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Office 365 A1 Plus guidance

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On August 1, 2024, Microsoft will retire the Office 365 A1 Plus program, a free Office subscription that includes Office desktop apps for qualified schools that purchased Office institution-wide for faculty and staff through Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES), Open Value Subscription Education Solutions (OVS-ES), Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), or a school contract. This program was introduced in 2015 to ease the provisioning burden for IT of moving users to the cloud. While the intent was to help schools with their transition, it also introduced a level of complexity leading to compliance issues for our customers, with many inadvertently becoming noncompliant. Today, Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 licenses are easier to assign, both addressing our customer requirements and the need for a transitional program. All existing Office 365 A1 Plus licenses will expire as of August 1, 2024.

This guide is intended to help IT Admins understand the license change planned and what they should do to manage the change and mitigate any user impact.

Step 1: Check for Office A1 Plus in your tenant

To plan for this change, IT Admins should first identify if they have any A1 Plus licenses present or assigned within their Microsoft 365 Education tenant. Follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal: https://admin.microsoft.com

  2. In the navigation menu on the left side of the screen, select Billing > Your Products

  3. Identify any instances of the Office 365 A1 Plus for Faculty and Office 365 A1 Plus for Student assigned licenses

    Screenshot of your products list.

Step 2: Identify users with A1 Plus

If you have identified A1 Plus licenses assigned to users within your tenant, you should then identify which users are assigned these licenses. Follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin portal: https://admin.microsoft.com
  2. In the navigation menu on the left side of the screen, select Users > Active Users
  3. Create a filter for each A1 Plus sku:
    1. Select the Filter button and choose New Filter
    2. Provide a Name for the filter
    3. Under Assigned Product License, select A1 Plus for Faculty
    4. Select Add
  4. Repeat these steps to create a second filter A1 Plus for Student
  5. To view the list of users associated with A1 Plus, select Filter > select your custom filter
  6. Select the ellipsis (…) button and select Export users
  7. Review the exported CSV file to review users with A1 Plus licenses assigned

Step 3: Plan for license changes

Once you identify any A1 Plus users within your environment, you may begin planning for the upcoming changes. These key questions help with planning for this change:

What license do I want my users to be assigned once A1 Plus is retired?

IT and/or system leaders need to decide which Microsoft license users should be assigned as A1 Plus licenses are retired. Download this Microsoft 365 Education infographic to learn what suite is right for your school and review the Microsoft Education License Comparison Guide and Microsoft Education Service Description for detailed information to inform your decision. If needed, contact your Microsoft License Service Provider or contact Sales.

What should I do for users with A1 Plus and other licenses assigned?

Microsoft 365 supports assigning multiple licenses to users. If users in your organization have A1 Plus and another license assigned, the A1 Plus license will be removed on August 1, 2024. If the secondary license assigned is the intended and correct license, the secondary license assignment will persist as the A1 Plus license is removed. In this scenario, you don’t need to make any changes. If the secondary license is a free A1 license, these users will lose access to the desktop version of the Office 365 client applications, so plan to direct users to the web applications instead. If the secondary license isn't sufficient to meet the user’s needs, you’ll need to assign the desired license in addition to A1 Plus license and can optionally unassign the A1 Plus license in advance of the planned change.

What will happen for users with only A1 Plus licenses assigned?

For any user with A1 Plus as the only license assignment, Microsoft will automatically move these users to an A1 license, on August 1, 2024. If this is the desired outcome for your organization and A1 Plus users, you don’t need to do anything. A1 users will no longer have access to the Office 365 desktop clients when this change occurs (August 1, 2024) and will need to begin using the Office Web applications included with the Office 365 A1 license. Microsoft recommends communicating the change timeline to your user population, along with how to access the Office 365 Web Apps. Microsoft has created an end user guide that schools can customize with your own branding and timeline to communicate to your end users. Get the end user guide to help communicate with your end-users. If you want to ensure your users can continue to use the desktop Office 365 applications, you must assign a license, which includes desktop apps, like the Microsoft 365 A3 or Microsoft 365 A5 license.

When should I move users from A1 Plus to another license?

If you decide your users should be moved to an A3 or A5 license, you can initiate these changes anytime ahead of the August 1, 2024, date using tools like Group Based Licensing or PowerShell. If you plan to have A1 Plus users moved to A1, you may also make these changes anytime ahead of the August 1, 2024, retirement date to better align with your organizational goals, communication strategy, and timeline. If you don’t proactively move users to an alternate license, they’ll be automatically moved to an A1 license on August 1, 2024.

Can I assign new users an A1 Plus license?

If you deployed Microsoft 365 and have ongoing changes with your end user population, you may already assign licenses as part of your user provisioning process. Regardless of which method you use to assign new users their licenses, you should review these processes to ensure you're no longer provisioning A1 Plus after August 1, 2024. If you attempt to assign an A1 Plus license after August 1, 2024, the license assignment will fail to execute, as the A1 Plus licenses will no longer be present and available to assign within your tenant.

What should I communicate to users?

If you have users moving from A1 Plus to A1, you should inform end users the desktop version of Office 365 applications will no longer be available, and they’ll need to access the Office 365 web applications instead. Microsoft has created an end user guide which schools can customize with their own branding and timeline to help communicate this change with end users.

If you have users moving from A1 Plus to an A3 or A5 license, you may share all the new features and improvements associated with the license upgrade.

Step 4: Update user licenses

Once you’ve determined if your tenant has A1 Plus licenses assigned, planned for the change, and acquired any additional licenses needed, you’ll need to implement your plan and update user licenses accordingly. There are multiple ways to update user licenses. The most common methods use the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal, PowerShell, and Group Based Licensing.

Microsoft 365 Admin Portal

The Microsoft 365 Admin Portal is a great location to make ad-hoc licensing changes and license changes for small user populations. Because each change is manual, this isn’t an ideal method for making changes to hundreds or thousands of end users. However, the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal is well suited for making changes to 100 or less users. The portal provides search and custom filtering capabilities for user lists, allowing you to easily find and target the specific people you intend to update. The portal also allows you to multi-select users, up to 40 at a time, in order to make license changes in bulk. To access and leverage the Microsoft 365 Admin portal for licensing changes:

  1. Navigate to the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal https://admin.microsoft.com
  2. In the navigation menu on the left side of the screen, go to Users > Active Users
  3. Select the user(s) you’d like to update
  4. On the flyout pane on the right side of the screen, select Licenses and Apps
  5. Select the license you’d like to assign, and unselect the A1 Plus license
  6. Under the Apps section, deselect any applications and service plan you want to disable
  7. Select Save Changes

See Assign licenses to users in the Microsoft 365 admin center for more detail.

Group Based Licensing

Group Based Licensing is a great method for managing licensing in bulk for Microsoft 365 Education tenants. This is a premium service requiring Microsoft Entra ID P1 or P2 licenses and is available in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center. Group Based Licensing allows an IT admin to assign licenses based on group membership, so adding users to one of these groups will automatically assign the correct and intended license based on the group membership and rule. Group Based Licensing supports Microsoft Entra Security Groups, Security Groups synced from on-premises AD, and Dynamic Security Groups in Microsoft Entra ID.

See What is group-based licensing to learn more about Group Based Licensing and its license requirements.

See Assign licenses to a group to learn more about how to start using Group Based Licensing.

PowerShell

PowerShell continues to be one of the most popular methods for managing licenses in Microsoft 365. PowerShell allows IT admins to quickly manage thousands of users with just a few lines of code. PowerShell scripts are often bespoke and can be utilized for New User Provisioning and License Assignment automation, as well as for ad-hoc management and changes with user licenses, like removing an A1 Plus license and replacing it with another license. For some great PowerShell samples and scripts to assign and update licenses, see Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to user accounts with PowerShell.