Determine licensing requirements
Subscription estimator is a tool that is available in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services. Microsoft uses this tool to estimate the initial size of the production environment that must be provisioned for a customer. Before customers can request deployment of a production environment, they must estimate their peak transaction volume in terms of transaction counts and then upload the information to Lifecycle Services. By using the details of user licenses and transaction counts to infer subscription requirements, the subscription estimator tool helps ensure that the provisioned environment meets the customer’s business requirements.
The Usage profile is used to gather required information for Subscription estimator. Users can complete the following usage profile sheets and upload them to Subscription estimator. Customers should download and update the usage profile with peak transaction volume per module and financial report and then upload the usage profile to Lifecycle Services.
To download the latest usage profile:
- Go to the Lifecycle Services project and select Subscription estimator from the upper left hamburger symbol.
- On the Subscription estimator page, select Sample usage profile to download the file.
The usage profile Excel spreadsheet has three sheets that must be filled out:
- Instance characteristics - Contains basic questions about the number of legal entities, master data volumes for customers and vendors, inventory, manufacturing, and whether the customer uses Dynamics 365 Commerce.
- Peak transaction volume - Fill in the transaction volume for peak business hours per module, process, and reports.
- Retail & Commerce - Contains questions about store details, point of sale devices, Store commerce transactions, e-commerce, and e-commerce transactions.
After completing the Excel spreadsheet, you must upload it to the Subscription Estimator page.
- On the Subscription estimator page.
- Select New estimate.
- Name the estimate, and then upload the usage profile file.
The uploaded file will be listed in the Other estimates area until it is activated. Select Mark active to activate the estimate.
Based on the transaction volume and modules mentioned in the usage profile, the Specifications section will compute and display the estimated enterprise user count, total transaction lines per hour, and financial transaction volumes for Management reporter. The enterprise user count is used during license purchase.
An estimate can also be edited for multiple implementation projects under one tenant.
When a subscription estimate is created, the full count of all purchased licenses is assigned to the estimate. Customers can’t allocate more than the total number of licenses to a single estimate. Additionally, customers can’t reduce the allocated number so that it’s less than the minimum number than the Dynamics 365 licensing policy requires.
For more information about using Subscription estimator in Lifecycle Services, and frequently asked questions, see Subscription estimator in Lifecycle Services (LCS).