Licensing Advent Calendar – Day 7 – Device based security roles

The previous post was about users who should be excluded from license reporting. In this post, I will elaborate on one user type which might need some additional settings to be excluded from reporting: the device user.

Device users

Yesterday, I talked about users excluded from the license reporting and explained the difference between a device and the device user. If you missed the post, you can read it here: Licensing Advent Calendar – Day 6 – Excluded users

As explained, several users are excluded from reporting if they have specific standard roles. Some roles intended for device users are not in the list. E.g. the security roles for manufacturing execution requires either an Operations – Activity or Supply Chain Management license. It might also be the case that you have custom roles for e.g. warehouse mobile devices.

In a recent update for versions 10.0.43 and above, Microsoft added new roles out of the box, without any duties or privileges assigned.

There are three roles added:

• Device based – Production floor worker
• Device based – Retail store manager
• Device based – Warehouse worker

If you don’t see these roles in your environment, you can update to the latest available quality update for your Dynamics 365 F&O application.

Next to e.g. a custom role, you can assign this role to the device user. In the next example, I used warehouse users.

In case you will add one of these roles to the device user, the user is directly recognized as a device user and is exempted from a license requirement. You can check this via the User License Consumption report on either Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC), Lifecycle Services (LCS).

Additional notes

The device based roles are a solution which might be temporary. Microsoft will review the option to enforce licenses for devices and might enhance the licensing calculation in future to recognize the device user.

Exempting the device user from the report does not take away the licensing requirements for the devices itself. The option to hide users with these roles should only be used in the right context. In case you will use this for normal business users, this is a violation of the product and contract terms. This can be recognized via telemetry and Microsoft reserves the right to back-bill for unlicensed usage based on compliance audits.

There is more…

During the Advent period, each day in December, I will share some thoughts and tips related to the Dynamics 365 user license enforcement. If you have questions about this topic, feel free to contact me via LinkedIn, the comments section below, or the contact form on this blog. I will then either update one of the planned blogs for the coming 24 days or answer questions in a new post.

Dynamics 365 Licensing Enforcement Advent Calendar

I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.


That’s all for now. Till next time!