This article provides information about the Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation solution. The solution provides Power Automate flows to manage license assignments to Dynamics 365 F&O users. The solution is designed to simplify the license assignment of Dynamics 365 F&O licenses. It also saves a lot of time compared to manual license assignments in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Overview
Users of Dynamics 365 require a license. Assigning a license for Microsoft365 or Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement apps is straightforward in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. When onboarding users who also need Dynamics 365 F&O apps, there is a complexity as the required license(s) depend on the security roles granted in the application. This information is often not known when creating the user in Microsoft Entra ID.
The solution is provided AS-IS and is not an official ISV solution. You can send feedback via the contact form. Ideas will be considered for future enhancements.
Currently, the solution contains of three Power Automate flows and it is using some connectors (version 0.9.0.6)
- Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation – base
The flow contains all logic to check for available and missing licenses. It can run stand-alone per user or as a child flow. It checks the assigned security roles and sums up the required licenses for a user. - Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation – all users
A flow that loops all users and runs the base flow as a child flow. It will be started manually (instant cloud flow). The result will be sent in an email to the person running the flow. - Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation – role assignment change
This is an automated flow. Whenever a role is added to a user, the flow is triggered and calls the base flow as a child.
It is possible to customize the solution by adding parent flows that support your specific scenario for looping users and assigning licenses.
Connectors used in the flow are: Microsoft Dataverse, Excel Online (Business), Office 365 Outlook, and Azure Key Vault.
Assumptions, known issues, and limitations
The next comments are important to be aware of before using the license automation flows. The content will be updated after receiving feedback and releasing new versions of the tool.
- The Dynamics 365 F&O License Assignment solution is created for this moment to not require any customization for the Dynamics 365 F&O application. For that reason, some metadata is maintained in the Power Automate flow. Also, an Excel sheet supports the flow with knowledge about the required license(s) per role. I requested Microsoft to work on APIs where license reporting from the microservice can be consumed, or some (read-only) data entities on top of the new licensing tables in Dynamics 365 F&O. In that case, Power Automate can run without the currently required Excel sheet.
- The solution does not consider multiple production environments at this point in time. Users may have access to multiple environments with different security roles and, for that reason, possibly different license requirements.
- The tool currently only assigns licenses. Removing licenses is technically possible and is considered for a future enhancement. When implementing this, the scenario with multiple production environments should be taken into account.
- The flow skips users without a Usage location set on their Entra ID record. Without a usage location, the license assignment will give an error. Skipped users are reported via the base flow results or email notification.
- The tool is currently not recognizing users with inherited roles via Entra ID groups using standard Dynamics 365 F&O. This is considered for a future enhancement. As a workaround, the enhanced Entra ID integration can be used to have these users recognized
- When running the base flow in parallel, there is a small chance of license overassignment. You can check for over-assigned licenses on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (requires login and permissions).
- The list of excluded roles contains the system administrator and device-based roles at this moment. In case one of the assigned roles is in this list, the user will be skipped for license assignments. For all other excluded roles, in case the user has also normal business roles, the license will be calculated for these roles. In case of deviations from the Microsoft license reports, feel free to provide feedback via the contact form.
- The base flow contains a list of common Dynamics 365 F&O SKUs, including a SKU part number to map a SKU against available licenses in your tenant. There might be custom SKUs in your environment active. In case one of your licenses is missing, please report this via the contact form.
In addition to the common licenses, partner sandbox licenses for Dynamics 365 F&O and Human Resources are in the list. - In case a user needs more than one license where the user is already assigned a base license from a license SKU having a lower subscription price, the licenses will not be assigned automatically. The user needs to be reviewed manually to remove the current base license. The automation can then run again, which will then assign the licenses starting from the correct base license.
- When multiple licenses are required for a single user, there might be an error that there are too many Microsoft Graph calls for the user. When running the flow multiple times, it will eventually assign all required attach licenses, if available. The flow that runs for all users has an automatic retry mechanism implemented.
- The tool is like the Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations license reports not aware of users with access to the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement app. In case the Dynamics 365 roles are suggesting, e.g., a Team members license where the user needs access to Dynamics 365 Project Operations Core, it will not assign a license if the user already has a Project Operations license. Otherwise, it will follow the suggestion from the Dynamics 365 F&O licensing logic.
- The solution is a managed solution, meaning that extensions are currently restricted. This is to ensure stability and avoid unattended or wrong changes to the flows, leading to non-working flows or incorrect license assignments. Feedback will be collected, and improvements will be applied to future versions.
Additional resources
Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation installation and configuration
This article explains how to install and configure the Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation solution.
Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation download
This page has the asset to download the solution with related files.
Introducing Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation
This is a blog post announcing the availability of the Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation solution.
Extend Dynamics 365 F&O License Automation with custom flows
Coming soon!