In this blog, we’ll discuss the challenges organizations face in optimizing the use of their Office 365 licenses and how they can overcome these challenges using ADManager Plus’ Office 365 reporting feature.
 During the initial migration to Office 365, organizations usually purchase licenses based on an estimate of their business needs. However, even if perfectly estimated upon initial purchase, the number of licenses an organization needs changes over time. When employees leave an organization or leave a specific team within an organization, an extra license is often freed up. It’s because of instances like these, where licenses are underutilized, that organizations require regular analysis of their license utilization.
Manually reassigning licenses whenever there’s a structural change in an organization is nearly impossible. To effectively do this, admins need accurate information on the licenses, users, and groups in their organization. The reports in the Office 365 Administrative Center don’t provide a comprehensive view to the admins, and automating license management using PowerShell scripts can be complicated and time consuming. Administrators need an efficient way of optimizing license management with real insights into their Office 365 and Exchange Online applications.
ADManager Plus’ Office 365 reporting feature provides comprehensive information regarding the licenses, users, and groups in an environment. This reporting tool allows admins to generate:
- Office 365 User Reports:
View details on all Office 365 users, inactive users, never logged on users, and more to make better decisions on assigning and revoking licenses.
- Office 365 License Reports:
See details on all the Office 365 licenses as well as licensed and unlicensed users. Admins can ensure optimum license utilization in their organization using these reports.
- Office 365 Group Reports:
Review details about all the security, distribution, and dynamic distribution groups so admins can take necessary action to keep the list of groups updated.
With the help of the data provided by these reports, admins can optimize license utilization in their organizations by removing licenses from inactive users and reassigning them to users who need them.
We’ve discussed the difficulties in Office 365 license optimization as well as how an organization can overcome these difficulties using ADManager Plus. If you’d like to download resources about Office 365 management and reporting, click here.
