Sysadmin Central

On September 1st, 2024, Microsoft plans to remove the ability to manage licenses in the Entra ID admin portal. This change may catch many by surprise, and there has been considerable concern about how we’ll continue to manage licenses, particularly for those using Dynamic Groups. Historically, managing these groups through other portals like the Office 365 Admin Center wasn’t possible.

Fortunately, this is no longer an issue!

How to Manage Licensing

It is now possible to manage license assignments, including for Dynamic Groups, via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center so long as you have at least a Microsoft Entra ID P1 license. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you to easily assign licenses via the portal –

1. Log in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Sign in with an account that has the Licence Administrator role or higher assigned.
2. Once logged in, go to the Billing tab and select Licenses.
3. Choose the subscription which you want to manage license assignments.
4. By default, the Users tab will be selected. Here, you can licenses to individual users. To assign licenses to groups, switch to the Groups tab.
5. Click on + Assign licenses, then search for and select the group you want to assign licenses to.
6. Finally, click Assign to assign the licenses to the entire group. The assignment process may take some time, depending on the number of members within the group.

Although I would prefer to be able to continue managing license assignments via the Entra ID portal, at least we don’t appear to be losing any functionality with this latest development.

Official Resources

• Assign licenses to users by group membership using the Microsoft 365 admin center
• Assign or unassign licenses for users in the Microsoft 365 admin center