The Optimization center is designed to identify license savings opportunities. From this report you can review unused, duplicated, or over-allocated licenses, and you can see users that are not taking advantage of the features enabled by their licenses. The ultimate goal is to optimize the licenses assigned to users and to free up more expensive licenses for those users who need them.
Note: Please click on the tabs to see relevant data.
Savings opportunities
The Savings Opportunity report is based on three different ‘Saving drivers’: disabled licensed users, inactive licensed users, and over-licensed users. This report focuses on “primary licenses” -- those Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses that provide the essential apps to the users. The list of licenses defined as ‘primary’ are the ones part of:
- Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS)
- Microsoft 365 Enterprise
- Microsoft 365 Frontline
- Office 365 Enterprise
- Microsoft 365 GOV
- Office 365 GOV
- Microsoft 365 Educational
- Office 365 Educational
- Microsoft 365 Business
- Microsoft 365 Apps
The definition of the savings drivers is as follows:
- Disable licensed users: users with a primary license and blocked credentials
- Inactive licensed users: enabled users with ALL primary licenses inactive for at least 90 days. This uses the “IsActive90” field.
- Over-licensed users: enabled users with more than one primary license, at least one of which is active.
Calculating IsActive90
IsActive90 (and IsActive30) is a field calculated by CoreView based on a number of different attributes. Below are the attributes that contribute to IsActive90.
| Application | Rule |
|---|---|
| Exchange | Exchange Plan not empty AND Last Exchange User Action within last 90 days AND RecipientType = UserMailBox. If "Skip Active MailUser" is false, then we also consider RecipientType=MaillUser |
| OneDrive | OneDrive Plan not empty AND Last OneDrive Action within last 90 days |
| SharePoint | SharePoint Plan not empty AND SharePoint Last Action within last 90 days |
| Yammer | Yammer Plan not empty AND Yammer Last Activity Date within last 90 days |
| Teams | Teams Plan not empty AND Teams Last Activity Date within last 90 days |
| PowerBI | PowerBiPro Plan not empty AND Power BI Last Action within last 90 days |
| Skype | Skype Plan not empty AND Last Skype Logon within last 90 days |
| Office 365 Installations | Office365Pro Plan not empty AND M365 Client App Last Activity Date within last 90 days |
| CRM | CRM last activity date within last 90 days AND SKU is in the following list: [“Dynamics CRM","Dynamics 365","DYN365","CRM","D365","Dynamics_365"] |
Licenses
The Licenses report replaces the License Optimization report in the legacy UX. This report allows you to see which users are using products/services associated with a given license. This report allows you to reassign or disable licenses where necessary and engage with users who are not leveraging their licenses to their full extent.
Advanced filters
The Advanced filters allow you to narrow down on users that have combinations of license and application usage. They provide two purposes 1) they act as filter criteria 2) they provide a running total of matching records. For example, let’s say in a tenant of 1000 users, 50 have E5s, once you filter to show E5s, the Usage map will recalculate the services/applications being used by those 50 users.
Note that the Advanced filters count also respects the column filters that may have already been applied.
License by user
The License by user report flattens out the license data for users to make it easier to find users who have combinations of licenses. It gives an overview of how your Office 365 licenses are distributed and utilized across your users. It provides each user’s full name, login name, Subscription type, and licenses for Office web apps such as the Exchange license, Skype license, SharePoint license, and Office Professional Plus license.
Service usage
The Services tab helps you quickly and easily understand which licenses are being used across your organization, as well as the cost associated with them. You can track and analyze usage metrics departmentally, by domain or other criteria to get a full view of the costs and usage of your organization's licenses. From the “Advanced filters” panel you can exclude newly created users and hide the costs columns for better readability.
Duplicated plans
The Duplicated plans tab allows you to easily discover users with licenses assigned that provide duplicated service plans. This is a great way to discover licenses that can be reclaimed by viewing more granularity than the "Saving opportunities" or "Licenses" tabs.