Office 365 License Optimization dashboard

Overview

The Office 365 License Optimization dashboard is part of the Web Portal. It shows how much money is spent on Microsoft 365 licenses in your organization, the amount spent on currently assigned licenses, and the potential savings based on possible optimization scenarios. If the usage statistics fit a different, cheaper license, Cayosoft Administrator suggests it.

Using this dashboard, you can see the licenses currently assigned to each user and all the optimization scenarios defined in the selected optimization model. Each scenario is assigned a score depending on the number and type of difficulties a specified user will face if moving from the current license to the suggested optimization. For example, some existing and used functionality will no longer be available. After taking into account all these difficulties, you can select and apply a new target license for a user.

The data used by this dashboard as well as the Office 365 Service Adoption dashboard is updated by the built-in Analytics collection rule. Make sure this data is updated regularly by setting a schedule for Analytics collections. For that:

1. In the Cayosoft Administrator console, navigate to Home > Rules > Built-in Rules (Pre- configured) > Analytics collection.

2. Schedule this runbook to a specific timeframe:

   
   

Also, make sure to set your prices for Office 365 licenses in the Microsoft 365 extension settings to verify that the amount spent on data is correct.

IMPORTANT: The Office 365 License Optimization dashboard requires the Office 365 audit logging to be enabled. The report is compiled on the Microsoft backend and is usually about 3 days behind actual activity data. For more information, please see the following article: How to enable audit logging in Microsoft 365.

Using the dashboard

License Optimization Summary

• Total spend: The sum of money that is spent on Office 365 licenses in your organization.

• Assigned: The total cost of currently assigned licenses.

• Unassigned: The total cost of licenses that are currently unassigned.

• Potential savings $: The total amount of money potentially saved if each user in the license optimization model has the license changes according to the recommended scenario.

• Potential savings %: - Potential savings $ \ Assigned.

You can set this License Optimization Summary to yearly or monthly spend. Also, you can see this summary for All Admin Units or select a specific user Admin Unit.

User List

You can get the list of users and see their current licenses, the recommended optimization for each user, possible cost savings, and status (optimized or not).

If the user status is Not Optimized, to get user optimization details you should click the Optimization Advisor web action. In the Optimization Details form, review the following:

1. Suggested optimization scenarios - drop-down with a list of possible optimization scenarios.

2. General Overview with license change recommendation, cost savings, and possible difficulties in case of license optimization. Each option that is out of range for a license plan is called a difficulty and is used to determine the difficulty of moving to the target license. Difficulties are categorized by severity:

   1. Informational: These are notices that do not affect the final optimization score.

   2. Minor: By default, each of these difficulties removes 2% from the optimization score.

   3. Major: These difficulties remove 10% from the final score.

   4. Critical: These difficulties remove 20% from the final score.

3. By default, optimization scores of 80% or below are not recommended.

4. The list of Office 365 service usage and user activity. These are individual metrics that track to define the usage level of Microsoft functionality.

5. You can select the target license and apply it to a user.

Office 365 License Optimization dashboard settings

Web Actions tab

For details review the following article: How to add, remove or re-arrange Web actions within a Web Query.

How to delegate the dashboard

A Global Administrator user can delegate permissions to view the Office 365 License Optimization dashboard to a web administrator. The prerequisites are as follows:

• The trustee must be delegated the dashboard access.

• The trustee must be delegated access to the AD Users web queries in all Admin Units.

  IMPORTANT: Cayosoft Administrator defines the dashboard scope using the scope of the AD Users web queries. If you omit an AD Users web query targeting a unique scope, the users in the scope will be missing from the dashboard.

Refer to the following steps to delegate access to the dashboard:

1. In the left pane of Cayosoft Administrator Console, navigate to Home > Configuration > Roles > Web Administrators.

2. In the Web Administrators window, click the Add Delegation Rule button.

3. Add scope for the new delegation rule.

4. In the Specify Policy Scope > Virtual Admin Units, select Dashboards and relevant Admin Units containing AD Users web queries this web administrator must have access to.

5. Click OK > Save changes.

IMPORTANT: Verify that you have delegated the correct admin units to the web administrator trustee. Otherwise, the dashboard shows the You do not have permission to view collected data message instead of data.

Change History