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Introduction

The Savings Opportunity Dashboard allows you to review license usage and allocation over time. It aggregates the data from other reports into a clickable dashboard view. We will explore how to use the Savings Dashboard and how you can utilize it.

 

Prerequisite

  • You must have an Enterprise License and have more than 300 users. If you are not using an Enterprise License or have less than 300 users, you will not see data on the dashboard or it will appear unlicensed.
  • Your Tenant must have License Pools configured


Background

This dashboard provides the ability to check past license allocation for each license pool. CoreView saves a snapshot of the dashboard for each month that you can access from the ‘View’ dropdown. You can also compare two snapshots to track the evolution of your license wasting with the ‘Compare to’ feature.

 

This dashboard is based on three different ‘Saving drivers’: disabled licensed users, inactive licensed users, and over-licensed users. 

  • Disable licensed users: users with a primary(*) license and blocked credentials
  • Inactive licensed users: enabled users with ALL primary(*) license inactive
  • Over-licensed users: enabled users with more than one primary(*) license, at least one of which is active

* Primary license: with this dashboard, we have introduced the concept of primary license. Those licenses are the 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

 

Please be aware that the snapshots will be stored starting from April 2022, and will move forward from that date.

 

 

Getting Started

 

By following the instructions, you will be able to review license activity over a period and compare it to the current month. You can leverage this dashboard to identify trends and improve license optimization.

  1. You should be logged into the CoreView portal and sitting on your home page.
  2. On the “Analyze Tab”, click “Dashboard”, then “Saving Opportunities”. 

 

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You should now be on the “Saving Opportunities Dashboard”

 

  1. Click on the “Disabled Licensed Users” box to see a filtered “User report” of disabled licensed users. This view can help find licenses that you should probably reclaim/reassign.
  2. Click on the “Inactive Licensed Users” box to see a filtered “User report” of users who have not been logging into the Microsoft company products but have an issued license of products.
  3. Click on the “Over Licensed Users” box to see a filtered “User report” of licensed users using all the products they are licensed for. This may allow you to switch them to a different (cheaper) license.
  4. Click on the “Total Users” box to see a “User Report” of all your users.

 

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  1. Under the “Unnecessary Spending Trend” box, you can adjust:

7a. Which report you are viewing data on under the ‘View’ dropdown, and

 

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7b. Date lengths of 3, 6, 12, and 24 months using the ‘Last’ dropdown. Please note that data timeframes are limited to the preset timeframes and may be less based on if you have been with CoreView less than the set timeframes.

  

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  1. The “Compare Snapshot ” box lets you choose the snapshots to visualize in the chart by selecting from the ‘View’ and ‘Compare to’ dropdowns. The data of the ‘Saving drivers’ (licenses inactive, allocated to disabled users, and users over-licensed) is plotted in the chart accordingly.
  2. The default view of the table shows you the current situation of your license allocation and the ‘Saving drivers’ (licenses inactive, allocated to disabled users, and over-licensed). Using the ‘Display by’ dropdown, you can switch what numbers are shown in the table (number of users, license costs, or percentage of the total users in that license pool).
  3. By clicking on any of the numbers in a cell, you will be redirected to the list of users corresponding to that combination of license pool and saving driver - so you can manage them (i.e., reclaiming their licenses using the ‘Manage licenses’ action, or even better launching a dedicated workflow).
  4. You can access the past snapshots available in your Tenant by selecting them from the ‘View’ dropdown.

 

 

 

  1. You can compare a snapshot to the one you are currently visualizing by selecting it from the ‘Compare to’ dropdown.

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Disclaimer: To have two comparable snapshots for the filter criteria, you must match them (i.e., if a snapshot has license pools configured by ‘country’, it cannot be compared to a snapshot with a ‘domain’ configuration).

 

Roles and permissions

This report gets filtered on license pools, so delegated operators (users who are not Tenant Admin) will be able to see only the license pools assigned to them. Tenant Admin and users with the GlobalLicense role can see the full report for all the license pools.

 

Summary

This is a brief introduction to the “Saving Opportunities” report. You should now be able to see where some cost savings may present themselves for your Tenant.

 

Click around and see where it takes you!