To effectively manage your Dynamics 365 usage and optimize costs, it’s crucial to understand your usage from a licensing perspective clearly. This requires conducting an in-depth analysis of your Dynamics 365 environment. One of the most efficient ways to achieve this is by using the tenant-level analytics feature in the Power Platform admin center. This feature allows you to export detailed license usage data to Azure Data Lake Storage, enabling you to generate custom reports and gain actionable insights.
An organization can have multiple Environments just like Dev (Developers to make changes without breaking anything in a live environment), UAT (Use the application and give feedback about the features) & Production (Live Environment).
If anyone wants to know who the Active Users having Dynamics 365/Microsoft 365 or Power Apps Licenses are, then with the help of tenant-level analytics, one can do the same. There might even arise a scenario in which a specific environment needs Licensing Attention, as per the Users using the Licenses. The feature has an answer to it as well.
Why Analyze Dynamics 365 License Usage?
Analyzing your Dynamics 365 license usage is vital for several reasons:
- Cost Optimization: Understanding which licenses are in use and which are underutilized can help you make informed decisions about renewing, upgrading, or downgrading licenses.
- Compliance and Auditing: Keeping track of your license usage ensures compliance with Microsoft’s licensing terms and prepares you for any audits.
- Operational Efficiency: By identifying active and inactive users, you can streamline your operations and allocate resources more effectively.
To leverage these benefits, follow this step-by-step guide to exporting Dynamics 365 license usage data using tenant-level analytics.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure you meet the following prerequisites:
- To access the data export feature, you must have one of the following roles: Power Platform admin, Dynamics 365 admin, or Microsoft 365 Global admin.
- The environment should have a minimum of 1GB of Database capacity.
- Now to see this feature, the user needs to first, Log into Power Platform Admin Centre → Then, Click on ‘Billing’ on the Site Map → Click on the “License (Preview)” option highlighted in the below image. The Licenses page will then open.
Step-by-Step Guide to Exporting Dynamics 365 License Usage Data
1. Set Up Data Export
To begin, sign in to the Power Platform admin center using a Microsoft Entra Global Admin account. Navigate to the Export to Azure Data Lake section and select Power Apps. Turn on the Enable tenant-level analytics option.
Official Microsoft documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/tenant-level-analytics[1]
2. View License Usage Data
Sources
Official Microsoft community answers: https://community.dynamics.com/blogs/post/?postid=b35acbe1-bee0-46d0-b892-cc039a71fa1d which is linked to this article: Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM Tips and Tricks
Once the export is set up, you can view your Dynamics 365 license usage data:
- Log into the Power Platform Admin Center (https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/[2]).
- On the left menu bar, go to Billing → License to see an overview of license consumption by type across your tenant.
- Select the “Environments” tab. The Overview Tab displays the summary of environments in your tenant which requires licensing attention. By enabling, this Toggle Button the user is also including the Unmanaged (Standard) environment for licensing attention. By default, only Managed environments are displayed.
Now, let’s suppose an Organisation has 3 environments and wants information if an environment will have any License Issues and will need attention or how much license consumption is happening in an environment. With this new functionality, all these requirements can be availed by the users under one Page i.e., “Licenses”.
- For each environment, select license type: D365, time period last 30 days, Licenses type “All”;
- After selecting the Environment, the below image will appear, which will display all the Licenses Types for that selected Environment along with the Total Number of ‘Active Users’ and ‘Recommended Actions’.
Under the ‘Recommended Actions’ column, we will get information like, Is there any existing User in the Tenant, who needed a Standalone Power App License, depending upon the Licenses consumption?
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Now we can download this information as shown in the above image, by simply clicking the “Download” button highlighted in the above image. The file will be downloaded in (.csv) format.
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In order to see the complete list of user details like Organization (Tenant), which Active user is using which License, and what is the Date, in which he/she was last Active you needs to click on any of the ‘License Type’. Another section will be displayed as shown in the below image that contains all the ‘Active User Email-ids’, ‘License name’ and ‘Last Active Date’.
Checking License Usage
Consider a scenario where an administrator wants to check which users have been assigned the Dynamics 365 for Sales Enterprise Edition license.
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Select the License: In the Power Platform admin center, navigate to the license management section. Simply select the desired license, such as “Dynamics 365 for Sales Enterprise Edition.”
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Identify Active Users: Once the license type is selected, a list of all users assigned to that license will be displayed, along with their ‘Last Active Date.’ This feature is particularly useful for identifying any users who have the license but are not actively using it.
For instance, if you want to find an active user who hasn’t been using the “Dynamics 365 for Sales Enterprise Edition” license recently, you can check their ‘Last Active Date’ to see if they have been inactive for the past 15 or 30 days.
Direct Access to User Management in Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Another valuable feature is the ability to directly access user details in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
- Click on the User’s Email ID: When viewing the list of active users, clicking on a user’s email ID will immediately redirect you to their profile in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. This functionality eliminates the need for multiple steps that were previously required to access user details.
- Once in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, administrators can perform various tasks, such as updating or deleting user details, managing license applications, and assigning security roles, all in one place.
For example, if we are checking a user who has the Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise license, clicking that user’s email opens their profile page in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, where the admin can update their details, licenses and roles.