Partners weigh in on Team Member license changes for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement apps

Microsoft recently announced changes to the use of the Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement Team Member license. Users with these licenses will no longer be able to create or modify account entities within Customer Engagement apps. Rather, users will need to have full licenses for D365 Project Service, Field Service, Customer Service or Sales to create, edit, and delete accounts.

The changes apply to customers that activate new Dynamics 365 Team Member agreements after Oct. 1. 2018. Customers that acquired Team Member licenses before that date will only be affected when they renew their licenses beginning in July 2020.

MSDW reached out to some partners and experts to find out exactly what these changes mean both for customers who may have users assigned to them and for partners who have sold and deployed them to clients.

No longer open to interpretation

Brian Illand, Dynamics 365 solution architect and Microsoft lead with Codec-dss, says there have been issues around Team Member licenses for some time.

"There were quite a few gray areas in the licensing guide before October 2018," he says. "Because of those gray areas, some customers would have taken a very loose interpretation on that. Obviously, as partners, we absolutely need to stay on both the letter and the spirit of the law. So we would be able to [advise] customers to stay compliant. Before October 2018, how Team Member licenses were used depended on a user's interpretation."

Before the new changes went into effect on Oct. 1, a Team Member license allowed users ...