Remove Teams Premium Licenses from Azure AD User Accounts After 30-Day Trial Finishes

Microsoft makes a Teams Premium trial license to allow customers test whether the functionality available in Teams Premium is worth the $10/user/month cost. Some of the features, like meeting templates, might be less obviously worth the money. Others, like the advanced webinar functionality (like having a waitlist for webinar participants) might just be what you need. The trial allows you to try before you buy by testing all the features with up to 25 users for 30 days.

Once the 30-day period finishes, Microsoft automatically terminates the license validity and users lose access to the premium features. Even if you decide to go ahead with Teams Premium, it’s a good idea to clean up by removing the licenses from the user accounts that participated in the trial. This is easily done in the Microsoft 365 admin center by selecting the license, selecting all accounts holding the license and choosing Unassign licenses (Figure 1).

Remove Teams Premium Licenses with PowerShell

Given that we’re all learning how to manage licenses with the Microsoft Graph because of the imminent retirement of the Azure AD and MSOL modules, it’s good to know how to remove licenses. Let’s examine what’s needed to remove the Teams Premium trial licenses.

First, we must know the SKU identifier for the license. To do this, run the Get-MgSubscribedSku cmdlet and look through the set of licenses known to the tenant to find Teams Premium:

Get-MgSubscribedSku | Format-List SkuId, SkuPartNumber, ServicePlans

SkuId         : 36a0f3b3-adb5-49ea-bf66-762134cf063a

SkuPartNumber : Microsoft_Teams_Premium

ServicePlans  : {MCO_VIRTUAL_APPT, MICROSOFT_ECDN, TEAMSPRO_VIRTUALAPPT, TEAMSPRO_CUST...}

According to the Azure AD list of licenses and identifiers, the SKU identifier for Teams Premium is 989a1621-93bc-4be0-835c-fe30171d6463 rather than the 36a0f3b3-adb5-49ea-bf66-762134cf063a shown here. This is because the first value is for the paid license. The second is for the trial license. Both SKUs have the same part number and display name (which is why the license shown in Figure 1 is called Microsoft Teams Premium). It would be nice if Microsoft added a trial suffix for its trial licenses.

In any case, both SKUs include seven separate service plans. A service plan is a license for a piece of functionality that cannot be bought. Instead, it’s bundled into a product (SKU) like Teams Premium. Service plans allow administrators to selectively disable functionality enabled by a license. For instance, you could disable advanced virtual appointments without affecting the other elements in Teams Premium. Table 1 lists the service plans covered by Teams Premium.

PowerShell Code to Remove Teams Premium Licenses from Azure AD Accounts

Now that we know the SKU identifier, we can run some PowerShell to:

• Find user accounts with the Teams Premium license. This is done using a lambda filter against the assignedLicenses property of each account.
• Remove the license from those accounts.

Connect-MgGraph -Scope User.ReadWrite.All
Select-MgProfile Beta
# Populate identifier for target product (SKU)
$TeamsPremiumSku = "36a0f3b3-adb5-49ea-bf66-762134cf063a"
[array]$Users = Get-MgUser -filter "assignedLicenses/any(s:s/skuId eq $TeamsPremiumSku)" -All
If (!($Users)) { Write-Host "No Teams Premium Trial licenses found - exiting" ; break }
Write-Host ("Removing {0} Teams trial licenses from {1}..." -f $Users.count, ($Users.displayName -join ", "))

ForEach($User in $Users) {
  Try {
    $Status = Set-MgUserLicense -UserId $User.Id -RemoveLicenses $TeamsPremiumSku -AddLicenses @{}  }
  Catch {
    Write-Host "Error removing Teams Premium Trial license from {0}" -f $User.displayName }
}

Updated with an appropriate SKU identifier, the code will remove licenses for other Microsoft 365 products.

Remove Teams Premium Licenses to Avoid Confusion

It doesn’t matter if you leave expired licenses in place. They won’t affect how people use Microsoft 365. However, given that the paid-for and trial versions of the Teams Premium licenses have the same display name, it’s best to remove trial licenses to avoid potential future confusion.

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Teams Meeting Templates are part of Teams Premium

Now that Microsoft considers Teams Premium to be generally available, it’s appropriate to investigate some of the functionality enabled by the new product to see if it’s worth the $10/month/user fee. In The 30-day trial license for Teams Premium remains available.

Microsoft has introductory pricing for Teams Premium of $7/month/user until June 30, 2023, possibly because some of the features aren’t yet available. For example, branded meetings won’t be available until mid-February and the much-hyped intelligent meeting recap powered by GPT 3.5 is scheduled for sometime in the second quarter of 2023. Given the delay, you might want to wait before testing.

Managing Teams Meeting Templates

Meeting templates are available now. These are essentially policies to apply to meetings to control settings that are otherwise set by the meeting organizer. The idea is to speed up meeting creation by using templates. A new meeting inherits options from the template used.

Management of meeting templates is through the Meetings section of the Teams admin center. Figure 1 shows that the organization has four custom templates and one default (for virtual appointments).

The process of creating and editing templates proceeds in the same way as managing other Teams objects. The only odd thing I encountered is the ability to create meeting templates with duplicate names. Although each template has a unique identifier, having multiple templates with the same display name is likely to confuse users.

Meeting Templates and Sensitivity Labels

When you create a new meeting template, you can set values for a range of meeting options, including using a sensitivity label. You don’t have to choose a sensitivity label, but if you do, the template inherits settings from the label and locks them against change (Figure 2), meaning that meeting organizers cannot change these settings for individual meetings. You can also lock settings in templates that don’t use a sensitivity label.

The control a sensitivity label exerts over a meeting template is similar to the way sensitivity labels manage containers (sites, teams, and groups). Using a sensitivity label in a meeting template does not mean that Microsoft Information Protection will encrypt the meeting and its associated artifacts (attached files, attendance report, and so on).

Configuring Sensitivity Labels for Teams Meeting Templates

Before a sensitivity label can be used with a meeting template, administrators must configure it with Teams settings (Figure 3). These are the settings inherited by a meeting template from the sensitivity label.

Sensitivity labels with Teams settings are tagged with “meetings” when listed in the Information Protection section of the Microsoft Purview Compliance portal. If you want, you can find the set of labels available for Teams by running this PowerShell snippet:

Connect-IPPSSession
[array]$Labels = Get-Label
$TeamsLabels = [System.Collections.Generic.List[Object]]::new() 
ForEach ($Label in $Labels) { 
    If ($Label.ContentType -Like "*Teamwork*") { # It's a label for Teams
      $DataLine = [PSCustomObject] @{
        LabelId     = $Label.ImmutableId
        DisplayName = $Label.DisplayName
        Priority    = $Label.Priority } 
      $TeamsLabels.Add($DataLine) } 
}
$Output = $ContainerLabels.DisplayName -Join ", "
Write-Output ("These labels support Teams Meetings {0}:" -f $Output)

Meeting Template Policy

Users gain access to meeting templates through the meeting template policy assigned to their accounts. The default meeting template policy for the organization allows access to all templates, but you can create policies to restrict access to specific templates. For example, you could have a policy allowing access to a set of templates that’s assigned to members of a certain department.

When planning meeting templates and the policies used to publish templates to users, it’s a good idea to focus on a scheme that gives users an appropriate amount of choice. If you use a single policy to publish 10 templates to users, people might find it difficult to select the right template for a meeting. Three or four templates is a practical number to aim for.

Creating Meetings from a Template

To create a meeting from a template, select the template from the list revealed by the down arrow beside the New meeting button (Figure 4). Teams creates a new meeting and populates its options from the template settings.

Apart from the number of templates shown here, the importance of good template names becomes apparent. For instance, what’s the difference between a confidence meeting and a secure meeting or a private meeting? Differences may well exist in terms of the settings meetings inherit from each template, but it’s hard for users to differentiate between the templates.

Meetings created using templates have their options set. The options that the organizer cannot change have a lock icon to indicate their status (Figure 5). Other options can be amended as usual.

Apart from having predetermined options, meetings created from templates work in the same way as do regular meetings.

The Promise of Templates

Microsoft says that meeting templates reduce “the time and thought process it takes to create and get the meeting right.” And “With templates, leaders can ensure that their meetings adhere to company best practices and policies.” I never expended too many brain cells when creating Teams meetings in the past, but I see value in applying standards to specific types of meetings. Whether that’s worth the extra license fees is a different matter. But I suspect that meeting templates will not be the key functionality that justifies an organization buying Teams Premium.

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Defining What Teams Premium Covers

Updated 20 January 2023

On October 12, 2022, Microsoft announced Teams Premium, an add-on license that Microsoft estimated would cost $10/user per month. Thirty-day test licenses are available for organizations to test the advanced meeting and security features that Microsoft hopes will make Teams Premium a popular choice, especially in enterprise tenants. Microsoft emphasizes that Teams Premium covers ground that would otherwise need a suite of add-ins from multiple software vendors. That, and the close integration with standard Teams functionality is their trump card.

Confusingly, Microsoft continues to offer the Teams Advanced Communications license, something that might go away when Teams Premium becomes generally available in February 2023. That date is predicted and should be taken with a fairly hefty dose of salt.

Additional Clarity About Features Moving to Teams Premium

On January 14, Microsoft updated Microsoft 365 notification MC445406 (the original announcement for Teams Premium) “to provide additional clarity.” In this instance, Microsoft confirms that some features previously covered by the Teams standard license will move to Teams Premium.

Microsoft will allow a grace period for each feature to allow users with Teams standard licenses to wean themselves off the functionality. Once the grace period expires, holders of Teams standard licenses won’t be able to access the premium features.

The features moving to Teams Premium are:

• Live translation of captions during Teams meetings. This feature allows users to opt to see captions generated for voice communications during meetings in their preferred language. The grace period is 60 days.
• Custom together mode scenes. A scene is the backdrop that meeting participants appear on during Teams meetings when using together mode. Standard users can choose from a set of scenes created by Microsoft. Those with premium licenses can use custom scenes created with the Teams scene studio. For instance, you could create a custom scene based on a well-known physical meeting space like an conference room or atrium. The grace period is 30 days. Up to now, the use of custom together mode spaces required the Teams advanced communication license, so this move shouldn’t affect holders of Teams standard licenses.
• Timeline markers in the recordings of Teams meetings. These markers indicate when participants join and leave a meeting. The grace period is 30 days.
• Virtual appointments is like the Bookings app for Outlook and allows users to schedule and manage structured appointments using online Teams meetings. Although the Virtual appointments feature remains available for standard users, its premium features such as SMS notifications to let people know when an appointment is scheduled, analytics in the Teams admin center, and the ability to view queued appointments require the new license.

Of this set, live translation of captions gets the longest grace period, probably because it’s a feature that makes matters discussed in meetings more accessible to users. As such, its new status might therefore be deemed more sensitive. There’s possibly some truth in this feeling. Whether regaining the ability to use live translation of captions or any of the moved features would make anyone want to pay for Teams Premium remains to be seen. I somehow doubt it, which then begs the question of why Microsoft decided to elevate these features to premium status.

The Question of Licensing

Another subject deserving more clarification is the exact licensing requirement for each of the premium features. In some instances, it seems like per-user licensing is necessary, as when individual users want to choose separate languages for live captions. In others, it’s down to people doing specific tasks, such as those who organize advanced webinars (Teams webinar events with features such as waiting lists). Microsoft hasn’t released these details yet.

The Case for Premium

There’s a perfectly valid case for Microsoft to offer Teams Premium licensing for specific features. Some organizations need functionality like the ability to watermark meetings, meeting templates, and using sensitivity labels to protect meeting content. Others do not. Someone has to pay for the engineering effort needed to build and support the desired functionality, and that payment flows through premium licenses. I’ve no issue with this approach.

Likewise, I have no issue with Microsoft demanding premium licenses for new features. However, it does seem somewhat unfair to change the rules of the game by moving features from the standard license to premium status. I guess the pressure to generate as much revenue as possible from Microsoft 365 users is growing.

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Test New Functionality with up to 25 Users

Updated: 3 February

Microsoft is making 25 free trial licenses available for the Teams Premium package available to organizations to test the new functionality. The trial licenses last for 30 days after which the accounts assigned the licenses will lose access to the premium functionality. The official announcement appeared in the Microsoft Technical Community on December 16.

To get the licenses, go to the marketplace section of the Microsoft 365 admin center and search for Teams Premium under Purchase from Microsoft. According to Microsoft, the trial licenses are available starting now, but as of December 19, I did not see any mention of Teams Premium in the catalog available within the Microsoft 365 admin center. However, the direct link does work. (update: the Teams Premium trial licenses are available as described)

Here’s the bizarre thing though. A bug in Microsoft’s internal eCommerce system stops tenants getting more than one license at a time. You can repeat the exercise three times to get three licenses and after that the eCommerce system fails to co-operate further and tells you that you’re “not eligible to buy this product.” Microsoft knows of the problem and will fix it, but perhaps not until the new year. I’ve been assured by Microsoft that the licenses obtained after the fix is in place will have their own 30-day trial period.

Features to Test

Microsoft’s documentation for Teams Premium licensing covers the additional features enabled over standard Teams in areas like meetings, webinars, and meeting protection and reporting. Some of the features are less interesting (to me) than others. The set that I’ll be paying close attention to include:

• Translated post-meeting transcripts.
• Adding watermarks to meetings. It won’t stop people taking screenshots of sensitive content presented during meetings, but it might deter some.
• Assigning sensitivity labels to Teams meetings to protect content associated with the meeting such as shared files. The Purview team has already deployed the change to support a label setting for Teams meetings and OWA is also getting a similar feature (MC484925) and I want to compare the two.
• It’s worth saying that not all the new features are available yet. I have noticed that the premium features for the new webinar experience work as expected (like operating a waitlist or requiring manual approval of participants – Figure 2), but other pieces of functionality listed by Microsoft are currently unavailable.
• Time markers and autogenerated chapters in meeting recordings.

Oddly, there’s no mention in the documentation about intelligent meeting recap, one of the features hyped by Microsoft at the Ignite 2022 conference.

Limited Time for Testing

Given the limited amount of time available to test functionality using the trial licenses it might be wise to wait until after the holiday period before getting the licenses. Over the next few weeks, it’s unlikely that Microsoft will deliver a significant number of new features so running a solid 30-day trial starting in mid-January sounds like a good approach that should give organizations sufficient evidence to make an intelligent purchasing decision when Microsoft makes Teams Premium generally available. At Ignite 2022, Microsoft indicated that the target date is February 2023.

Understanding Licensing Rules for Teams Premium

Microsoft hopes to persuade customers to cough up the $10/month/user charge for Teams Premium licenses. I see no mention in their documentation about the scope of licensing. For instance, I assume that only a webinar or meeting organizer needs a Teams Premium license to organize an event that uses premium features, but some features like the ability to see live translated captions in your own language during meetings are likely to require per-user licensing.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft will move some features covered by the standard Teams license to the premium license. These features include:

• Live translated captions.
• Timeline markers in meeting recordings to note when users join or leave meetings.
• Custom together mode scenes.

If you’ve been using these features, you might need to consider what to do in the future. The choice is to either drop using the features or pay for Teams Premium. I think it’s somewhat sneaky of Microsoft to move existing features into an optional license but I don’t get to vote.

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But What the Two Products Will Deliver is Very Different

Among the features listed by Microsoft at the launch of the Teams Premium product at Ignite 2022 are sensitivity label support for Teams meetings and intelligent meeting recap. Sounds good, but then the Outlook team revealed that they will ship sensitivity support for Outlook meetings and a meeting recap feature among the set of new capabilities planned to be available to targeted release customers before the end of 2022.

The Teams Premium product is currently slated to cost $10 user/month, yet Outlook appears to be about to deliver the same functionality at zero cost. Does that make sense? Actually, it does, but in a weird kind of way.

Teams and the Exchange Calendar

Teams depends on Exchange for its calendar. The Teams calendar app is built on top of the Exchange calendar, which handles the scheduling of meetings. Teams uses a deeplink to connect the scheduled events in the Exchange calendar to the online space used to host meetings. As far as Exchange is concerned, it delivers a scheduling capability for meetings and nothing more. What happens to extend that basic functionality is entirely under the control of the app that creates the extension. This is how Teams handles features like meeting roles, the lobby, and so on.

Outlook, Teams, Meetings, and Sensitivity Labels

Outlook will “provide the capability to apply sensitivity labels to meeting invites and protect them too. ” In other words, Outlook will allow organizers to apply a sensitivity label to a meeting and the protection assigned by the label will apply to meeting artifacts, like attachments.

The Teams description focuses more on the automatic application of sensitivity labels (an Office 365 E5 feature) “to apply relevant meeting options automatically.” Apart from the automatic application of labels, the assignment of meeting options is a capability like the way that containers (Teams, Groups, and Sites) inherit settings like privacy and guest user access from sensitivity labels.

It therefore appears that Outlook will extend the existing method of protecting messages with sensitivity labels to cover meeting invitations. Teams Premium will inherit settings from sensitivity labels to make sure that critical meetings and all the artifacts associated with the meeting are properly protected.

Meeting Recaps

Outlook’s definition of meeting recap is that “users have new discoverability and productivity features to easily find and access information about a meeting including files, transcript, and the recording directly from the calendar event in Outlook.” The screen shot for Outlook meeting recap posted by Microsoft shows how users can click a View meeting recap link in meeting properties to see the meeting transcript and other information. It’s a nice way to catch up with what happens during a meeting.

Teams Premium applies Artificial Intelligence to derive more value from the same meeting data. Microsoft says that “intelligent recap uses AI to suggest action items and owners” and “After the meeting, intelligent recap will create smarter recordings with automatically generated chapters and insights such as when your name was mentioned, when a screen was shared, or when you left a meeting early.” This is a more proactive and expansive use of information gathered during a meeting.

Of course, whether users will like Teams suggesting action items and owners automatically is quite another matter. And adding automatically generated chapters (markers) to the video recordings of Teams meetings is only useful if someone actually goes back to review the recording. As we know from the data Microsoft shared when they introduced the auto-expiration feature for Teams meeting recordings, relatively few people consult a meeting recording after it is stored and available to participants.

Confusing Naming

It would be nice if Microsoft product groups didn’t use the same terms for very different features. The bottom line is that the public information revealed by Microsoft to date indicates that Outlook will deliver support for sensitivity labels for meeting items and a basic meeting recap. Teams Premium uses more from Microsoft’s bag of AI tricks to introduce intelligence into understanding what meeting data means and how it could be better used. Of course, all of this could change before the software is generally available, so final judgment must be reserved until we see the Outlook and Teams Premium implementations in real-life scenarios.

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