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Microsoft expands employee self-purchase to Visio and Project

As per September 15, Microsoft expands the employee and team members self-purchase option to Microsoft Visio Plan 1 and Plan 2 and to Microsoft Project Plan 1 and Plan 3. This means that employees can subscribe to those services and the subscriptions will be added to the company tenant.

Thrive innovation
Microsoft’s thoughts are that team members who need new technology should not be held back by slow organizational procedures. They should be able to go to the internet and subscribe to this new technology, on behalf of the company. This is already the case with Microsoft Power Platform products like PowerBI and PowerApps. Now they are extending this possibility to Microsoft Project and Visio too. In this way, team members are capable of thriving innovation for the organization. At least, that’s the thought …

Surprises
However, when employees or team members use this option, this can lead to big surprises for Software Asset Managers, IT Asset Managers, IT resource managers, purchase departments and financial departments. Because suddenly new or higher numbers of subscriptions appear on the monthly invoice. And organizations don’t like surprises, they like predictability.

Block
Knowing this, Microsoft offers organizations an option to block the self-purchase option at a subscription level. This means that as an IT Administrator you can block self-purchase of Microsoft Project Plan 3, but allow the self-purchase of Microsoft PowerBI, as an example. Self-purchase is by default ‘on’, disabling the option has to be done with a PowerShell script.

SAM
Blocking or allowing self-purchase might be driven by technology, innovation, purchasing policies or control freaks. Whatever the reason for enabling or disabling might be, the one and most important issue is that you must be aware. Take appropriate measures and embed whatever you decide within your Software Asset Management (SAM) procedures or managed SAM solution in conjunction with your service provider. Might you want guidance or help with this matter, please do reach out to us.

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