 Now, I'd love to introduce our speaker, Shruti Ramaswamy. Shruti is TechSoup's Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Relationship. She's responsible for Microsoft program offers and works closely with both nonprofits and Microsoft to ensure the sector around the world is able to derive the most impact from the program offerings. Prior to her work at TechSoup, Shruti was a technology consultant with IBM. We're super excited that you're here, Shruti, to get some of these questions answered. So I'm going to hand it on out to you. Perfect. Thank you so much, Nicole. And welcome, everybody. It's really, really great to see so many people here. And I'm especially excited because I see a few people from my hometown in Monmouth County, New Jersey. So a special welcome. I am out of my home office right now in Montclair, New Jersey. And I'm really excited to be here today to talk to you a little bit about some of the Microsoft program changes that we have sent an email about and that you may have heard about. As Nicole mentioned, this session is really to get your questions answered. We are here to provide as much information and help as possible. My goal at the end of the session today is to get through as many questions as we can. And to make sure that you guys are leaving out of this session feeling like you have your questions answered or you know how to get help moving forward. We are here to do that and that's what we're going to plan on doing today. And as Nicole mentioned, I'm probably going to just speak for 10 to 15 minutes. We have received many questions from organizations over the last week. So it helps to give a little bit of background and framing about what the offers are. And hopefully that can provide a good context for us to really engage in more of your questions and direct concerns. So I'll kick off by just giving a little bit of background about TechSoup. As most of you who are here know, TechSoup is a global nonprofit. Our mission is really to make sure that the rest of the ecosystem of charities and nonprofits around the world are well supported. We want to make sure that we all have the same technology, access to technology and support that we all need to be able to further our own missions at scale and as efficiently as possible. We do that in partnership with over 400 corporations, foundations who work together to bring their offers to the nonprofit sector. And our goal is to really make that process of interacting with all of those organizations and foundations as simple as possible. So we are here to partner with wherever you are in your digital strategy and wherever you are in your digital capacity today. So we can support from your traditional desktop environments to your cloud migration strategies. And we do that through in cell software that we can offer hardware solutions that we offer, as well as cloud software and technical support and services. And we also have a really robust amount of courses, content, educational sessions such as this one today that we offer to really make sure that not only do you have access to technology, but your teams, your volunteers, your IT staff, all have the ability to get support and education to be able to leverage and use that technology as effectively as possible. We are happy to answer as many questions as we can today, but our focus today and discussion topic is really going to be centered around the Microsoft offers that are available for nonprofits. What I'll try to do is give a little bit of overview about all of the different offers that are currently available to nonprofits from Microsoft through TechSoup and then talk a little bit about specifically what is changing in this program. And I just wanted to note that a lot of the changes that we talked about in the email that may have prompted you to join this discussion don't really come into play or start changing until April. But the goal of our session here and some of this communication is just to make sure that you feel really well prepared for any decisions that your team might need to make in terms of budgeting or in terms of technical planning. And so we hope that this information is really something that you can leverage to be able to make the best decision possible. But we're here to partner with you and support you and help you through that decision-making process as well. So I'll start by just giving a little bit of an overview about some of the licenses that are available for nonprofits. And I will preface this with saying that we are trying as best as possible to make this as simple to understand. But it is a little complex and there's a lot of terms that we use. And so I thought I would start really simple and just with definitions of what we're actually talking about when we say some of the things that we've been saying in our emails and make it easier to understand what's actually changing. So Microsoft provides many offers and many solutions available to nonprofits at both a discounted and donation rates. So the first thing that I'm going to talk about is what's in the gray here, which is our on-premises offer. And when we say on-premises, what we mean by that is the solutions that you might be using that you might have traditionally gone to the Volume Licensing Center for, where you are paying once and you are getting access to a solution like Office Standard, where you are downloading that product from the Volume Licensing Center and downloading it to a specific device that you have. So either a laptop, a desktop, or accessing it on a server. And then you own that license moving forward. So you can choose to upgrade if you want later, but you have that license and it's now in your kind of possession to use that. Typically, these on-premises licenses will have free patches available, updates that are available between versions, but it's usually dependent on you actually going and making sure you're keeping up to date and actually updating your solutions. There are full version releases that typically happen every couple of years. We're actually just in a position, and many of you might know that Microsoft recently just released the Office 2021 version. So there are typically releases that happen, but this is something that we kind of refer to under the on-premises kind of category. On-premises offers are also available in two different kind of categories. The first one is donation. And so these are product sets that are typically fully donated by Microsoft. There are still administrative fees that go to TechSoup to help support our operational sustainability and make sure we can provide the support services and solutions like this to be able to support you. But those products are typically capped at about 50 licenses per product group. And they are also usually just standard products. So Office Standard versus Office Premium. They actually were Office Professional, excuse me. So it's a smaller set of products that are available, but smaller set of products that are available. But they still have about 25 or so products that are in that catalog of offerings. Those donation offers also include software assurance. Software assurance is a benefit that comes with these licenses that allows you to have a two-year period. So if there are new versions that come out, that you can get a free upgrade for that period of two years when you first purchase. So that's what we really mean by donated on-premises licenses. It's kind of that particular group of products. There are also products that are in the on-premises kind of download world that are also discounted. And so those products typically have a larger set of products that are available. They include the premium, the professionals level products, as well as the standard products. They do not have a quantity restriction. So if you want to get 150 licenses, that's no problem. You can do that. And there's a little bit more choice and flexibility whether or not you want software assurance or not. And typically, organizations might choose not to get the software assurance because it does add costs to it. So if you're looking and you're a little bit more price sensitive, you can get just the licenses only, which will bring down the cost of it as well. So that is all what we kind of refer to as on-premises solutions. Microsoft also offers cloud solutions. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about what those solutions are and what that means and how that's a little bit different than the on-premises solutions. The cloud solutions that Microsoft offers are really subscription offers. They are something that you can renew annually. It is an opportunity to subscribe to a product set. And so with that subscription, you're not necessarily taking that same ownership of the license like you did in the VLSC. There may still be downloadable desktop applications that you can use from that subscription. So you can still have offline capabilities and you can still have things that are on your desktop. But the goal is that that's really a subscription product that's continually updated. So you don't have to update your version of Office. That's always continually updated when you're on that subscription. So if there are new features that come out, if there are new product solutions that come out, there are new security patches that come out, that's gonna be directly updated into your license. That does require a stable internet connection to make sure that you get those updates, to make sure that you're syncing. And for those features where you want collaboration or live collaboration online. So it doesn't necessarily mean you have to use everything that is online, but for you to get some of those features and the kind of robust features that are available in cloud solutions, you would probably want the internet connection there. So Microsoft offers these cloud subscriptions at both donation and discounted rates. And there are many different subscription types and different licenses that are available to organizations. And I'm happy to walk through those in more details. But typically what you will see is that much of the functionality that we have in the on-premises solution is available in the cloud subscriptions as well. Like I mentioned, it includes some of the desktop applications, things that you can download. And one of the great things is that you can mix and match these solutions. So when you have like a big volunteer activity or you have seasonal kind of nonprofits where you do summer events or activities and you really only need the licenses for certain periods of time, you can turn on the licenses on and off as you need it. And you can be a lot more flexible. You might want some like a particular license for one group of users. You might want a higher level of license for another group of users. And so you can kind of pair those together in a way that allows you to have the access level that you need and really hopefully a lot more flexibility in terms of what's available to you. That being said, there are obviously pluses and minuses to all of this. And so we're not necessarily saying that this works for everybody or the solutions work for everybody. On-premises typically have some advantages because you do own the license. It's a one-time expense. You don't have to fundraise or have ongoing costs. And that obviously all of us know can be a challenge. And because you have the software assurance, you will have some upgrades available to you every couple of years. Disadvantages are that there is a lot more that needs to be done for upkeep. You might have to upgrade when new versions come out. And typically if there are security patches, you're going to have to patch that yourself. And you're gonna have to make sure that you're taking a look at that, understanding if there is. And for many of us who might not have an IT department, that becomes a little bit more onerous and potentially kind of risky situation. On the cloud side, obviously there are a lot of advantages. We talked a little bit about those. There's a flexibility of cost. You're getting all of those updates automatically. You can have a lot more robust features and then you have the inherent collaboration. So you can work on products together or solutions together. You can be in the same Excel doc together. You can work on the same Word document together. But there are some disadvantages as well for some organizations. If you have to use a discounted license, those costs being spread out over time might be a little harder to be able to budget for. And there are some requirements for some stability of internet connection. If you want to use some of those more robust features and you might need to have a stable internet connection if you want those updates to flow through as well. So what I wanna talk a little bit about now is what's actually changing. So all of that is what we currently have today. And for the most part that all remains to be true but there are a few things that we wanna highlight for your planning purposes to understand what will be changing and what might be an implication for your organization. So after April 4th, Microsoft is going to be limiting that on-premises solution, that gray box that we had talked about before to only discounted licenses. So all of the products that you currently get will still be available to you but they will only be available at the 60 to 75% discount rate. There will be a few exceptions to that. One of them would be the Windows Pro which is your operating system that will still be available as a donation. There will also be some server licenses that are available but only for those markets and those organizations that might have branches that are working in areas that do not have Azure. And once we send out the sec, you can look at that and see if Azure is available in any of the countries that you might be operating in. And the last one is for public access computers. So there are many of our nonprofits and organizations that have training center or education centers where they have one computer that many people are using. And typically for those, the user-based licenses of cloud solutions don't really work well. So for those organizations, particularly, there will be some donation skews available or donation products available so that organizations can take advantage of that. What is not changing are the cloud donations. Everything that is available today as a donation offer for cloud licenses will still remain available. And as I mentioned before, a lot of the functionality that are in the on-premises licenses are also available in some of these cloud subscriptions as well. Just to be a little bit more clear about what's changing, it's again, all of the products remain the same. It's just what we see here as the donation and on-premises goes really to a discounted offer. And to provide a little example about what we mean by that and how that really might impact you, some of the most popular products that we offer and that nonprofits have really requested from us are Windows Office Standard and the Windows Server Standard Products. And those are examples of on-premises offers. Right now, they're available, as you can see in these kind of colored areas as a donation offer. So they have that 50 license limit, but they have a small administrative fee. All of these licenses that are here today are also available as a discount, which you see underneath. And you can see a lot of the functionality, particularly with Office Standard and Windows Server Standard, are already included in the Microsoft 365 business premium license, which is actually a cloud subscription. This subscription includes Office Application. It allows you to download those applications to your desktop so that you don't have to necessarily have an internet connection to be able to use it. It also comes with a lot of the other functionality that a lot of people want the cloud subscriptions for, including Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote, I use a lot. But it also includes a lot of security features and things that we currently see in Windows Server and allows you a lot more administrative functions. What's changing on April 4th is where you see these donation offers. You'll actually see that move into a discounted offers space. Again, all of that's still available in the cloud licenses and all of it is still available as a discount as well. But there are some price implications, which is really why we wanna make sure that everybody feels comfortable and aware of what these changes are. So you feel like you can make the right decisions for your organization. Right now we wanna move into everybody's questions, but I'm gonna kick us off really quickly with the top four questions we've currently received and that we continue to receive to make sure that we can answer some of these up front. The first question that we've gotten a lot is what does this mean for your existing license? I already have office standard. I have an office standard that I've been using. Will I still be able to use this product? And the answer is absolutely. You still can use any of the on-premises license that you have. This change really impacts what you can newly request moving forward, but it does not change any of the current licenses that you have. You will still be able to use those. And for the on-premises licenses, you already own those. So that is up to you when you wanna change or upgrade. The same is true for the cloud licenses. If you are on a cloud subscription already, you might be on an E1 license and E2 license, a Microsoft business premium license. Nothing is going to be changing in terms of the cloud functionality that you already have. The third question that we get a lot is what if you don't have dependable internet connectivity? And this one I can completely understand. And there are many nonprofits who do not have great internet connectivity here in the US in rural communities or even abroad as well. And I wanted to just clearly see it again that on-premises solutions will still be available, but they will only be available as a discount. And also note that a lot of the cloud subscriptions do come with downloadable applications. So you can still get that offline capability and function. And when you do have internet connectivity, you'd be able to upgrade and get some of those syncs and use some of the collaboration features, but it's not required for you to use some of the products. The last one I wanted to talk a little bit about is how are libraries impacted? And this is something that's really near and dear to many of our hearts because TechSoup has a large and long-standing TechSoup for Libraries program. And typically what we have been able to do in the TechSoup for Libraries program has been to offer solutions, Microsoft solutions just for public access computers. And that has included the same products that we have, but really for those computers that are being used for the people that are coming into your libraries. We are still working on how we can make sure that that will continue to operate. There are a few fulfillment changes that Microsoft is making, and many of you in the library system know that there are also educational offers that are available to libraries. We are working with the Microsoft Education team right now to see how we can extend the same benefits for the public access computers as some of these changes roll out. And we are hoping to have more information about that in the next few weeks. And we're working hard to make sure that we can get those offers through TechSoup and that you can get the same benefits that you currently have today, if not better. So I will pause there and I know Nicole's here ready to help me answer everybody's questions. So I'm excited to do so. Yeah, I just wanna acknowledge everyone asking lots of great questions. Thank you so much. I also see that we've got some upvotes. So continue to give a thumbs up to the questions that you would like to see answered. And that helps us to prioritize since we do have so many questions. We do wanna get as many of them as possible. So let's start with this one, Shruti, on just overall, I know you talked here some top questions being around license restrictions and usage and how to find how many licenses you have. So let's take some questions. We'll kind of focus in on this area. We've got several questions from audience members on this, starting with a question from Joseph. Joseph says, our 501C3 nonprofit has many part-time and volunteer staff members and Microsoft perpetual licenses have been a cost-effective IT strategy. But with the end of the Microsoft nonprofit perpetual licensing in April of next year, he's afraid that paying for these subscriptions for user per month will not be affordable for us. So it's more of a comment rather than a question, but we got a lot of votes on that. So we'd love to hear your response. Yeah, thanks for asking that question, Joseph. And I think it is an important one. One thing I wanted to show here were some of the cloud offers that are available because some of these are available as a donation. So I just wanna call these out and make sure that you're aware that there are some opportunities here for I think some budget-friendly options that are in the cloud subscriptions as well. The first one that I would just call is the Microsoft 365 Business Premium License that's at the bottom. This is I think one of the most robust offers because it comes with those downloadable desktop applications as well and it comes with a lot of security. These are completely free for the first 10 users. And so obviously we know some people have much more than 10 users. And so it's available at a discount of $5 per license per month after that. But I can understand that some people don't have the budget for that. So there's two other ones that I would highlight. The first one is the Microsoft 365 Business Basic License. That's completely free for up to 300 users. But I just wanna note that this is only cloud application so it does not include the desktop applications. So I think particularly, Joseph, for your situation it might be something that you would want some of the downloadable desktop applications for as well. And then I would point you to this Microsoft 365 Business Standard. This includes the cloud services as well as the desktop solutions. And these are available at $3 a license a month. So it's a pretty significant discount from the commercial rates. And hopefully it can be cost effective but we completely understand that there might be some price limitations or cost limitations to that. I think there are a lot of offerings where you can pick and choose so you can make the most of the donated offerings that are available and for those licenses that you need, particularly with volunteers, one thing I would just state is that you can get the licenses for when you need it. And when you're not using it, you don't have to have it. So you can disable those licenses. And I think that can be really helpful in ways to manage cost. But obviously that's like, there's a cost of managing that in general. So I understand that. So there are other solutions that are available and I'm happy to talk a little bit more about those as well if you need to. Great. And I did see a lot of questions too about pricing. This slide is super helpful and laying that out and a reminder to everyone that we are wearing the link to this recording and a follow-up email within the next couple of days talks. If not sooner, it'll also include a link to the slide. So you'll get to revisit all of this information up close and personal and make sure you're comfortable. On that note, before we continue with some other licensing questions, we have this question from Michelle about if we can schedule an appointment to discuss our individual needs to determine the best way to proceed. Absolutely. And thank you for that question. There's two options here. If you're just wanting questions and we don't get to it today, there's an opportunity here on every slide in this slide deck. I've tried to reach us at techsuit.org. So feel free to reach us. We're here to answer your questions. I'm also gonna skip to this last slide here. We do have free consultations available. And as we send these decks out, you'll get all these resources and links and we might be able to put that in the chat right now. But you have an opportunity to schedule a consultation so that we can help you choose the right licensing as well. Great, great. And maybe if you can go back to that slide on 365, actually, let's see. There are just some more clarification questions. Saw this come up from a couple individuals but just wanting to know if the business standard license is still going to be $3 per license per month after April 2022? Correct, none of these prices are changing. So the only changes on April 4th are gonna be to those on-premises licensing. So these pricing should remain stable. Excellent, great. Okay, let's go on to this next question. We have this question from Maikelle who says, who used to be able to access our Microsoft volume licensing page to retrieve product keys? Oh, wondering if that site is now shut down and if so, how can we retrieve the product keys that we have already purchased? That site is still live so you are still able to go to the volume licensing center to be able to access any previously purchased products that you have that you might not have downloaded yet. You can still go to the volume licensing center and get that. There are a couple of things that I think they've updated in the volume licensing center including the logins and things like that but you should be able to access your licenses through there. Excellent. We have this question from Steven. Can you get a combination of basic and premium licenses? Yes, absolutely. TechSoup is a really good example of that. We have like, I think four, five, six different license types that we use across our group so typically our IT team has a much higher level of licenses than some of our other team members who just really need some of the basic applications. If we have volunteers or interns we might have them at different licenses so you can absolutely pick and choose based off of the user profile and what they might need. Excellent. And here, another question on licensing. This one is from Danita. Danita would like to know do you have a step-by-step instruction guide that you can send us on how to check to save our organizations at 80% level for us to keep each of our donated licenses? So I think the big thing here is just understanding what licenses. Yes, and we have all these slides that we've kind of assumed we were gonna get some questions on so I'm glad that you asked that question, Danita. Some of you may or may not be aware but many of you who are on some of these donation licenses today are probably aware that Microsoft does require and a look at the utilization of the licenses so they're looking to say if you have a donation product that you assign to your users they wanna make sure that you're actually using those otherwise they'll deploy it to other people to make sure that they can serve as many organizations as possible. So part of that is making sure that at least 85% of the people that have assigned the licenses are actually using those licenses and there are steps in order to be able to figure out are you meeting that requirement or not? It sounds easy but you actually can go to your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 administrative portal and there are reports and dashboards that you can leverage to look at your users and understand their utilization. I'm happy to provide one of our team members here Kevin Mulhall put together a great video showing exactly how to do that so we'll share that resource so that you can take a look at that and we're actually in the process of creating a guide for that as well because we know it's a little bit complex so we'll get that out to you as well. Fantastic, let's see here and I think this is along the same line here or similar thread. This question from Fyrus, we're a startup that's gradually increasing it's hiring in the next 12 months how do we save our 365 licenses from being taken back from lack of use for future hires? So a simple way is if people are not using it you can just unassign the license you can unassign the user from the license. So that 85% is only for those licenses that are assigned to a specific user. If you have requested licenses that you don't really need right now or that people are not necessarily using right now go ahead and unassign a user from them. You can still have those licenses but if they're not assigned to a user they're not gonna be tracked against that utilization requirement so that's kind of a simple way to make sure that you're managing that. Excellent, excellent. We've got a lot of individuals from libraries and other organizations that are using publicly shared computers we're gonna get to those bunch of questions in just a moment here but want to get to this question I've seen it pop up a couple of times now but this one specifically from Cynthia can I transfer software I've purchased to a new computer without having to buy it again? So this is also one of those disadvantages I think a little bit in some of the on-premises licenses so once you kind of download that license you have to get another license if you want or if you have a different device that you need that license on. If you are using a cloud license you can actually use that same license on up to five different devices so it kind of depends on which one you have so if you have a cloud subscription you can use that on up to five devices. If it's an on-premises license that has not already been installed you can do it but if it's already installed you will have to get another license. Great, thanks Shruti. Let's see here, let's move now into some of these more library related questions that we have. So I think you've covered a lot of this but I think it warrants just additional clarification and emphasis. Question here from Kurt about on-premises licenses to Microsoft Office, Windows and Windows Server will it still be available to public libraries since we have computer labs, training centers, public access computers? So we are still working on exactly what that will look like for libraries particularly and the real reason why libraries are a little different is because libraries are one of the only groups that are also eligible for education pricing and for education offers directly from Microsoft and Microsoft has a suite of education offers that have really great discounts and donations of I think it's just discounts actually discounts available to libraries and typically TechSoup has only served nonprofit and for a while libraries were served under that but as Microsoft has grown their education, library and museum space there's a lot more offerings there. So what we're trying to do is actually make sure that we can help you through that and make sure we get access to those education licenses and serve you with all of your needs and what we're doing right now is working with the Microsoft education team to make sure that we can bring those offers to you. We don't have exactly how it's gonna work at we 100% understand the need for public access computers and that they are different and that a lot of the cloud solutions that are available will not work for public access computers. And so we've been really advocating and working hard with the Microsoft education team to figure out how do we make sure that libraries still have public access computers available to them or software for their public access computers. We know for example that some of the on-premises solutions can still be available. We're still just figuring out how do we make sure that there's not a huge price impact and that you guys are still able to get that an affordable rate. So if you have feedback, we are working directly with the Microsoft education team right now. We are really looking forward to advocating for what you need there and we're hoping to get more information in the next few weeks. Great, we'll continue with some more library related questions but just wanna remind everyone that we are recording this webinar and we'll be sharing the deck that you saw previously that Shruti presented on and it just mentioned the recording and any resources that we're sharing via email within the next few days, if not sooner. Anything that you might have missed here and keep your questions coming, keep reviewing some of the questions that are in here and give a nice thumbs up to any of those that you would like to see answered if they haven't been answered already as I'll be keeping an eye on those to prioritize. So let's move to this question. Do you know actually at first let's go to, oh from Nancy. Nancy would like some clarification. So we've noted that the on-premise donation option from office is going to be available until April 2022 but there was one slide that said it would be available to libraries until December 2021. I think you just kind of called that out but just noting that. Yeah, that's a good clarification. So right now the nonprofit change is scheduled for April 4th. There are other changes that are happening in library and we're trying to make sure that that's going to be around the same timeframe but for right now we know for a fact that will still be available to from until December 31st. We are hoping to extend that to make sure it's the same as other nonprofits as well. Excellent, excellent. Okay, I think that handles some of the existing library-related questions. Let's move on to security. We have this question from Sue. So you would like to know what about security and HIPAA with cloud-based products? That's a great question. So a lot of Microsoft solutions allow functionality and allow for you to enable HIPAA compliant policies. I would definitely recommend if you have a higher level of security needs. The licenses that I had flashed up on screen were some of the basic licenses that are available but there are also Microsoft and Office 365 E3 and E5 licenses that have a lot higher level of security and a lot of other features that might be utilized and more easily used to configure for HIPAA compliance. And I think we have an article and a few content pieces on that. I don't know if some of our team can post that into the chat. That would be really helpful. Excellent, excellent. So this has also come up. There's a little bit of confusion on different licensing terms and what products that people have. So this one from Barb. Barb says, I'm a bit confused as our licensing says, Office 365 E3 for nonprofit staff pricing and then enterprise mobility and security E3 nonprofit staff pricing. But the wording doesn't really match the business standard premium. So what do I have? Fair question. Actually, you probably have the Office 365 E3 and EMS licenses. Those, I didn't put all of the offers that are available on the slide here and I can show you a little bit of a graphic that has all of that. But there are Microsoft 365 licenses that are available. Those are typically usually meant for organizations that have less than 300 people. And then there are also enterprise licenses, Office 365 E1, E2, E3, E5. Those are enterprise licenses and those are typically meant for larger organizations. But like I mentioned before, sometimes it makes more sense to use those licenses because they have more robust security features. Enterprise mobility suite and software are really licenses that are leveraged to do device management, to do access management and it provides a level of higher security. So what I provided was a really high level overview of some of the licenses that are available, but there are many, many, many more cloud offerings that are available to organizations. We have done a few things, content pieces to support and help make those decisions. There is a table that we've put together with all of the cloud licensing offers that are available to nonprofits and you can take a look at some of the features and benefits there. And as I mentioned before, you can always feel free to have a cloud consultation with us and we're happy to walk you through that as well. Excellent. Yeah, there'll be more information shared on that where you can access that consultation link directly in a follow-up email and I know it's also been shared in chat too. So let's see here. Yeah, we're probably gonna be just kind of skipping around now as I see some questions that still have to do a lot with licensing, but here's one from Dana. We know this to be true, working from home and then sometimes in the office, especially given the last year and a half. So Dana would like to know if we need to have two separate licenses for Microsoft 365 Business Premium loaded to each computer. So you don't have to have separate licenses for like your devices. Basically, and I might be misunderstanding it so I apologize, but once you have an Office 365 license, like for example, I have an Office 365 and or E5 license or E3 license I think, but I can use it on my mobile app. I can use it on my desktop and I can use it on up to five devices. So if I got a new laptop, I could use it there. If I, you know, it transfers, it's based off of a user license. It's not based off of a device. So you have a little bit more flexibility. Excellent. And Jill would like to know again, what was the license for organizations with less than 300 people called? So those are the Microsoft 365 Business licenses. And I just wanna, I'm gonna share my screen a little. I just tried, hopefully this will work, but we do have this asset available. Can you guys see my screen? Try to make this full screen. Okay, great. So it's a little hard to read, so I apologize, but within this, and hopefully there's a link in the chat for it, you can see all of the different licenses available and we recommend to use that Microsoft 365 nonprofit business premium license as the first kind of thing to go for because it's free for up to 10 licenses and it has like everything that you need. It has all of the web applications. It has the downloadable desktop applications and it includes security, but then there are other options. So we have these that are available for small and medium organizations, which is the business basic and business standard that we talked about. There are volunteer licenses for volunteers that are here. And then there are some add-ons that we kind of recommend here as well. And then you can see the E1, E3, E5 licenses that are all available as well. So this asset is available, you can take a look at it and you can make sure you have, we try to kind of call out what the cost would be for you, who the license is for, what recommended user amount this is for and what are the key applications that are available within these applications. But there are tons of options in choices, which is great, but can also be super overwhelming. So feel free to take a look at it and if you wanna have a consultation, please just feel free to reach out to us. Great, here's a question on cloud and internet connectivity. Michael specifically asked if there are suggestions for internet speed for Microsoft 365 for active users. And he's been using it at 40 MPPS unlike totally blanking of megabits per second. You got it. Yes, and the lag compared with a local server is noticeable. So I don't know if you have any suggestions up front on recommend the internet speed. That is a really good question. I don't have anything off the top of my head, but I'm happy to come back to you on that. I would also just state that if you have a license that allows you to download the applications, it's really helpful to do it. Teams has a desktop application, Windows, Excel, I'm sorry, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, they all have desktop applications that you can use. And I find that like using them on my desktop speeds that up and increases the performance a lot, obviously depends on your hardware and things like that. So if you're using like a Chromebook or if you're using just like a device that is just for internet access, it might be a little bit different, but I'm happy to look into that more. I'm sorry, I don't know that off the top of my head. Great, yeah. And I've made a note of that to check in on. Yeah, so then we've got some questions on Office here. One question from Bill about if any version of Office 2022 will be offered by TechSoup. So right now, if you download Office Standard or if you request Office Standard, you will actually be getting the newest version or you can choose to get the newest version from the Volume Licensing Center, which will be Office 2021. That just came out last week, that is available. So if you want that, you can get that. I don't know if they're doing an Office 2022, but they just came out with 2021. So I think that's your plus bet. Right on, great. Let's see here. I don't think we've addressed this question from Alan, similar on Office. Would it work to get Office 2019 now via the donation from Microsoft and then upgrade it to 2021, which I mentioned just came out using the Software Assurance Program after April 4th? So would it work to get Office 2019 now and then upgrade it after April 4th? Yeah, so what happens is what you get access to right now is if you want to request something today up till April 4th, you can go in and request Office Standard. And now when you go to the VLSC, you get to choose which version you want to download. And if you chose the 2019 version, you can also just start with the 2021 version. But if you chose the 2019 version for the two-year period of your Software Assurance, you can upgrade that. So that would be available to you. So you could do that. But like I mentioned, you can go ahead and request the 2021 if you're available and you're ready for that now. Excellent. And then revisiting a question here on internet connectivity from Ida. For cloud-based licenses, when I'm in a location that doesn't have internet service, will I not be able to use Microsoft Office software? So I think just a little... Depends on the license. Yeah, it depends on the license. So there are a few licenses that include desktop applications and that you can download it and totally doesn't require internet. That's the Microsoft 365 Business Premium License, which is available as a complete donation. There are also two other donated licenses or discounted licenses, sorry, that include that. The first one is the Microsoft... Let me put up that screen again, sorry. The Microsoft 365 Business Standard License, that's available for $3 per user. And then there's also a Microsoft 365 Enterprise Apps License, which is only the downloadable thing. So if you just want the downloadable licenses, you can use that. So it depends. If you're using something like an E1 or this business basic license that are only cloud services, then you will need internet connection. There are some offline capabilities, but it's a little harder to manage. I would say if you're really looking for things where you have consistently no internet access, you would probably want those solutions that have desktop applications that you can use with or without an internet access. Excellent. I wanna get into some questions. I think we're doing okay on time. Got a question here from Cynthia, but I wanna make sure we get to some other questions around Azure. But first from Cynthia, I would like to know if you can disable or hide features that you don't like or use for an example. She gets a pop-up about Teams when she logs on, but as she's the only employee, does not need Teams. Got it. Yes, I think there are ways that you can enable or disable notifications that come up. Cynthia, if you send us an email, I think we can help you walk you through like how to do that. Perfect. Great. All right, so let's move into some questions on Azure here. This question from Dee, we'd love to set up a simple Azure Virtual Desktop Windows 10 machine for remote access, but it's been a bit like drinking from a fire hose to learn how to do this. Totally. Can you help? Yes. I probably can't help on this call, but we definitely have resources to help. So I would say that we have a couple of different support services that are available, either just to give advice or to actually manage some of those solutions for you and some of those virtual desktop setups. So if you send us an email or if you can, on the resources page, you'll see some of the opportunities to engage with our services team. We can definitely help get you set up and make sure that we can walk you through that process or get you in touch with the people who can help you do that for you. Excellent. Let's see, we've got some other questions on that thread. So let's see here. Let me just make sure we did not cover this. Yes, from Mary, we're using Office 365 with MS Access and Access is downloaded and set up for multiple users. What's going to be the Microsoft product that replaces Access? We would like a cloud version for multiple users, ideally. Really good question. So it depends on how, so right now, Access is still available even if you have a cloud license. Hold on, let me go back to that page. So you can see Access is still here in the business premium and business standard, but it's only the PC version. It's a desktop version that's included for Access. It's not this collaborative tool. So I think more and more people will be using some of the Azure services that are available to be able to use kind of shared database systems within Azure itself. So if there are some things that you're specifically trying to do or looking to recreate in a more collaborative way, I would definitely suggest that you send us a note or engage us and we can put you in touch with the right kind of team that can help you in setting up and maybe thinking about moving to Azure for some of those database solutions because right now, even the Access solutions that are available in the cloud subscriptions are for PC use only and are downloadable. Great, great. And we're gonna ask this question too. I think it's specific, but just in case other organizations who are on the line today have also experienced this, I wanna ask this question from Matthew. Matthew said, we had access to VLSC for the past 15 years with TechSoup, but last week, all of our admins were locked out. Do you know what might have occurred or asked us to create an account using Azure Active Directory instead? So it's a little specific. It is, but I do think there is something that is helpful that I hopefully can help with. So Microsoft is one of the reasons that they're making some of these changes is that they are trying to start migrating away from some of the volume licensing center and make things more directly accessible in your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 administrative centers. So you can still use the VLSC, you can still get your licenses from there. But as they're making the move to make sure that people can get all of this from their one admin center, part of that is making sure that you have a work account that's set up so that you can get those licenses. So I think one of the changes that the VLSC has made recently is to ask organizations to set up a work account in order to go into the site. And so if you had set up before and you didn't have basically an account that was set up and created with Microsoft, like a Microsoft account. So you might have been using like shruti.gmail.com or something, then they're asking you to create new logins. They still map to your existing users that they're asking you to create new logins so that they can at some point integrate that all into one experience so that you would be also able to get those licenses from your admin center. If you're still having problems with that, you can call VLSC, there's a number there that there should be able to support you through that. And I know that's been a challenge for people. And if you still have any questions, feel free to reach out to us and we can try to help as much as possible. But I think that's probably what's happening is that the VLSC is making some work account changes and that's causing a little bit of issue. Thank you. All right, this question from Nora. Nora says, I have the 365 premium license for small 15 people organization and we haven't had any problems, we love it. My question is besides the office regular programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, what are some other programs and other benefits from this package? This is like my favorite question. So thank you for asking. There are so many other things in Office and I get like really excited about it because I mean, typically people just use PowerPoint, Excel, the things that you really need but there are so many other things that are included in an Office 365 subscription. That include things like to do, like a task list that you can use. They include solutions like Sway which is like ways that you can create better annual reports or like visualizations for things. And so if I can just show you really quickly, this is gonna be my personal one, so excuse me, but I'll just really quickly show you what this really looks like. If you go, let me share my screen. So apologies if there's something weird that shows up but over here you can kind of see all of the applications that are available to you and if you go to all apps and this is just going to officelike.com and you can just log in and if you're signed in to yourself, you can see all of the other applications that are available which include OneNote, Calendar, Sway which I just talked about to create reports, forms in which you can actually like create forms like intake forms that you might have for people who are volunteering, you can create forms for surveys. You can also have OneDrive and one thing that's also included in here is that's not on this screen right now but it's called bookings which has been really helpful because we use bookings. So if you schedule a cloud consultation with us, we will use bookings to do it but we found it to be super useful for people who are scheduling consultations or like services for family counseling or things like that or if you need to set up an appointment with somebody. So all of these solutions are already in your Office 365 package. You're literally using it, you have access to it now if you have these licenses. So I would just dig around a bit. There's so many things in here that you could be using and that are essentially you're already paying for or you already have subscription for. So a lot in there. Great. Thanks, Shruti. How are you feeling on timing? I know we're almost at the top of the hour. Are we? Okay. If you could just leave two minutes because I just wanna go through our resources but if we probably have another time for one question or so. Yeah, let's take one more question here. Let's see here. There's a lot of good questions. Thank you to everyone trying to follow the ones with upvotes and bucket them in a way where we get as many of them answered. So let's see here. I think this question has come up in a couple versions here. So Arlene has a revolving volunteer staff and with donated licenses and having to go through these Microsoft program changes, like how can we bypass individual sign-in if that's an option? Yeah, it's a great question and we're happy to help a little bit more if this isn't like, if this is too general and answer for this. But what I would suggest is Microsoft does make available some volunteer licenses and typically they are licenses that provide what most volunteers probably need like email access to certain office applications but they do that and it's also like that flexible thing. So you can actually assign it to different users. You can take those licenses, take them offline when you don't need them, disable it when you don't need them, enable it when you do need it. It does require some planning and I think some management of those licenses like which I said before, I understand can be costly in general to manage. So I think that's an opportunity. It also depends on how you have volunteers sign up. If you're assigning everybody like a laptop, maybe the desktop applications are more important and so on-premises is probably gonna be useful but it's kind of based off of what you have your volunteers engage in and what you need them to do. And so if you have specific questions we're happy to help with that. I know we have a limited amount of time. I hope we got through a lot of questions that you all had and I really, really appreciate all of the feedback and kind of the engagement that everybody's had here. I did wanna just really quickly line up on the last page here about some of the resources that are available. Like Nicole mentioned, the recording will be sent out. All of these slides will be sent out and this includes all of these links and I just wanted to spend a second just to make sure you know how to get the help you might need. The first one that we talked a lot about is scheduling a free consultation. If you have questions, you wanna think about what license should I use or am I ready to move to the cloud or what can I do? Please go ahead and schedule a consultation. We have team members who are happy to help you through that. I also wanted to note that we have a digital skill center which is courses that are fully for nonprofits. They've been contextualized for nonprofits, volunteers and staff. They are meant for people who are on the job and who need certain things to be useful. And so it is really a helpful resource if you wanna learn how to get more out of the solutions you might already have access to. We also have a digital assessment tool which is a great free resource available for you to be able to look at and assess the current state of where you are technology-wise and start creating a plan for your own technology adoption solution moving forward. And then the other resources here are some blogs to help you think about the licensing, some catalog offerings that we have of all of the solutions and really just some services that we have to help support you. So I really wanted to point these out. This is probably one of those pages that you wanna make sure to go to. And so you have it all in one place, all of the links. But as I mentioned, every single one of these slides has reached us at techsuits.org and we are happy to answer any questions that you have. So feel free to reach out to us. We wanna hear what's helpful to you, what's important to you. We are here to be your resource to help you. And we have many, many other things outside of Microsoft as well. So if there's another solution that you're looking for or if this is not the right solution for you, we're happy to help on those as well. Thanks so much, Rudy. So much great information. It's a lot digest, but as Shruti said, we've got your back. We're gonna send a follow-up email soon with all these resources, the recording, the deck, so you can go back at your leisure and then of course reach out with additional questions. So with that, it's time. Thank you again for joining us and being part of community. We really appreciate your engagement. And before you go, well, actually maybe after you take our quick survey, it helps us know how this event went for you and how we can do these events even better next time. So thanks everyone. See you soon.