 Welcome everybody to this Microsoft program offerings, your question answered. Today's webinar, we're going to go with some details of product options and so much more. I'm Harita Simons. I'm the webinar producer here. Our Shruti is going to present to us, Ms. Swami is TechSoup's vice president of Strategy and Strategic Relations. She is responsible for all of Microsoft's authors. She works closely with both the non-profit sector and Microsoft to ensure the sector around her world is able to derive the most out of the Microsoft program offerings prior to her work here at TechSoup. She was insulted with IBM Shruti, vice president of Strategy and Strategic Relationship. Take it away. Thank you everybody for joining today. I hope that today's session will be informative and give you a little bit more background about some of the Microsoft program offerings that are available to non-profits. We'll spend the most of our time just talking a little bit about what the program offerings are, what's available to non-profits, and what's changing and then we'll devote at least 20-30 minutes just to answering your questions. As Aretha mentioned, please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A section. The uploading helps us to make sure that we're addressing the right questions and hopefully we'll get through as many questions as possible. For any of those that we don't get, as Aretha said, you'll see on pretty much every slide here. We have an email address reach us at techsoup.org, and you can feel free to reach us and reach out to us and ask us your question if you did not get it answered here today. Aretha also mentioned this that I know this always comes up. We are recording all of the slides and the information on the slides as well as the reporting will be sent to you. You will get that so you don't have to feel like you have to remember everything that you see here. This isn't the only time you'll see it. I know most of who TechSoup is because you're here today, but just to remind you, TechSoup is a global nonprofit and charity ourselves. Our mission, our goal is to connect you with all of the donated and discounted services and products and solutions that you need to power up your own missions. We do a lot more than just the distribution of the products and services because we know that's just part of it. Access is just the first part in order to leverage technology and we know there's so much that's necessary in terms of adoption and support. We offer software, hardware, both new and refurbished courses to help your staff or your volunteers, mobile hotspots and then we also have IT consultants to help you make the best decision on your technology needs as well as services and support that really help you manage and maintain that moving forward. We do this in partnership and because of fantastic corporations, foundations, and organizations that support the mission and try to bring these products and services to you. What we really want to do is make sure that there is a way that we can support you no matter where you are in your stage of digital development. If you're looking for installed software, we have solutions that can help you there. You're looking for the hardware or if you're looking to migrate and move into more cloud solutions and be fully cloud-based, we can help in terms of support and technology there. As I mentioned, we're going to speak a little bit focused today on the Microsoft program changes, but I would definitely recommend that if you're interested in learning about some of the other solutions and services that we have, you can take a look at other events that we have upcoming or our marketplace on TechSoup.org, so you can see all of the different solutions that you might be eligible for. What we wanted to talk a little bit about today was that there are a lot of Microsoft program changes that are upcoming. I think many of you might have seen that in your emails or on our site or content that you may have read and we wanted to address that and make sure that you were aware of what those changes are. The biggest thing that's coming up in the next week, so on April 4th, there will be some changes that impact our on-premises product availability. On-premises solutions, I'll talk a little bit about that more in a few seconds, but on-premises solutions are those desktop solutions or solutions that you're downloading and installing on a specific device. All of your licensing is going to be device-based licensing and typically, or in the past, Microsoft has made many of their on-premises products available as a donation for quantity limit of about 15 usually or 25 for servers licenses. Then if you wanted more licenses or if you wanted other product offerings, there was also a charitable discount program where you could get those as a discount for up to 16-75 percent off of the commercial pricing. On April 4th, most of those on-premises products will no longer be available to nonprofits as a donation. They will still be here, they will still be available to nonprofits, but they will only be available at the charity discount prices. There are a few exceptions to that, so there will be some donations available for computer labs or for organizations that have public access computers where you really need device-based licensing because multiple different people are coming in or the other exception is that Microsoft will continue to make sure that the Windows Pro or the Windows Professional License, which is the operating system license, will still be available to organizations as a donation as well. And as we're saying that, I want to make sure it's clear that though the on-premises and the downloadable desktop solutions are moving into a discount model, that does not mean that donations are still available to nonprofits. All of that functionality that exists in some of those donations that are currently provided already exists in some of the cloud subscriptions that Microsoft makes available and that are available today as a donation. And I'll spend a little bit of time talking a little bit more about what those cloud solutions are, what the functionality is, and what the pricing is, and where we have donations available as well. So if you're on a cloud solution already, nothing is changing on April. If you are somebody who is still using some of the installed software and products, it's just good to understand that after April 4th, there may be different pricing than you would expect otherwise or different costs than you would expect otherwise and an opportunity to see if some of the cloud subscriptions might work for you as well. As I talked about, there we go, what is changing is really the on-premises solutions. So again, on-premises are those licenses that you pay once for, you download it and you install it onto your laptop or desktop. You probably will have some free patches between version releases for security updates, but if a new version releases or if there's some new update, you would have to wait until getting a new license for that new version. To this point, and up till April 4th, these were available as a donation for, again, the quantity restriction of usually about 50 license, but right now, they are gonna be moving into that discounted model. So what you'll see now is you'll still have all those licenses, it will just be available as a discount. So that will be available to organizations at a 60 to 75% off of the commercial rate. There will be unlimited, so there's no quantity cap on them. So if you needed 100 licenses, you could get that and you'll see in the discounted offers, they include both the premium and the standard level products. And these are available in two ways. You can get them as a license only. So it's just the license that you're getting access to or you can get that as a bundle with software assurance. Software assurance is a two or three year benefit that allows you to get additional upgrades if something comes up, if a new version came out of the product. So what's changing in April 4th is everything that was previously under that donation realm, but we'll move into that discounted realm up until April 4th. So there's still a few days left. If people need any licenses or need to get any on-premises licenses, they can do over the next few days and get those as a donation still. Just most of you probably are aware, but as TechSoup is a nonprofit ourselves, you'll see that each of the donations have a small administrative fee. Those administrative fees goes to help TechSoup administer this program to deliver the licenses and to obviously provide all the support and services to be able to support the community. What's not changing is on the right-hand side. I don't know why that took me so long to determine left from right on the cloud solutions. The cloud solutions are subscription services. You pay on either a monthly or an annual basis. Cloud subscriptions are, you're going to be requesting a user-based license. So it's tied to me as a user, not the device that I'm using it on. So for me, I can use it on a laptop. I can use it on a desktop if I had one, on my mobile device. It's actually able to use on five different devices and it goes with me as a user. The other part of that is it's a subscription. So you're having a subscription for all of the feature updates that come. So if a product releases a new version, if there's new features, new apps that are built, all of that is automatically being updated into your subscription. You don't have to get an version. You don't have to download anything new. These are all automatically updated and pushed. And I'm sure as many of most of the things that Microsoft has been developing and producing goes to the cloud solutions first. And then some of that's wrapped up and tried to be available in a desktop solution every couple of years. But for the most part, most of the development, most of the work, most of the effort, Microsoft is absolutely a cloud-first type of solution-oriented organizing. I will say that in order to get some of those feature-rich benefits of things that are going to be collaboration in the cloud, communication within the cloud, you will need a stable internet connection. But, and I'll talk through this a little bit more, there are many license options that include desktop applications. So you can still use the license even if you're not connected to the internet. You'll get all of those updates. You'll get all of that collaboration feature when you do get connected. Cloud licenses are available as both a donation and a discount. So there are some that are available as pure donations. So you can get those for zero dollars and there are some licensing restrictions on that I can talk to. And then some of the more feature-rich subscriptions are discounted. But one thing that I think is really important to be aware of is you can mix and match. Based off of your organization's needs, based off of your staff or volunteer needs, you can figure out the right licensing for each user. So if you have a specific group of users that are only using email or only using kind of SharePoint or PowerPoint online to access things, you can get some basic licensing for them to make sure that they have those features. But if there are people in your organization that might need a higher level of security, handling different kind of data or they are admins in some way, you can get higher level licensing for them. So you can definitely mix and match and play around here. And that's really helpful in terms of flexible pricing and making sure that you can operate within here. The other thing I will mention is that these are often can be monthly subscriptions. So you can get more licenses when you need them and shut them off when you don't need them. So for many organizations that might have more activities in the summertime when schools are off or during holiday times because that's when your services are in most need, you can scale up and add more licenses for a period of time and then take them down. So you don't have to incur the cost for the entire period of the year, you can just incur those costs for that time period that you're actually using the license. I always think those are really important things to mention because we're all managing budgets that are probably small here. And so we wanna make sure that we're doing that as diligently and as respectfully to the budget that we have as I also wanted to know and I'm sure if any of you have requested or gone through our process over the last couple of months since January, you've noticed a few changes. So the process for requesting and accessing products at TechSoup particularly Microsoft products at TechSoup I should say has changed since January. In January, Microsoft retired one of their older licensing platforms which was called the open licensing platform which we had used in the past to distribute a lot of our donations. Now everything is being done through one consolidated licensing platform called a cloud solutions platform. And so with that there have been some changes that needed to happen to the way that you can request and the way that we distribute and download those products as well. So the first thing is any organization that wants any type of product or solution needs to first have and create a Microsoft account at the Microsoft nonprofit portal. They need to be validated as a charity there and you'll usually get an email that signals you're now eligible and usually the person who is creating that profile or creating that account is automatically set up as the administrator for that account. So maybe you had somebody in the past who set up that account for you. If you do it's usually the person who set up the account who's listed now as the administrator. So once you have your nonprofit account set up then you can come into the TechSoup account and link those two accounts together. And the way that we link those is by you providing us your account information and then providing consent. So you just have to log into your own administrative center and say that we consent to TechSoup being a provider for us. And I'll just state here, if you have other providers that's totally fine you can have multiple providers and as long as you enable TechSoup to be one then we can provide licenses to you as well. The way you get those products will also change. So because you created that Microsoft 365 account even if you don't have cloud licenses that account becomes the place where you can have all of your solutions in one place. When we actually have a license to distribute or deliver all of those licenses will now be accessible to you from your Microsoft 365 administrator portal. And you can download your licenses directly from there. And if you have cloud solutions you can see both of them in the same place. So you will have one console to be able to see both of your on-premises as well as your cloud subscriptions. And if you're using any of the other services like Azure services or Dynamics you'll see all of that in one place as well. The one thing that has not migrated is if you have older licenses that are already in the volume licensing center or the VLSC that Microsoft has those haven't been migrated. So until you move everything over and get new licensing that's in the administrative center you might still have to have dual management where you're getting some licenses on the VLSC but in the future everything else will be coordinated and consolidated into the Microsoft 365 administrative center. You'll have a five day window to download the software that you need but we just want you to be aware that if it says the link is expired that's okay we can regenerate a new link for you. So that five day period is really the links are valid for five days. If you need more time then that's fine we can regenerate that link. And then one thing to note is that Microsoft only offers specific versions of products. So organizations don't necessarily always are not always able to downgrade to the version that they might want. For the most part in the solution when you go to download you can choose usually about at least a version below and in some cases two versions below if you need it. And then one thing the last thing to note is before so prior to January most of the donations that we provided all included software assurance. Right now the donations that we have up till April 4th and then moving forward the license only solutions are only the licenses themselves. So they do not include the software assurance benefit which usually entitles you for a two year period to get any upgrades that might be available. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about the cloud offers themselves what the cloud solutions are and what's available to nonprofits. So Microsoft makes several different licenses available to nonprofits both in their Microsoft 365 and in their Office 365 suites. The differences between Microsoft 365 and Office 365 were more cosmetic in name but traditionally the distinction between the two is that Office 365 licenses and that name of Office 365 has been kept for the enterprise licenses which usually is for above 300 users or 300 licenses but you'll see that kind of name interchangeably in some ways. But I think the signal here of Microsoft 365 is that the 365 solution has a lot more than just the office applications. And I think that's important because there's a lot within this suite of services. We've highlighted the key applications that we know nonprofits use but there's so many more applications underneath this as well. So Microsoft makes available many different licenses and we've just highlighted some of the key licenses that we think are most useful for nonprofits. The first one is the Microsoft 365 business basic license. This is a fully cloud based license subscription so you do not get anything downloaded or on your desktop. This is something that can be used if you have internet connection and internet stability. It's free, completely free for up to 300 users and it includes exchange teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, as well as the key office applications of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This is really similar to the E1 license that many people might have been on before as well. There's also the Microsoft 365 business standard license. So this is available right now as a discount for $3 per user per month for up to 300 users. And the difference between this and the previous one is that it includes the online applications as well as desktop solutions. So you can still use these licenses if you have no internet connection at all. You can download these and have desktop applications and use them offline. Because it also includes those offline capabilities, it includes publisher and access as well. And then the last one that we wanted to highlight here is the Microsoft 365 business premium license. And I will say we strongly recommend that organizations use this license and use this offer that's available for Microsoft because it's a fantastic license and it's one of the most comprehensive and robust licenses that's available. And Microsoft makes the first 10 available for completely free for organizations. And so this includes everything that I mentioned before. So online and desktop applications, office applications as well as teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, everything. But it also includes robust security features. It includes Azure, sorry, information protection. It includes Windows Defender. And it also includes Intune so you can have device management as well. So if you have admin functionality or if you're an organization that might need or store secure sensitive data, this is definitely the most robust license that's out there. And since it is free for up to 10 users, we definitely recommend that organizations leverage this offer because it's a really good license. And with that, you also get in the case that you have an existing Windows professional license, having a business premium license gives you the upgrade rights to get Windows 10 or Windows 11 if you have an older Windows Pro operating system. If you need more licenses above the free allocation of the 10 licenses, you can choose to get that as a paid option, a discounted paid option for $5 a license a month. Or like I mentioned before, you can mix and match. So maybe there are certain people in your organization that need the business premium license or we'll get more out of using that. And then there are some that are going to just need the business basic license. So you can choose that. You don't have to get all of the same licenses. So you can figure out how to manage your own budget across all of the licensing offers that are there. They're also like I mentioned the Office 365 licenses. Again, there are no changes to these licenses, but the E1 license is similar to that business basic license which is only the cloud applications. That's available for $2 a license per month. This was previously a donated license. So if you've had that as a donated license in the past, you can still access that as a donation and you can still add up to 2000 users in that bucket for your donation. But if you've never had that license before, if you've never had that subscription before, it is only available now as a discounted license. There's also E3 and E5 licensing that will go up in terms of the security and features that it has with it. Three is currently offered at $4.50 per license per month. And E5 is one of the most kind of comprehensive in terms of security features and that's available at a discount of $14 per license per month. So all of these are available. And like I mentioned, there are others, there are add-on, there are ways that you can do more, but we find that these are the core solutions that most nonprofits are requesting and looking at. And we know that this can be a little overwhelming. So we've created a couple of things to help guide what you might think of as the key kind of factors or considerations for your usage of the license to help figure out which license might be best for you. So we've created kind of a PDF of all of the features and benefits so that you can see them all alongside each other. And we've also created a new wizard and the link we can put into chat right now where you can just answer a series of five questions. It takes two minutes and answer a couple of questions. And then we can actually recommend a license for you based off of your needs and what your kind of usage would be. One thing to point out that we'll talk, that I can answer questions about is there is a utilization requirement. So Microsoft for those donated licenses. And just to remind you, the donated licenses are the Business Basic and the Business Premium. Both of those donated offers do have a restriction against it that states that organizations who are getting that grant software from Microsoft need to be using at least 85% of those licenses. So they have what they call a usage requirement. There's a link in here and we also provided some assets and resources to understand that a little bit more. But essentially Microsoft requires that if you are requesting this as a donation then they wanna make sure that you're actually using the license as well. They're only counting the usage for those licenses that you have actively assigned to a user. And they define actively using as somebody who has at least used one Microsoft cloud application in the last 90 days. So for the vast majority of organizations this is not going to be something that you should be concerned about or overly concerned about in any way. But if you're thinking of just getting the 10 licenses because you think you'll need it, I would say wait until you know who you're gonna assign it to and when they're going to be using it before you assign the user. You can still request the 10 and wait until you and not assign the users and that will be fine. But when you assign that license to a user that user should just be using the license. And the goal there is just to make sure that Microsoft can continue to offer these things as a donation and as a grant and that they're distributing it to those organizations that need it the most. All right, so what we're gonna try to do now is pivot to all of your questions but we want it to just kick off with a few of the top questions that we've heard in past webinars and questions that we've gotten in through email and that we've heard from organizations. The first question that we've been getting is are there any changes to my existing software license? So if you already have an on-premise product like Office Standard, these are perpetual licenses. So you have no issues in using the existing software that you have. Nothing is changing to your existing licenses. The changes really impact licensing moving forward. So if you're requesting something new or you have an additional license that you need those are the changes that might impact you. Also, if you have an existing software assurance benefit those will still be honored for the entirety of the contract term itself. Similarly, are there any changes to your current cloud licenses? The changes that we talked about on April 4th do not impact any of the cloud licenses. So if you're on an existing cloud license that's not gonna change. You can still maintain that cloud pricing and the functionality of the solutions that you're using. The other question that we get is what if I don't have dependable internet connectivity and I really cloud-based solutions are not gonna be working for me? So I think there's a few things here. One, I just wanna re-emphasize, I know I've said it a bunch of times but the on-premises and desktop solutions are not going away. They will still be available after April 4th. They're just gonna be available at that charity discount which is still significantly less than any of the retail pricing that you might be able to get. And as I mentioned those cloud subscriptions particularly the business premium license that's available for 10 licenses for free include downloadable applications. So you can use those when you're offline. And then when you have internet connectivity you can sync your users, you can use some of those other cloud features but it's not required that you have consistent internet connectivity in order to use the license. The other question that we get a lot is how are libraries impacted? And I should have mentioned this before but the program offerings that we had talked about are really specific to nonprofits right now. And in January when we made that transition and Microsoft made that transition from their licensing programs one of the effects of that libraries were unfortunately no longer served under the nonprofit or charity umbrella for Microsoft. So previously libraries could get cloud licenses under academic Microsoft programs but for public access computers they were able to get those needs fulfilled through the charity solution that Microsoft made available. Now Microsoft has made all of the licenses both licenses for cloud as well as licenses for on-premises all available through the academic discounted model for Microsoft. And so if you have questions or if you're a library that's looking for solutions there is a link that you can contact us or you can contact us at reachusattechsuit.org and we can help you with some information on how to get access to those education licenses and we can also distribute those once you are eligible for education we can, TechSoup can distribute those licenses to you. The other question we got and I think I mentioned this before is what if you need more than five days to download the on-premises software? As I mentioned, if that link for download expires you can always contact us and we can regenerate that link for you and you can also open that link and download the files but not install the product as well. So you have some flexibility there that five days on time period is not necessarily a use it in five days or a lose it type. And I think the last question that we hear a lot of is what if you already have an Office 365 E1 or E2 license as a donation offer? And as I mentioned before as long as you're meeting that utilization requirement those licenses are still available to you and that subscription is still available to you at no cost. It's just if you need a new subscription or somebody who's never gotten those licenses before they are now only available as a discount moving forward. There is a cap of 2,000 licenses on it. So if you go over that or need more than that that would fall under a discounted model but otherwise your existing offers or existing subscriptions won't be changed. I'm going to pause here and move to your questions. I also just wanted to note that I know that a lot of people have been struggling through this new process of getting the Microsoft account and TechSoup account synced up. And so we've provided a couple of steps here and solutions here as well as a video step-by-step guide and a PDF guide whichever way you learn best or whichever way helps you in navigating the process the best. But there are a few kinds of things that we've learned from where people have had trouble and where we've had trouble in navigating this new system as well. So we've added some tips and tricks here to help you navigate that process. That will be available in these slides as well as many other resources that I can walk through before we end today. So this time I'll stop and I will pivot to questions that you guys have. So the first question I have is from Victoria. Is there a place where on premises is defined? You said what it was but I don't really understand what that means for us. Yeah, Victoria thanks for that question. I know it's a little bit confusing so I think the best way to define it is similar to how what's in that slide. We do have a few blogs and resources that really speak to you exactly what those on-premises solutions are and so I'm happy to make those resources available but really essentially it's something that's either downloaded onto your desktop and it's a solution that is one-time and device-based licensing. If it's a license that is used for that is assigned to a device that's really more on-premises solutions whereas a cloud subscription is something that is assigned to a user. So that's the easiest distinction. Janice asks what are the discount prices? That's a really good question and it depends on the license itself. For the most part as I mentioned most of the licenses will be discounted offers will be at a standard rate of 60% off to 75% off of what the commercial rates are and they're already actually in our catalogs right now so you can see what the discounted pricing is. I also have a slide here that I think can help a little that I'll bring up that speak specifically to what those discounted pricing looks like and I'll make sure that's available within the slide deck that we provide back. I can't find it right now of course but in general like Office Standard is currently available about $32 or $36. That'll go up to about $100 moving forward. Okay, Martin asks are some of the offerings different across regions? Some products only be available in certain regions or will all Microsoft products be available as a discounted product? That's a really good question Martin and if you have a specific geography that you're interested in please do let us know but typically for the most part all of these licenses are available globally. There are a few distinctions that I would call out. One is that where Azure is not available so Azure is not in all 236 countries and territories that we serve. So there's about 19 countries in which Azure is available if you're in one of those countries that Azure is not available. There will be some Windows server solutions and server cows still available as a donation but otherwise most of the product offerings and the cloud solution offerings are all globally available. There are a few distinctions in terms of the features that might be available particularly in Europe. There are some more stricter kind of GDPR or data protection laws. So that will inhibit some of the features within some of the solutions but by and large most of the products are globally available. Okay. Donald asked, we have 300 computers that were donated for an after school summer program. They all had Linux on them but the county requires Windows Pro as the only OS. What would be the best option for them? Really good question and I'm actually so glad that you answered this Donald because you asked this Donald because next week so hopefully by April 5th, Microsoft is actually going to make available a new donation offering. That donation offering is going to be a full Windows operating system. So it'll be a full Windows Pro operating system license. That will be available as a donation for up to 50 licenses and there will be discounted offers if you need more than that is that will provide an ability for you to get the if you have an existing OS and you wanna upgrade you can use it or if you don't have an OS or if you have a Linux you can use that license to download it. So I would say wait about a week and we'll have those licenses up and ready. It'll be a Windows professional license and it'll be a full operating system license. So that will be available and I know I'll just plug here that is a huge help and great license particularly for organizations who might be on home licensing. A lot of the organizations that we support are on Windows Home and so this will be an opportunity to get to the Windows professional license as well which will make transitioning to some of the solutions like Microsoft 365 business or some of the cloud subscriptions. Okay, Alyssa as we already received the Windows 10 Pro from TechSoup last year will it be affected or is it still good? Great question Alyssa as I mentioned if you have an existing license you're totally fine it will not change nothing is gonna be changing your existing licenses that's really if you need any new licenses and I'll just also say that Windows 11 which is the newest operating system is available for free if you're upgrading from Windows 10 so there is a wizard that you can go online and check and see if your device is compatible with the new Windows and if your device and your hardware meets the specifications and requirements you can automatically and for free upgrade to Windows 11 if you want to do that as Peggy asks we use Mac and Windows and we prefer the non 365 version can we still purchase or get donated or get those donated? Peggy if you're looking for an office standard license you will still be able to get both the Windows and Mac versions of that they will be available as a donation until April 4th and then after that they will still be available as a discounted license if you need the on-premises version. Pat asked I bought a discounted Microsoft office that I still use I'm about to move to a new laptop and our other one is failing how do I move the license to the new one? This is where device-based licenses become a little bit trickier so if you have a device-based license like a Microsoft office that is only good for that existing device so if you have a new laptop you're gonna have to get a new one since for that new device so I would recommend that you either get a new license for that or you can move to a cloud solution like the business premium license I talked about which is user-based licensing and that way you can get up to as many devices as you need so that you can transfer that and that goes to the user and not the device itself. Donna asks if our non-profit qualifies for TechSoup do we automatically qualify for Microsoft Grants? That is such a good question, Donna. When you qualify for TechSoup what we're looking at is your legal status so your 501c3 charitable status as well as the programs in which you're eligible for and each of the programs that we work with Microsoft, Adobe, Google all of the different programs that we talk about that we serve and that we offer all have their own program requirements so just qualifying for TechSoup does not necessarily mean that you automatically qualify for Microsoft Grants Microsoft makes their program pretty widely available so likelihood is pretty high but there are some mission requirements there so Microsoft has some sort of specifications on which types of nonprofits they support so it's not always guaranteed but for the vast majority Microsoft is a pretty generous and open program and so there's not a huge amount of restrictions there but one thing I'll just note on that sorry Donna just to add is that once you get qualified as TechSoup you can go into your profile and see what you're eligible for so you will be able to see automatically what programs that you're eligible for and then in order to get any of the Microsoft licensing you will still need to go to the Microsoft portal create the account there and make sure that they have your account details already there and validate you as a charity as well but for the most part if we say at TechSoup that you should be valid for that then you'll probably be valid for that on the Microsoft side as well Steve asks, installing the Office Deployment Tool is daunting Can TechSoup? Yes is a simple answer but also completely daunting the Office Deployment Tool has been such a hardship for many of the organizations we serve so we actually partnered and we have a service offering that provides installation support just so that we can take that off of your hands and we can create and manage that installation for you that is available at a really low cost I think it's close to $30 per laptop or computer so that we have a service partner who's fantastic and everybody raves about who can help and support and remotely install the solutions for you we also have some self guides where you can follow along in the instructions but it definitely requires a time commitment and a little bit of knowledge on how to kind of configure files and install and download things so if you really want to save time or save your own sanity in some ways we definitely have a service to help you with that as well and if somebody from our team can just put in that link in the chat that would make it easy for Steve as well and that resource is definitely available on these slides as well and I'll send that out Marsha asks why is it asking me to connect with a partner? How do I make TechSoup my partner? Great question, Marsha so the reason why you need to accept TechSoup as your provider from Microsoft is to make sure that we have consent to be able to deliver those licenses directly to your new Microsoft 365 administrator account in the past that was all done through VLSC and VLSC was the one that was managing that but now in this new program the providers are actually distributing those licenses directly to you and so Microsoft just wants to make sure that we have consent to do and that we have consent to share that information of what those account details are so that we can distribute the license to the right organization so that's why in terms of how you can connect I can post that link in chat as well if you want to accept us as a provider you can just click the link that I'm going to be putting in chat right now and that should help you do that and you can also do that directly in your administrative portal but I find that using we'll make it a little easier okay Bruce asks I'm at work right now so I'm not able to log in the Microsoft nonprofit portal but I have 10 licenses of business premium am I going to lose access to these licenses? No, but you will not lose access to any of the licenses that you already have and this is really just for new licenses and again these are really for the on-premises licenses themselves that are changing so all the cloud subscriptions that you're using no impact on this Hope asks if we already own five on-premises licenses nothing's currently changing with them we would only have to create that validated account in the Microsoft portal and get the new discounted price for any additional on-premises licenses that we want to get that is absolutely correct Hope so that is exactly what we're saying so if you want a new cloud subscription or if you want a new on-premises license you would go through that portal and make sure that you can sync those accounts so we can provision those but if you're content and you don't need that at this time you can continue to use the on-premises licensing that you have okay Lisa asks I purchased the Microsoft office package from TechSoup the volume license professional plus I have a small nonprofit don't have an administrator or server for this and the installers isn't activating so as our product key is wrong I've uninstalled it, reinstalled it and it says you have to have your admin how do I exchange the one I have or how do I get some support so Lisa I think this is probably something that we can help with either maybe by issuing a new license or figuring out what your authorization number is so you can ask for some direct support from Microsoft we can reach out to you or if you don't mind emailing us reach us at TechSoup.org we'd be happy to look into your particular solution and see how we can help Ivan asks, are Windows Server licenses affected? Yes, Windows Server licenses will be affected moving forward again, that will be available still as a discounted solution after April 4th but if you have a need or if you need additional licenses they are still available right now as a donation until April 4th but moving forward, Windows Server licenses will move to a discounted model if you still we have a question what will happen to the licensing.microsoft.com site after April 4th? Will we still be able to access download softwares? Yes, and I think that you're probably thinking about the volume licensing center that you go to get your existing licenses that will still remain available to you you can still go to the VLSC and get the licenses that you already have and download them or use them or get support in that way again, this is just for new licenses so if you have new licenses that are coming that will be administered through the Microsoft 365 administrative center but the volume licensing center did not go away, it's still available. Okay, and Nina asks we are a small nonprofit with no IT support is there any support from moving to a different cloud from a different cloud solution to Microsoft? That is a really great question and we do have services and support for cloud migrations I'd recommend a few different things one is we have a and I'm gonna bring this up really quickly we have a service, a cloud consultation service that we provide and that's completely free so you can sign up for a cloud consultation and we can support you and help navigate what might be the best solution for you and the best right next steps so let me pull that up really quickly we are a gold certified Microsoft partner so we have that consultation but then we also have a few set up and implementation and migration support services so within the migration support if you are on a Google workspace and wanna migrate over to Microsoft 365 we have solutions and services that can help you through that process email migration, data migration if you wanna chunk those out as well but we could also do work to do a full scoping to understand how can we migrate your organization to the cloud and we can put in the link and again on this free consultation link we'll be part of the resources that we send over Dave Basham asks is there any benefit to moving users from E1 to a Microsoft 365 basic license? I think if you have an E1 license right now and you're using it and it's working for you there's not really a difference in terms of the functionality itself of the E1 and the business basic license that will provide you anything different so I don't necessarily think that there's gonna be a huge benefit I will say that over time if you need to increase your licenses and if you only have it as a donation right now you might want to look at adding additional licenses into the business basic license and if you don't have an E1 license business basic is a free license so I would definitely go with that for cost savings as well there's a question here from Peggy so if I use Microsoft 365 Business Premium will that work without the internet for max? So if you're using the Microsoft 365 Business Premium license there are two things that are on there you can get the cloud services which will require the internet connection but you can also have access to desktop applications and those desktop applications will work on both iOS as well so Mac and Windows Solutions and your mobile devices as well so you will be able to get that on your Mac and use it without the internet just keep in mind that there is still that utilization requirement so as long as every 90 days or something one of your users is using some of the cloud services or when they do have internet they're able to save and upload things to the cloud or use teams for collaboration then you'll still be able to meet that utilization requirement itself All right Debbie asks please help me understand what I need to purchase in terms of Office 365 for seven users Debbie I would suggest that you take a look at our wizard our wizard will give you like a quick five questions where you can answer for about two minutes and then we can help you decide what the right license is for you without knowing much about anything I would always suggest starting with the Microsoft 365 Business Premium solution it's the most robust offer it includes the cloud solutions the desktop applications, advanced security and it's available for up to 10 users for free it'll get you all of the basic functionality that you need plus a lot more so that's where I would always recommend people Okay Tim asks we're a healthcare non-profit we have an RFP in several vendors hands each is presented in different interpretations of licensing including one who said M365 is not hyper compliant only Office 365 and we have more than 300 users will what is the be all end all licensing bottom I think we probably answered a little bit of this directly to you but I wanted to raise this question a little bit more Tina because it is pretty complex and while Microsoft will not necessarily say all of their solutions are completely hyper compliant there are ways to enable features within the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites in order to be hyper compliant I would recommend probably this is what was in the direct message as well but that we do a cloud consultation understand exactly what your needs are and figure out that light licensing solution I'll also say it is a little there is not necessarily a super bottom line because it's so varied and so that's probably why you've gotten different interpretations from different vendors we're happy to be somebody who helps with that decision and offers a different perspective where can help you make that decision Amanda asks does the advanced security within 365 replace in the need for additional antivirus or internet security products Amanda I'm sorry this is going to be another one of those answers like Tina's which is probably not super valuable because the answer is it depends you can definitely feel free to email us at reaches at TechSoup.org and we can get into more details about your specific need but many of the licenses have anti-spam like phishing kind of solutions they have basic email protections there are add-ons and so that you can get even of the antivirus and security solutions that you might need but it really depends on what devices you that you are using what endpoints that you have and how you're using your technology and who your licensed users are and that will give us a better sense of whether or not you will get all of those security solutions within the existing Microsoft or Office 365 solution or if there might be add-ons or additional products that you might still Steve asks if I move Microsoft 365 from an on-prem Exchange server can I keep my domain name? Yes, so part of the email migration that you can do is you can definitely migrate your existing on-premises server with your existing domain into Exchange Online or through Microsoft or Office 365 service so you can absolutely keep your own domain actually TechSoup went through a pretty large migration ourselves so all of us migrated from our Exchange server to the Office 365 obviously keeping our TechSoup.org domain so it's definitely possible and I would definitely recommend that you look into some of the email migration services if you would like some support okay Zuri Hammond asks what is the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office 365 and TechSoup licensing? Really good question, it's not super transparent and not a very cut and dry thing but typically Office 365 licenses are usually meant for enterprise licenses so people with licenses that need over 300. On the Microsoft 365 naming convention is usually used for some of the business applications there are some Microsoft 365 enterprise solutions as well but the vast majority are for under 300 seats. We only have a few questions but I wanted to make sure I touched on some of the questions that we've gotten about cloud price changes. So Michelle asked, I received a message last week saying that there would be a charge for the on-premises Microsoft program. At my nonprofit, we use Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Power Automate and E2. Will we be starting to charge on April 4th? No, as I mentioned those pricing changes are really for the on-premises products that's not impacting the current cloud solutions that you already have. There may be some price changes that are coming and there are price changes that will be coming for people on paid discounted Microsoft 365 licenses and Office 365 licenses. Those will only go into effect in September and will definitely provide more information about those shortly. So if you're on one of those, there are some global price changes that are happening on Microsoft side but it's on a commercial scale and for some of the nonprofit prices. Kat asked, hi, just for clarity, if you already have nonprofit staff pricing E1 for free, it's gonna remain for free moving forward and we can add up to 2,000 licenses. That is correct. So if you have an existing E1 or E2 license that you got as a donation, you are grandfathered into that donation so you can continue to use that donation as long as you maintain the utilization and don't exceed the 2,000 cat fee. Okay. We also have a question here from Jim. We'd like to move from Office 365 E3 that we pay for a nonprofit to the donation of Microsoft Business Premium. Is there an easy path? Jim, I think definitely reach out to us for this and we can talk a little bit more about it but there is, there's definitely a way that you can do that. You can actually add the Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses onto and assign them to your users and then remove the other license so that it's all seamless and there won't be any interruption of service. I'm gonna pause here on some of the questions. Let's just show a couple of the resources that are gonna be available to you in the deck and the materials that we're gonna be emailing out to you so that you have what resources are there for you. So let me just share my screen again really quick. As I mentioned, we're here for you. We have services and support throughout this journey of cloud adoption. So if you need a cloud consultation service, excuse me, we offer that for free. We do have setup and implementation services so that we can get you on setup with your Office 365 or Microsoft 365 account. We also have lots of training and services and courses. And so I would definitely recommend that you look at those and particularly if you're adopting new technology, providing your staff or your volunteers with access to training to be able to best use that can be really helpful and all of the training that we've created are really focused on the nonprofits themselves. It's built for people who are busy who are looking at nonprofit type scenarios so you can easily get to the solution that you need. And then in here, we also have a ton of links for additional resources. Excuse me. The first one is that recommendation tool and wizard that I talked about. So you can click right there and you can answer those questions and get some licensing recommendations for you. You have videos and guides to help you go through that new process of requesting and downloading your Microsoft licenses. We also have links for the free consultation or more information on if you're a library and how to get academic licensing. Links here on our digital skill center so you can access to the courses. And then we have some blogs and content that help you make the decisions and understand a little bit more about what we were talking about today. Particularly I'll call out the utilization requirement for donated Microsoft licenses. So you can read through what that utilization requirement really means, how it might impact you as well as how do you figure out what your utilization is. Particularly, if you're an administrator of your account you can get away to see all of your users in one area and see how you might be able to see what your utilization actually is. And then within the Dink Deck we also have additional information. So you'll see more slides about the differences between on-premises and cloud. I know that question came up as well as some of the other licensing that's available to you. There's a lot in here. We really hope that this has been helpful to you.