Intune Administrator Licensing

 All Intune administrators need a Microsoft Intune license by default. You can change this in the Mi- crosoft Intune admin center (https://intune.microsoft.com) at a later point, allowing you to give administrators access to Microsoft Intune without requiring an Intune license.

To get an administrator license, you need to follow these steps:

1.  Go to Tenant admin | Roles | Administrator Licensing. 

2.  Click Allow access to unlicensed admins:

Figure : Microsoft Intune admin center – Administrator Licensing

Figure : Microsoft Intune admin center – Administrator Licensing after the change

3.  In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to https://admin.microsoft.com. If you are a global admin, you can assign your Intune license:

Figure : Microsoft 365 admin center – license assignments

The Microsoft Intune license is a part of Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Microsoft 365 F1/F3 for Firstline Workers, EMS E3, as well as standalone Microsoft Intune.

There are many other licenses that give you access to Microsoft Intune. Always consult your license partner to find out the correct license for your scenario.

A user in your tenant also requires a license to enrol their device into Intune.

One suggested approach for allocating Intune licenses to your users is to utilize Entra group-based licensing.

Entra group-based licensing

Microsoft paid cloud services, such as Microsoft 365, EMS, Windows 10, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and other similar products, require licenses. These licenses are assigned to each user who needs access to these services. Administrators use one of the management portals (https://admin.microsoft.com or https://entra.microsoft.com) and PowerShell cmdlets to manage licenses. Entra is the under- lying infrastructure that supports identity management for all Microsoft cloud services. Entra stores information about license assignment states for users.

Entra includes group-based licensing, which means one or more product licenses can be assigned to a group. Entra ensures that the licenses are assigned to all members of the group. This includes non-members who then become a member of the group. When they leave the group, those licenses are removed. This licensing management eliminates the need for automating license management via PowerShell to reflect changes in an organization and departmental structure on a per-user basis.

For any group assigned a license, you must also have a license for each unique member. While you do not have to assign each member of the group a license, you must have at least enough licenses to include all the members. For example, if you have 10,000 unique members who are part of licensed groups in your tenant, you must have at least 10,000 licenses to meet the licensing assignment.

Licenses can be assigned to any security group in Entra. Security groups can be synced from on-prem- ises using Entra Connect. You can also create security groups directly in Entra (also called cloud-only groups), or automatically via the Entra dynamic group feature. Office 365 groups cannot be used for group-based licensing.

When a product license is assigned to a group, one or more service plans in the product can be dis- abled by the administrator. Typically, this assignment is done when the organization is not yet ready to start using a service included in a product. For example, the administrator might assign Microsoft 365 to a department but temporarily disable the Yammer service.

Entra automatically manages license modifications that result from group membership changes. Typically, license modifications are effective within minutes of a membership change.

A user can be a member of multiple groups with license policies specified. A user can also have some licenses that were directly assigned, outside of any groups. The resulting user state is a combination of all assigned product and service licenses. The license will be consumed only once if a user is assigned the same license from multiple sources.

In some cases, licenses cannot be assigned to a user. For example, there might not be enough licenses available in the tenant or conflicting services might have been assigned at the same time. Adminis- trators have access to information about users for whom Entra could not fully process group licenses. They can then take corrective action based on that information.

Thant Zin Phyo@Cracky (MCT, MCE, MVP)