How to limit license consumption in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365

Problem:

You’ve bought the number of licenses that matches your user count. Still, when using CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365, you run out of licenses. As a result, email signatures are not added to messages sent by users who were supposed to get them.

Solution:

First of all, be aware that licenses are consumed not only by (standard) user mailboxes, but also shared mailboxes. At the same time, you, as an administrator, have the possibility to reassign licenses.

Still, before using the license reassign feature, which is discussed in the last section below, spend a moment to read the whole article. CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 offers several mechanisms which give administrators control over the assignment of licenses to users. We recommend that you first verify to whom the licenses are assigned. Next, limit the number of users who are to get licenses with the method(s) available for the signature mode you’re currently using. Finally, reset the license count.

Use the links below to learn more about each step:

• How to check which users are licensed
• How to limit the scope of users who will get server-side signatures
• How to limit the scope of users who will get client-side signatures
• How to reset the license count

How to check which users are licensed

The information on which users are assigned licenses is available in the CodeTwo Admin Panel (Fig. 1.). To learn how to access that information, read this user’s manual article.

Fig. 1. Accessing information on which users are assigned license.

How to limit the scope of users who will get server-side signatures

The following methods are available to limit the scope of users consuming licenses when using server-side mode:

• Limit the scope of users when configuring Exchange Online connectors
• Limit the scope of users by editing the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule

Limit the scope of users when configuring Exchange Online connectors

When configuring Exchange Online connectors automatically using our configuration wizard, it is possible to select a group of users who will receive signatures. Using this method, you can select one group only, so make sure the group contains all the users who are to get the signatures.

Read this article in the user’s manual to learn more

Limit the scope of users by editing the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule

If you have already configured the Exchange Online connectors automatically using the wizard available in our program, removing the connectors and adding them again to reduce the scope of senders could affect the mail flow in your organization. Instead, you can edit the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule and add a group (or groups) of users. This will limit the number of senders receiving signatures to the members of this group.

More information can be found in this article

How to limit the scope of users who will get client-side signatures

The available methods for limiting the scope of users consuming licenses in the client-side mode depend on the type of CodeTwo signatures add-in for Outlook you are using:

• If you’ve chosen to use the modern CodeTwo Signatures Web Add-in for Outlook and OWA, you can deploy it for selected users only, as described here.
• If you’ve chosen to use the classic CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook (COM Add-in), you can reduce the number of users by centrally deploying the CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook, as described here.

How to reset the license count

After you have used any of the methods listed above for reducing the number of users who consume licenses and you are satisfied with your new scope of users, you need to reset the license count (Fig. 2.). This will unassign licenses from all users and make them available for assigning to the new, limited scope of users. You can now reset the license count in CodeTwo Admin Panel, as described here.

Fig. 2. Resetting the license count in CodeTwo Admin Panel.

This step is very important because when a license is assigned to a specific user, it will not be automatically reassigned even if you delete this user's mailbox, change the scope of senders or if the user signs out from the classic CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook (COM Add-in).