How to resolve problems with incorrect license consumption in CodeTwo Email Signatures 365

Problem:

You’ve bought the number of licenses that matches your user count. Still, when using CodeTwo Email Signatures 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:

CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 offers several mechanisms that let administrators control how licenses are assigned to users.

First of all, only users defined in the scope of licensed users can consume licenses and benefit from the CodeTwo service. See this user’s manual article to learn more about this scope.

Follow the steps below to verify which users are currently assigned a CodeTwo signature license and learn how to manage license assignment in your organization, depending on which signature mode you use (cloud, Outlook, or combo). 

Check which users are licensed

The list of licensed users is available in CodeTwo Admin Panel. Follow the steps below to access the list.

1. Sign in to CodeTwo Admin Panel.
2. Select your tenant on the Tenants page.
3. Go to Licenses in the left menu.
4. In the Signature licenses and Autoresponder licenses sections, click See who is using signature/autoresponder licenses to display the lists of all licensed email addresses (Fig. 1.).

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

Restrict the license assignment

Limit the number of users who are to get licenses with the method(s) available for the signature mode you’re currently using:

• Cloud (server-side) mode
• Outlook (client-side) mode

If you’re using combo mode, a user is only assigned a single license even if both a cloud (server-side) and an Outlook (client-side) signature rule apply to that user. In such a case, the user may be assigned a license based on criteria related to either cloud or Outlook mode. Therefore, the best idea is to perform steps for both the modes to limit the license consumption for that user.

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

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

• Limit the scope of senders by editing the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule
• Limit the scope of licensed users

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

The scope of senders in CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 specifies users whose emails are routed through the CodeTwo service. Every user whose emails go through our cloud service uses one license from your license pool, no matter if this user is defined in any signature rule. This scope is first defined when registering a Microsoft 365 tenant with CodeTwo.

To properly restrict the scope of senders without affecting the mail flow in your organization, edit the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule and add the appropriate group (or groups) of users. This will limit the number of senders receiving signatures to the members of this group. 

Note that the term ‘members’ also covers shared mailboxes which, when editing the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule, should be treated as user objects (and not group objects) to avoid problems with missing signatures. Learn more

Limit the scope of licensed users

The scope of licensed users in CodeTwo Email Signatures 365 specifies users who can consume licenses and benefit from the CodeTwo service (get signatures, automatic replies, etc.). Just like the scope of senders, this scope is first defined when registering a Microsoft 365 tenant with CodeTwo.

The scope of licensed users can be changed at any time in CodeTwo Admin Panel (on the Scope & region page in tenant settings). To properly restrict the scope of licensed users, limit this scope to a selected group of users only.

See our manual to learn how to change the scope of licensed users

After modifying the scope of senders, scope of users, or both, you need to reset the license count.

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

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

• deploy the CodeTwo Outlook add-in to selected users only, as described here; or
• set up Outlook (client-side) signatures for selected users only, as described here. 

Reset the license count

After you have used any of the methods listed above to reduce the number of users who consume licenses and you are satisfied with your new scope of users, you need to reset the license count on the Licenses page in tenant settings available in CodeTwo Admin Panel (Fig. 2.).

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 users (senders) in the CodeTwo Exchange transport rule, or limit the scope of licensed users. Resetting the license count will unassign licenses from all users and make them available for assigning to the new, limited scope of users.

Refer to this article to learn how to reset the license count in CodeTwo Admin Panel.

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

See also:

• How to exclude guest users from consuming CodeTwo licenses