Knowledge Base

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:

Info

When using combo mode, a user is only assigned one license even if both a client-side and a server-side signature rule apply to that user. The user may be assigned a license based on either client-side or server-side criteria. As a result, the best idea is to perform steps limiting the consumption for that user for both the modes.

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.

Accessing information on which users are assigned license.
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:

Info

The solutions provided here are based on using groups available in your Exchange Online organization (a distribution group, a mail-enabled security group or a Microsoft 365 group). You can either use an existing group (or groups) or you can create a new group that will include all the users you want to get signatures. The new group should be created before you start configuring CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365, as it takes some time for such changes to propagate.

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

Tip

The same can be done when configuring connectors and the transport rule manually during the initial set-up of the program, as discussed here.

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:

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.

Resetting the license count in CodeTwo Admin Panel.
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).

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