How to limit 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:

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 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 cloud (server-side) signatures
• How to limit the scope of users who will get Outlook (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 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 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 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. The term ‘members’ also covers shared mailboxes which, when editing the CodeTwo Exchange transport, should be treated as user objects (and not group objects) to avoid problems with missing signatures. Learn more

More information can be found in this article

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

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

• Modern CodeTwo Signatures Web Add-in for Outlook and OWA:
  • deploy the add-in to selected users only, as described here; or
  • set up Outlook (client-side) signatures for selected users, as described here. 
• Legacy CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook (COM Add-in) – reduce the number of users by centrally deploying the add-in, as described here.

Learn more about CodeTwo Outlook Add-ins

How to 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 (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 users (senders) or if the user signs out from the legacy CodeTwo Signatures Add-in for Outlook (COM Add-in).