Overview
License consumption is a document type in Azure Documenter that provides a detailed summary of Microsoft 365 licensing SKUs and their associated service plan inventories, showing how licenses are allocated, consumed, and utilized across the tenant.
Business value
License consumption reporting helps IT and finance teams understand license allocation and usage patterns, reduce waste from underutilized or unused licenses, and make data-driven decisions ahead of licensing renewals, without manually cross-referencing Microsoft 365 admin data.
Prerequisites
The app registration must have the following application permissions configured in Microsoft Entra ID:
- Organization.Read.All: required to retrieve organization-level license and tenant details. Without this permission, document generation fails to fetch SKU and license allocation data.
- User.Read.All: required to read user profiles and their assigned licenses. Without this permission, user-level license details and service plan data aren't available.
If either permission is missing or not consented to, document generation results in incomplete or failed output. Ensure an administrator has granted tenant-wide admin consent for both permissions in the Azure portal.
Required permissions
| Role | Permission level | Access |
|---|---|---|
| Account owner, Owner, Contributor | — | Full access to the Documentation section |
| Custom role | Read | View documents generated under Documentation |
| Custom role | Manage | View, generate, and manage documents under Documentation |
How it works
The License consumption document shows how Microsoft 365 licenses are allocated, consumed, and utilized across the tenant. It surfaces license allocation across users, usage and availability of licenses, and service plan distribution within each SKU.
Document structure:
- Tenant details: overview of the organization's tenant information
- Paid SKUs overview: lists each purchased SKU with its Purchased, Consumed, and Available unit counts, usage percentage, waste percentage, and a WasteStatus rating (Excellent, Good, Review, or High) with a WastePriority indicator to help prioritize reclamation
- SKU details: detailed breakdown of each SKU, including assigned user counts and the number of service plans included in that SKU
- Paid SKUs (Free tier): free-tier licenses associated with paid subscriptions, such as Power BI Free and Copilot Studio Viral Trial, with their Purchased and Consumed counts
- Trial / Free SKUs: trial and free licenses active in the tenant, including any licenses with negative available units resulting from overassignment
- Service plan inventories: maps each service plan to the SKUs that include it, showing total Purchased, Used, and Available units per plan and the list of SKUs it belongs to
- Waste overview: highlights licenses with underutilized or unused units, grouped by WasteStatus and WastePriority, to surface the highest-impact reclamation opportunities
Steps
Use the following steps to generate a License consumption document. Navigate to Azure Documenter to get started.
- Click New configuration. The Configure your document wizard opens.
- In Step 1 — Basics, enter a configuration name. Under Choose document type, select License consumption. Click Next.
- In Step 2 — Service principal, select the service principal and configure the subscription scope. Ensure the selected subscription has a client with appropriate access to retrieve tenant license details. Click Next.
- Complete Steps 3–6 (Branding, Publish settings, Schedule, Notifications) as required. Click Next after each step.
- In Step 7 — Review, confirm your configuration and click Finish.
Once generation is complete, a URL is created for the document, and you can download it using the Download link.
Example scenario
An IT administrator wants to understand the organization's licensing utilization ahead of a renewal. They generate a License consumption document, review the Waste overview section for underutilized SKUs, and identify licenses that can be reclaimed or consolidated before the renewal date.
Limitations
- Document generation depends on the Organization.Read.All and User.Read.All Microsoft Entra ID permissions being granted with tenant-wide admin consent; missing consent results in incomplete or failed output.
Troubleshooting
-
Document generation fails or returns incomplete data
Cause: the app registration is missing the Organization.Read.All or User.Read.All permission, or tenant-wide admin consent hasn't been granted.
Fix: grant both permissions to the app registration in Microsoft Entra ID and ensure an administrator provides tenant-wide admin consent in the Azure portal. -
License details are missing for some users
Cause: the User.Read.All permission wasn't consented, so user-level license and assignment data can't be retrieved.
Fix: verify the permission is granted with admin consent, then regenerate the document. -
Selected subscription returns no license data
Cause: the subscription's associated client doesn't have appropriate access to retrieve tenant license consumption details.
Fix: confirm the client tied to the subscription has the required Microsoft Entra ID permissions before generating.
FAQs
-
Which analysis types are available for Microsoft 365 licensing documentation?
Three document types are available: License consumption (this article), License optimizations, and Service plan matrix. -
What happens if the required Microsoft Entra ID permissions aren't granted?
Document generation results in incomplete or failed output until an administrator grants tenant-wide admin consent for both permissions. -
What does the Waste overview section show?
It identifies underutilized or unused licenses across the tenant, highlighting where license spend can be reduced.