Learn how CoreView’s capabilities help enhance the native Microsoft 365 admin center. Allowing large organizations to get the most value out of their Microsoft 365 spend by gaining greater control over user permissions, license lifecycle management, security auditing, Microsoft Teams sprawl, managing hybrid environments, and so much more.
Download the datasheet and discover more.
Microsoft Optimization and License Management
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
User activity monitoring and
license activation reporting |
Yes |
Yes |
Both solutions allow administrators to monitor and report on
license status. CoreView takes license reporting to another level. |
| Account license changes |
Yes |
Yes |
Both solutions allow for license updates from their admin consoles.
CoreView simplifies and automates the process. |
| License optimization |
Yes |
No |
Identify unused licenses, minimize waste, and ensure costs are
allocated appropriately. |
Assign license pools to
specific business units |
Yes |
No |
Assign ownership of a set number of licenses to each department
or business unit. Putting the central IT group in complete control
over what licenses are distributed and who is paying for them. |
| License history |
Yes |
No |
Track license history changes over time. |
Chargeback accounting and
billing reports |
Yes |
No |
Provides the capability to perform chargeback reporting based
on business units, geographies, etc. |
Manage users in M365 and
on premises consistently |
Yes |
No |
You can connect CoreSuite to your on-prem Active Directory and
manage both synchronized and cloud-only objects. Taking the
guesswork out of where to make updates and the transition from
on-prem to Microsoft 365. |
Why License Optimization?
License optimization is the process of ensuring that employees have the licenses they need to do their jobs effectively, without spending more than is necessary or having an excessive number of licenses sitting on the shelf unused.
Due to the complex nature of Microsoft 365 licenses, for some organizations license management is a full-time job in itself. Getting the right licenses requires balancing considerations that are constantly changing, such as:
- Microsoft price changes
- Employee growth
- “Free trial” licenses that were previously complimentary but may convert to paid licenses
- Strategic changes in desired license mix – such as upgrading all executives to E5 licenses for security reasons
- Licenses currently unassigned – including those purchased in anticipation of future growth, unassigned due to normal employee turnover, and other needs
- Licenses currently inactive – including those assigned to employees currently on leave or otherwise explained by normal business activities
In the absence of a dedicated person or team to focus on these issues, it’s all too common for the pile of unassigned and inactive licenses to grow over time, and include license waste in excess of the amounts needed due to normal business activities such as turnover and anticipated growth.
It’s worth noting that, for many organizations theirMicrosoft contract is a multi-year, complex agreement that cannot be easily modified during the term of the agreement, and that in many cases we identify opportunities to avoid future costs, or avoid purchasing additional licenses, as opposed to a direct reduction in current costs.
License Optimization Opportunities
On average, the companies we studied purchased 59,617 licenses – but only have 40,736 users. Now, some of this is totally normal, because a given user may have a primary Microsoft 365 license, as well as a separate Power BI license, for example.And even in that scenario, buying separate licenses may be less efficient and end up costing more than buying a single combination license, depending on the situation.
But upon further review, we see that:
- The average company had 12,922 licenses unassigned (21.6%) and sitting on the shelf, and another 6,134 inactive licenses (10.2%), for a total savings opportunity of31.9% on average.
- 17% had more than 10,000 unassigned licenses sitting on the shelf, while 10% had more than 10,000 inactive licenses
Read the full findings around license usage here: https://www.coreview.com/benchmark-microsoft365
Segregation of Duties
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
RBAC assignments to
delegate privileges for
regional or departmental
administrators
|
Yes |
No |
Create unlimited custom roles, each with permission scopes
tailored - and limited - to only what is required for specific tasks.
Provide admin capabilities across AAD and applications.
|
Partition tenants for
delegated administration |
Yes |
No |
Organizations can segment users by Geography, Business Unit, or
Department to assign management and administration rights.
|
Grant access to system
events and audit logs |
Yes |
No |
Provides sanctioned access to secure information for research and
troubleshooting.
|
Usage Adoption and End User Training and Productivity
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
User activity reporting by
workload
|
Yes |
Yes |
Both solutions enable administrators to monitor user activity
by workload. The Microsoft 365 Adoption Content Pack utilizes
PowerBI, which requires manually updating one user at a time
or downloading a file to manage that list via PowerShell. But
with CoreView’s action-enabled reporting, you are able to take
immediate action based with a click of a button. |
Tracking and reporting of
adoption trends
|
Yes |
Yes |
Both solutions provide reporting and analysis of adoption trends
based on user activity changes. However, CoreView enriches
the data with additional information not available in the M365
Admin Center, such as licenses, department, country, and other
parameters. |
Reporting on user
productivity
|
Yes |
Yes |
MS Productivity Score provides insight into an organization’s
use of collaboration with MS tools. This score, however, is at the
organizational level, including comparisons to other organizations,
but not at the user level. CoreView allows insight into specific user
analytics, providing you with granular insights. |
Targeted adoption
campaigns using e-mail
templates |
Yes |
No |
Customizable communications can be targeted to specific user
groups and monitored for readership after being received. |
Tracking and reporting for
adoption campaign activities
by user |
Yes |
No |
Provides complete visibility into user actions performed in relation
to targeted adoption campaigns. |
Administration, Monitoring, and Reporting in User Interface
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
Analyze e-mail throughout,
delivery, and other metrics |
Yes |
Yes |
Limit operators to only search logs for e-mail message throughput
and delivery, for users in their designated Virtual Tenant
|
Generate reports about
e-mail throughout, delivery,
and other performance
metrics |
Yes |
Yes |
Both provide reports, but CoreView allows for the scheduling
of reports that are automatically distributed via e-mail to
preconfigured distribution lists.
|
Bulk-actions for account
updates on selected users |
Yes |
Yes |
CoreView has no limit on the number of selected user accounts for
which actions can be taken in bulk. The Admin Center only allows
admins to select a few user accounts for updates.
|
Customizable reporting
templates that are action
enabled
|
Yes |
No |
CoreView provides 240 user activity metrics for customizable,
actionable reports. Versus Microsoft’s approximately 50 reports
which are limited to blocks of 100 records.
|
Drill-down reporting at user
level, with no limit on viewing
or exporting
|
Yes |
No |
Enables administrators to easily investigate activity trends on the
user level, instead of company wide metrics.
|
Review user activity for all
workloads from a single
screen (User Card) |
Yes |
No |
Allows administrators to view complete user activity and take
action from a single user card. |
Custom drop-down menu
actions for integrating
PowerShell |
Yes |
No |
CoreView allows the integration of custom PowerShell scripts as
new actions available from the menus. |
Automated Workflows
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
| Customizable workflows |
Yes |
No |
CoreView provides workflows to help automate processes - like
onboarding and offboarding or authorization options.
|
CoreSuite offers one unified dashboard for all your management needs. Users seamlessly shift between tasks like calculating chargebacks and preempting data breaches, to onboarding new employees and tracking long-term product adoption. Here are 16 Microsoft 365 Tasks Easily Automated with Workflows.
Selected Action Options
| Features |
CoreView |
M365 Admin Center |
How CoreView Extends M365 Admin Center |
Tracking and Reporting for
ALL Admin Activities
|
Yes |
Yes |
Both solutions allow for tracking, searching, and reporting of admin
activities. However, the Admin Center only stores background
information for 90 days vs. CoreView's 360 days. |
Monitor Mailbox Delegations
for Security Compliance
|
Yes |
Yes |
Microsoft only provides visibility on who can access a specific
mailbox but not what mailbox a user can access. Furthermore,
Microsoft doesn’t provide reports to investigate delegation like
CoreView. |
Viewing All Mailbox Access
Rights for Users and Groups
|
Yes |
No |
Enables administrators to view and manage security rights for
different mailboxes from a single screen.
|
Security Compliance
Alert Notifications, with
Compliance Baseline
Settings |
Yes |
No |
Automated alerts can be configured to notify administrators when
security issues are identified. Plus, security compliance baselines
can be created for users who share group membership. |
Simplified Security Auditing
for Log File Entries |
Yes |
No |
CoreView provides a simplified model to view, sort, and search all
related Office 365 log files to identify security issues. |
