Licensing glossary

16 terms shown

Add-on

A licence that extends an eligible base subscription and may not provide a usable service by itself.

Auto-expanding archive

Exchange archive storage that can grow automatically for eligible licensed mailboxes; it is not provided as one immediately available block.

CAL

A Client Access Licence: an access right used mainly with on-premises Microsoft server products, distinct from a Microsoft 365 user subscription.

Conditional Access

Microsoft Entra policies that evaluate signals such as user, device, location and risk before permitting or restricting access.

DLP

Data loss prevention policies that identify sensitive information and can warn, block or record risky sharing and use.

eDiscovery

Tools used to identify, preserve, collect, review and export content for legal or regulatory matters.

Entitlement

A product, service plan or capability that a licence grants to an assigned user or tenant.

Legacy agreement

An older purchasing contract whose product names, prices or rights can differ from current public offers.

No-Teams variant

A Microsoft 365 or Office 365 suite sold without Microsoft Teams; Teams can require a separate licence.

Per-user licence

A subscription assigned to a named person, giving that user the specified services and usage rights.

Purview

Microsoft’s family of data security, governance, risk and compliance products.

Retention

Rules that keep or delete content for defined periods. Retention is different from backup and can vary by workload.

Service plan

The individual entitlement toggles shown inside a Microsoft product licence in the admin centre.

Shared mailbox

An Exchange mailbox intended for shared access. Size, archive and hold requirements determine whether it needs its own licence.

Tenant

An organisation’s isolated Microsoft cloud environment, containing users, licences, policies and services.

User subscription licence

A cloud licence assigned to one user, often abbreviated as USL.