Manage volume licensing user roles
Volume licensing (VL) roles grant users access to VL pages in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Users who only have a VL role but don't have another admin center role can only access VL pages and can't access other pages in the admin center.
VL roles are assigned by one of the following people:
- A VL administrator of the agreement who adds you as a user and invites you to sign in to register.
- A partner or seller who assigns you a role during the contract creation process.
Note
There’s no public facing API to manage VL user management tasks.
Before you begin
- You must have a volume licensing (VL) role to access the VL pages in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- VL roles are managed by the VL administrator and don't provide visibility or permissions to other areas of the admin center beyond the volume licensing section.
Note
Global administrators in the Microsoft 365 admin center don't have access to VL features. It's up to the VL agreement administrator to add any users, including global administrators, who might want access to specific Agreements (License IDs). For more information, see Commonly used Microsoft 365 admin center roles, and Volume licensing roles.
Understand volume licensing roles
There are seven distinct VL roles that you can assign for each Agreement (License ID). Each role permits specific actions in the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage VL.
The following table shows the relationship between VL roles in the retired Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC) and VL roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and lists the actions those roles can take.
| Microsoft 365 admin center role | (Retired) VLSC role | Allowable actions |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator | Administrator | Can assign, edit, and remove VL user permissions. Can perform all actions granted to other VL roles, except for viewing invoices. |
| License position reader | Licensing Info Viewer | Can view contract details, orders, and contract keys, and create license summaries. |
| Product download manager | Download | Can view contracts and download licensed Microsoft software products. |
| Product keys reader | Product Keys | Can view contracts and contract keys, manage activation and redemption of online services, and view keys on the Products and services page. |
| Benefits reader | Software Assurance Manager | Can view contracts and manage Workplace Discount Software Assurance entitlements. |
| Online services manager | Online Services Manager | Can view contracts and orders, reserve online services, manage activation and redemption of online services, and manage subscriptions on the Billing > Licenses page. |
| Invoice Reader | N/A | Can view contracts, the list of invoices, and can download invoices. This role is automatically assigned to the person listed on the licensing contact as the Bill To contract and can’t be assigned to the VL admin. |
Understand the volume licensing administrator role
By default, the VL administrator role is assigned to the Notices Contact, or the Primary Contact provided by your Microsoft partner or seller when they set up your volume licensing contract.
When these contacts sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, they can assign the VL admin role to other users. Those users can then access the Agreement (License ID) in the admin center without being listed on the original VL contract.
Note
For privacy reasons, we don’t provide names of VL admins associated with your organization. Ask your organization's partner or seller what contact information they provided to Microsoft for your VL contract. If necessary, your organization's purchasing, finance, or IT departments might be able to identify your Microsoft Reseller from your organization's purchasing records.
Change the volume licensing admin for the Microsoft 365 admin center
If you already have a VL user profile in the Microsoft 365 admin center
When you sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can view and manage the Agreements (License IDs).
If you no longer want to be a VL admin, you must first assign the VL admin role to another user. The new VL admin can then remove your VL admin permissions. You must repeat this process for each license ID.
If you don’t have a volume licensing user profile in the Microsoft 365 admin center
If you're named the contract as a Primary or Notice contact, you receive a welcome email inviting you to create your VL user profile in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Alternatively, you can choose to forward the email to someone else who can register and become the VL admin in the Microsoft 365 admin center, instead.
Change the Primary or Notice contact information on the licensing contract
If you want to change who is named on a VL contract with a role such as Primary Contact or Notice Contact, contact your Microsoft partner or seller to process a Change of Contact Information Request to update the license IDs that list you with this role.
Updating the Notices Contact information on active VL contracts helps ensure that any Microsoft or Partner communications are received.
Note
You don’t have to continually update legal participant roles on VL contracts that are no longer active. After there's at least one active VL administrator for each license ID, the licenses remain accessible to your organization, and you can add or remove administrators.
View existing volume licensing users
- Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- In the Navigation menu, select Billing > Your products, then select the Volume Licensing tab.
- In the Role assignments section, select Manage VL role assignments. The Manage Assignments page opens and contains a list of VL users for the license IDs that you administer.
- Select View access for a user to view the license IDs for which they have permissions.
Understand the Manage Assignments page
The Manage Assignments page contains a list of all the VL users that you invited and includes information like their status and the VL roles that you assigned to them. The following table explains each column in the list.
| Column name | Description |
|---|---|
| Display name | The user's full name. The display name is automatically populated for users who belong to the tenant. If you add external VL users who don't belong to the tenant, make sure that you enter the full name of the user. |
| Status | Indicates the status of the user. For a list of explanations for the possible status, see the next table in this section. |
| Actions | Indicates the action you can take for the user. For example, View access, Resend invite, and Reset invite. |
| Sign-in email | The email address used to sign in to Microsoft 365 admin center. In most cases, this address is the user's work email, but formats like user@userorg.onmicrosoft.com are also possible. The inclusion of this email is useful for organizations that don't have Microsoft Entra enabled. |
| Business email | The email address listed on the VL contract – typically the email address of the Primary Contact or Notices Correspondent. When you add new VL users, the invitation is sent to the Business email address so that the admin can then forward it to the new user. |
| Volume licensing roles | Lists the VL roles assigned to the user. |
The following table lists the statuses that you might see in the Status column on the Manage Assignments page.
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Active | The user profile is active. The user can use their Microsoft Entra ID to sign into the Microsoft 365 admin center to view and manage their VL agreements. |
| Assignment in Progress | A VL admin assigned the permissions, and no further edits can be made until the status is active. The status update might take up to two hours during peak processing periods. |
| Failed | The permissions assignment failed. VL admins should assign permissions to the user again. If role assignment continues to fail, contact support to help investigate the problem. |
| Invitation sent | The user has yet to register their assigned permissions and create their VL user profile by accepting the invitation email. |
| Invitation expired | The user failed to register their assigned permissions by accepting the invitation email. The VL admin can reset the invitation. |
| User not found | The user isn't in the organization's tenant. |
Assign roles to volume licensing users
Step 1. Add new users
Add new users who don't already have VL permissions.
Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
In the Navigation menu, select Billing > Your products, then select the Volume Licensing tab.
In the Role assignments section, select Assign users to contracts.
Select Add or edit users.
Search for users you want to add by entering their email address.
- Users with an email address managed by your organization are listed for selection and are added as "Internal user."
- If you search for a user with an email address not managed by your organization, you see the message "No results found. Press enter to save." You can add the user as an "External user," which provides access only to VL information.
If a user's business email is different from their sign-in email, enter the alternate email address.
Select Review + Apply.
Continue to Step 2. Assign users to contracts.
Step 2. Assign users to contracts
On the Assign users to contracts page, select the expand button next to a user, then select Add contracts to see a list of all license IDs for which you're an administrator.
Select the license ID contracts you want to assign to the selected user, then select Add.
If you're an admin for a parent agreement or a Microsoft Business and Services Agreement (MBSA), you can expand the list to all Agreements (License IDs) under that parent contract by selecting Show inherited contracts. As an "inherited admin" you can assign users to any Agreement (License ID) under the parent agreement. However, if you aren't an agreement administrator for the specific Agreement (License ID), these users aren't listed on the Assigned tab on the Manage Assignments page.
Tip
VL admins with inherited permissions can assign themselves an admin role on a particular Agreement (License ID) and then see any users they added to inherited contracts.
When you return to the Assign users to contracts page, expand the user details again. You now see the list of license IDs that you assigned to that user.
Continue to Step 3. Assign roles to users.
Step 3. Assign roles to users
After the Agreement (License ID) is selected, assign the VL roles. A user might have different VL roles for different Agreements (License IDs).
- On the Assign users to contracts page, select the expand button next to a user, then select Assign roles. You see a list of all the Agreements (License IDs) that you selected in the previous step.
- In the Assign roles to selected contracts pane, select one or more roles from the Volume licensing roles drop-down list.
- To assign the same VL roles for other license IDs, select Copy role properties. Select other license IDs that you want to assign the same roles for, then select Paste role properties.
- Select Apply.
- When you return to the Assign users to contracts page, you see that the user's details now include the new VL roles.
- To save the updates, select Verify and save user assignments.
- The users receive a welcome email from microsoft-noreply@microsoft.com with the subject line "Action required: Sign in to manage your volume licensing assets."
New users can access and manage the Agreement (License IDs) based on the VL roles that you assigned to them approximately two hours after registration is complete.
Edit or remove permissions of existing volume licensing users
When you delete a VL user, the VL permissions assigned to that user are removed for all the license IDs to which they were assigned, and the user is removed from the Manage Assignments list.
Access to VL information in the Microsoft 365 admin center is removed as soon as a user is removed from their organization's Microsoft Entra ID (tenant). However, the user is still displayed on the Manage Assignments page until a VL admin removes the user from all license IDs.
Note
This procedure doesn't delete a user’s account from their organization. It only removes a user’s permission to the VL information in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- In the Navigation menu, select Billing > Your products, then select the Volume Licensing tab.
- In the Role assignments section, select Manage VL role assignments.
- Find the user you want to manage and select View access.
- In the details pane, select the Volume licensing roles drop-down list for the license ID that you want to change, then either select or clear the check boxes for the roles you want to add or remove.
- Select Verify and save changes.
An email is sent to notify the user of the changes with the subject line "Permission changes for Microsoft Volume Licensing contracts."
It can take up to two hours for the role change to be reflected on the Manage assignments page. For newly processed agreements, it can take up to 10 hours for contract changes to take effect.
Note
A VL admin can't edit or remove permissions of a user whose permissions on a license ID are inherited from the higher-level agreement (the parent agreement or MBSA).
Apply admin permissions to all license IDs under a parent program
If you're the Primary Contact, Notices Contact, or Online Administrator Contact named on an MBSA, you can opt in to inherit VL admin permissions on every Agreement (License ID) added under that MBSA.
To view or change your opt-in preferences, use the following steps.
- Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
- In the Navigation menu, select Billing > Your products, then select the Volume Licensing tab.
- In the Preferences section, select Edit preferences.
- To opt in to get inherited admin permissions on all license IDs tied to the parent level contract you're the admin for, select Yes.
Contact support
Submit a case in the admin center by going to Help & Support. If you're unable to access the admin center, see Contacting volume licensing support.