Publishers can use existing custom licensing while moving to AppSource transactability
Important
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| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Admins, makers, marketers, or analysts, automatically | 
Mar 1, 2023 |
Apr 1, 2023 |
Business value
With the introduction of transactability for AppSource apps, where purchasing and per-user licensing happens through Microsoft AppSource, licensed users get access through so-called entitlements, which are created in the Business Central AppSource app. The entitlements map permission sets for the app with licensable AppSource offer plans.
When an app opts in to the new transactability support and a user doesn't have a licensed plan, the user won't get access permissions. This is fine for new customers, but most AppSource app publishers already have existing users who shouldn't be locked out when the app opts in to using AppSource transactability.
To support such "side-by-side" licensing of new users on AppSource transactability and existing customers on custom licensing, we are adding a new entitlement type "Unlicensed" that allows publishers a way to handle users who don't have assigned AppSource plan licenses themselves—for example, to support custom licensing for these customers in a transition period.
Feature details
We have introduced a new entitlement type called Unlicensed for scenarios when the user is not licensed through entitlements mapping to AppSource offer plans. When defined, this type of entitlement will only be applied to users who do not have an offer defined in the app’s entitlements.
You can then test for this unlicensed scenario and perform your custom licensing as before for existing customers, allowing side-by-side support while transitioning existing customers to the new AppSource transactability model.
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See also
Type (Entitlement) Property (docs)