Large teams and external contractors

Visual Studio subscriptions admins are responsible for ensuring that each user who interacts with Visual Studio-licensed software is appropriately licensed with their own Visual Studio subscription. Subscriptions may not be assigned to teams, groups, or labs.

Internal teams

Typically, modern software organizations include stakeholders from several groups. Identify contacts from each group who can help you keep track of user inventory and changes.

Every organization is different, but a typical list of teams involved in development might include:

• Software engineering teams.
• Business teams, including product owners and business analysts.
• Project management teams.
• Quality teams, including QA staff and manual testers.
• IT operations, including preproduction and lab infrastructure managers.

External contractors and partners

External contractors may bring licenses to engage with your Visual Studio-licensed environment. Microsoft Certified Partners may receive a few free Visual Studio subscriptions for their internal use. However, these subscriptions don't cover revenue-generating activities such as developing custom software for a customer. Ask partners to send you a certified letter that explains the licenses they're providing and ones they need you to procure.

Resources

• Visual Studio licensing white paper
• Visual Studio Administration and Subscriptions Support
• Volume Licensing terms

See also

• Visual Studio documentation
• Azure DevOps Services documentation
• Azure documentation
• Microsoft 365 documentation

Next steps

Learn more about responsibilities for admins:

• Admin responsibilities
• Inventory of preproduction environment
• Track user assignments and process orders
• Use Maximum Usage to track purchase commitments