Direct, channel, and marketplace private offer customers use heartbeat-based licensing.
Under this model, licensing is based on the total number of employees in the organization — defined as all full-time, part-time, and contract workers. Because it is not possible to programmatically determine an organization’s employee count, Active Directory does not meter directory user accounts for licensing enforcement in heartbeat transactions.
Usage reporting related to licensing is disabled, the Used column displays N/A, the Summary field displays Included in subscription, detailed usage views are disabled, and overage workflows do not trigger.
Customers are responsible for licensing their entire organization. Under the heartbeat model, this means all employees must be licensed — not a subset.
While directory accounts may still be counted in the background for internal analysis, those counts are not exposed to customers and are not used for enforcement.