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 employee counts cannot be programmatically determined, Active Directory does not meter directory user accounts for licensing enforcement.
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.
Directory accounts may be counted internally for analysis, but these counts are not exposed to customers or used for enforcement.