M365 Developer Tenant Challenges
My Visual Studio subscription was deactivated, resulting in the loss of my Azure subscription and licenses to access Microsoft Teams within my M365 developer tenant.
This post covers my attempts to recover access in vain.
Access to Microsoft Teams
I thought I could extend my access to Microsoft Teams by opting for a free trial for Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) and Teams Premium - Microsoft Teams Premium.
However, this did not restore access to Microsoft Teams despite waiting multiple hours after I added the above licenses.
I cancelled the licenses to avoid accidentally incurring costs.
Redeeming Benefits as an M365 MVP
Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) License
As an M365 MVP, I attempted to redeem my M365 license, which is Microsoft 365 E5 (no Teams) only and would not have granted me use of Microsoft Teams.
However, I was unsuccessful in claiming the offer with the message:
Visual Studio License
Fortunately, I could benefit from the Visual Studio subscription as an MVP and decided to redeem my benefit. I created an M365 Developer Tenant.
I claimed my Azure benefits of around £125 per month, but it got associated with my personal email address, which I was unable to transfer to the M365 Developer Tenant.
M365 Copilot MVP License
The MVP M365 Copilot can be redeemed once, and hence I was unable to claim it again on my new tenant.
Free Trial or Pay-as-You-Go for Azure Subscription Not Available to Developer Tenant
I attempted to add “Start with an Azure free trial” to my new dev tenant, but I was not eligible. I transferred my MVP Azure subscription from my personal account to the new dev tenant. The transfer was successful, but I was unable to use the Azure subscription within my Dev Tenant. I raised a support request and received the following response from the support engineer:
“An Azure subscription cannot be transferred to a M365 Developer Tenant as it overlaps with design, leading to non-functionality that might cause you lots of inconvenience.”
M365 Copilot License Not Available to Developer Tenant
I tried to claim the M365 Copilot MVP benefit on the developer tenant, but the tenant was not eligible.
Redeeming Workplace Visual Studio Benefit
I applied for a Visual Studio license and thought I could create another M365 Developer Tenant and redeem the Azure subscription as I did in the past. Unfortunately, there is a limit of one dev tenant per phone number. Only one M365 Developer tenant is allowed per phone number.
An Old M365 Tenant
I remembered an old tenant I created 5-7 years ago. I was pleased I could access it despite not having used it for a long time. I was glad I could activate a free trial for Azure Subscription.
The downside is the tenant has E3 license only. I can access Microsoft Teams from the old tenant. I am not sure if it’s wise using it to explore features as I may stumble on other unforeseen challenges.
Conclusion
Until I resolve all the different challenges, it might take a while before I can fully dive into building declarative agents or testing Copilot Studio Agents.
I am missing the prerequisites for Copilot license to use Teams Toolkit to create a declarative agent.