portal.azure.com licensed student benefits?

I ask my students to:

  • sign in to portal.azure.com,
  • then under Access Student Benefits, tap [Explore],
  • then under Learning Resources, tap Software,

then expect them to download, install and license a software item used in my curriculum, such as "Windows Server 2022 Standard" "Windows 11 Education version 23H2" or "Visio Profesisonal 2021." Unfortunately, the results are mixed: some students can download software and a license key, some students can download some software but not others, and other students can access none of the requested software. What determines whether a particular student is entitled to a student benefit, and what must we do differently to enable access to each enrolled student?

Tags student Download license benefits
Asked by Carl Gibbons on Tue 3/12/24 2:03 PM
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Answer (1)

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Rebecca Theis Tue 3/12/24 3:25 PM

All Construction Management Majors taking a course requiring Azure should be given access by BYUI. The following is some information we have on Microsoft Azure and some tips to help students access it.  In addition to making sure students are using their school credentials to sign up, there are some alternate links students can try. If these troubleshooting steps have been tried and students are still unable to download Azure, please let us know and we will look into this issue further.

 

Students can check their course syllabus to find the software links.

If the student is having trouble accessing/downloading their Microsoft Azure software they may want to try the following links that are also provided in the Syllabus:

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So, does this mean that only Construction Management majors have access to Azure for Education Dev Tools, but students of other majors may not get the same benefits from BYU-I's volume licensing agreement with Microsoft? - Carl Gibbons Wed 3/13/24 10:27 AM
Hey Carl! I was able to look into this a little more and here's what I found about Azure and what the school provides:

Everyone at BYUI has access to a trial in Azure based on their BYUI email. If a student hasn't used their trial before taking this class, they will be able to start their trial and access it just fine. If, however, a student has used up their trial before taking this class, that could cause some of the issues you mentioned where they have trouble downloading the software they need. The trial is based on dollars. It will last for $200 worth or 1 year, whatever happens first.

Beyond that, Azure softwares require licenses that have an additional cost associated with them and must be requested by a department and must be paid by that department. Some of the licenses have a monthly cost per seat (user) and some are perpetual licenses with a one-time cost.

I hope that helps! If you have further questions, let me know which softwares you need your students to have. - Rebecca Theis Thu 3/14/24 9:40 AM
Thanks for looking into my query, Rebecca. Unfortunately, most of this good information is still irrelevant to my students and curriculum needs. None of my students rent any Azure services; they don't activate their $200 credit.
I ask them to download ISO installation images of Windows operating systems, along with license keys; they use these to create virtual machines on their own laptops or desktops (NOT in the Azure cloud). Microsoft Visio is also helpful for my students.

I found the following FAQ that seems most relevant to my question:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/education-hub/azure-dev-tools-teaching/program-faq#azure-dev-tools-for-teaching

According to the information there, my students should be able to visit the Education Hub Store at https://azureforeducation.microsoft.com/devtools, log in with their BYU-I credentials, then download what they need. Some of them cannot. The reasons for this obstacle are not transparent. - Carl Gibbons Thu 3/14/24 1:29 PM
Thank you for the information and for your patience as I've looked into this issue. You are correct in that students should be able to get the needed software from the Education Hub after logging in with their BYUI credentials. We are also not sure what would be causing some students to experience issues with that and not others.

We recommend having the students experiencing issues contact us and we can help them each individually. This will help us to see if the cause of their issues are different, similar, or the same for each of them. From there we can figure out if there's something we can do to stop this problem from happening. - Rebecca Theis Fri 3/15/24 9:42 AM