Office 365 shared computer activation

Tim Tetrick

Back in May, I shared in a blog post that “native RDS/TS support for Office 365 ProPlus is coming, and is currently targeted to release in the second half of 2014”.

Well I’m pleased to announce that this support is now available as of September 1, 2014.  All SKUs containing Office 365 ProPlus, Project Pro for Office 365, or Visio Pro for Office 365 can be used by multiple users on a shared device or virtual machine.  This is referred to as shared computer activation.

Shared computer activation lets you to deploy Office 365 ProPlus to a computer in your organization that is accessed by multiple users. For example, several nurses at a hospital connect to the same remote server to use their applications, or a group of workers share a computer at a factory.

The most common shared computer activation scenario is to deploy Office 365 ProPlus to shared computers by using Remote Desktop Services (RDS). By using RDS, multiple users can connect to the same remote computer at the same time. The users can each run Office 365 ProPlus programs, such as Word or Excel, at the same time on the remote computer.

Shared computer activation gets enabled during the installation of Office 365 ProPlus, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365 using the Office Deployment Tool. Once enabled, Office installs without being activated. When a user signs in to a computer with Office installed via shared computer activation, Office will check to see if the user has been provisioned for Office 365 ProPlus and temporarily activates Office 365 ProPlus. If a second user signs in to the same computer, the activation does not persist from the first user and process is repeated.

It’s also important to note that deploying Office 365 ProPlus using shared computer activation does not count against a user’s five total installations of Office 365 ProPlus or Office for Mac

For more information, and for guidance on how to enable shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus, see Overview of shared computer activation for Office 365 ProPlus. 

For specific guidance on how to deploy Office 365 ProPlus by using Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and sharedcomputer activation, see Deploy Office 365 ProPlus by using Remote Desktop Services.

Thanks!