Hello TConnell
The assignment of Device SL for Customer Service licenses is done the same way the User SL for Customer Service licenses, through the M365 portal.
For a more detailed explanation about why Microsoft sell device licenses, you should engage a Sales Representative or a Partner if you work with one, in order to get feedback from the business planning team.
From a technical perspective, the platform underneath does not have a distinction between a device license and a user license.
The common assumption when thinking about a Device license is that you should be able to assign it to a "device", however there is no possibility to technically assign a device, since we do not have the possibility to register it on the M365 portal and therefore assign to it the license.
This concept has not been explored/implemented, not even from a Azure perspective where we would expect the possibility to register one such device, the same way we can register on an on premise local account directory (AD).
Then the main difference between the licenses is in what customers purchase and licensing terms of use. A user license is a for a (single) named user/employee, it cannot be shared. A device license that is assigned to a user can be shared by multiple employees (when logged into a device). A user cannot (and should not be assigned the same license twice).
This means that you can implement a service account that is connected to a single device, but that is used by multiple employees. For example, think about multiple shifts on a factory. Lets assume you have 3 shifts and each shift has 4 employees, but you only have one computer available. You should purchase 3 Device SLs, create a service account for each shift and assign the Device license to those accounts, and they each shift would use one of them.
On the other hand, Microsoft provides Multiplexing for the SLs, which can be done by using a pool of licenses and then you can manage the users accessing CRM, by creating an AD Security Group which have the users that are supposed to access CRM. You will assign the licenses to the security group instead of the users and they will inherit the license in runtime when they attempt to connect to CRM. This can be done with User SLs and will allow you to have less licenses than total users, if they work on different timeframes or shifts, but in which each one has his/her own computer to connect and work.
I'm providing below the link to the most recent licensing guide, since the one provided by Leah Ju is no longer correct:
go.microsoft.com/.../
Let us know if there are other concerns about this subject.
Kind regards,
Ricardo
