Partial upgrade for 5 of our 21 users into a Business Standard License

[CasaVirupa]

Hi! I'm new here, not sure if this is the right place but here it goes:

We use Workspace for nonprofits which is great. But I've been trying to activate Business Standard licenses for 5 of our users, just so they have the possibility to record on Google Meets, which is necessary for our activities, and it seems impossible to do this partial upgrade from the admin panel. 
An agent told me you could do partial upgrades starting from 100 users, but it seems absurd to have to set up 80 (we have 21 accounts right now) sort of fake accounts in order to have that possibility.

Does anyone know how to go about this? I've contacted support 4 times already and sent forms to the sales team but I am somehow not getting any answer.

Thanks for your help, this is really crucial for our cultural association!

[newman]

I am not as familiar with non-profits' specific rules/limits on licensing, but the overall concepts are the same as for-profit companies.  The 100 user number isn't a hard and fast rule.  That's the number support was given, tt's a generic response.  Even if you were at the 100 user minimum you would still have to talk to sales to get it.  I've seen companies of your size get partial domain licensing.  They will give you some minimum that has to be on the higher SKU.  Sales essentially works with management and gives you specific guidelines.

As for getting in touch with sales that may be more difficult.  I imagine you didn't interact with anyone from Google when you set up your non-profit account.  I'll look and see if I can find contact info or instructions.  Someone else will likely have additional info.

[CasaVirupa]

Okay that's nice! Did you find any more contact info? It's good to know that it is possible and it's definitely helpful to have that information when talking to support, but I am stuck in emails with technical support who don't seem to have decision power in that regard. And that's right, I didn't interact with anyone from Google when setting up the account, it was all in online forms and so on.

Any contact info or instructions you'd have would be amazing. Thanks!

[christiannewman]

Partial domain (mixed) licensing requires a minimum number of users and a minimum % of users on the higher SKU (edition).

Furthermore, except in very rare and exceptional circumstances, I always caution organizations against partial domain (mixed) licensing as confusion will abound amongst the user base with regards to who has access to what features and capabilities, and who doesn't. This invariably breaks workflows, and makes some workflows impossible to implement organization-wide.

Just a few of many examples:

Who can record meetings?
Who can use Shared Drives?
Who can use external spaces?
Who can use document templates?
Who can submit document approvals?
Who can have meeting co-hosts or create polls?
Nobody knows (except the admin)!

[CasaVirupa]

Well, in our case, it's actually pretty easy: the only need for upgrading is in order to record meetings, and the only people who will want to record meetings are the ones who give online courses. That's 5 out of 21.

Do you know what the minimum number of users is and the minimal % of users on higher SKUs? Because it does seem to be a shifting number, which is not that bad since it really depends on each organization's needs?

All in all, this is just so we can stop using Zoom and move everything to Google Meets. But if it can't be done... well, we'll stay with Zoom, but it's a pity because it would be great to have everything in the same place.

[StephenHind]

@CasaVirupa the last time I checked it was a minimum of 20 on the smaller licence and a split of 75 to 25% of higher to lower licences, so they only way you could do it would be to have 20 on Starter and 60 on Standard, which won't work for you obviously.

This may have changed since I last checked.

[CasaVirupa]

And... where is it that you checked? I guess my mai issue is figuring out who can I speak to from google, be it sales or technical support or whomever. Thanks!

[StephenHind]

The information used to be available in Partner Advantage as you can only get the partial domain licencing via a Google Cloud Partner.