Dockli is licensed per seat. You buy a number of seats, then decide who gets them by managing membership of a Microsoft Entra ID security group — a group you own and control in your own tenant. There are no license keys to distribute and nothing for end users to activate.
For the underlying token and grace-window mechanics, see Licensing and entitlement and Access groups and seats.
The model in one page
- Buy N seats on a plan (Essential or Spark) — directly with the Dockli team. See Purchasing and trials.
- Point Dockli at a Microsoft Entra security group during onboarding.
- Add people to that group to give them a seat. Remove them to take it back.
- Dockli reconciles group membership against your seat count automatically — roughly every 4 hours.
- When a licensed user opens Dockli, it checks their entitlement and unlocks the features for their plan.
Admins manage a group, not licenses
Because seats map to Entra group membership, you assign and reclaim access with tools you already use — the Microsoft Entra admin center, PowerShell, or dynamic group rules. No separate Dockli console is required for day-to-day seat management.
Assigning a seat
To give someone a seat, add their account to the Dockli access group. The next time Dockli checks their entitlement, they’re licensed — and at latest within the next reconciliation cycle.
- Add a user → they take one seat.
- Remove a user → their seat is released back to the pool.
- The user needs no admin rights and takes no action beyond signing in.
Sticky seats
Seats are sticky. Once a user is assigned a seat, that seat stays associated with them across sessions and device restarts — it doesn’t churn every time the app opens or the token refreshes. Stickiness keeps entitlement stable so a brief network blip or an in-flight reconciliation never bounces a licensed user out of their plan.
A seat is only released when the user is removed from the access group (or the subscription changes). On release, the seat returns to the pool and can be assigned to someone else.
Over-capacity alerts
If the number of people in the access group exceeds the number of seats you’ve purchased, Dockli detects the over-capacity condition during reconciliation and alerts the administrator. This is your signal to either:
- Add seats to cover everyone in the group, or
- Remove people from the group to bring membership back within your seat count.
Keep group membership within your seat count
Adding more members than you have seats doesn’t silently grant free access — it raises an over-capacity alert to the admin. Reconcile membership against your seat count promptly to keep every intended user licensed.
Changing seats or plans
| You want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
| Add seats | Increase your seat count with the Dockli team, then add the new users to the access group. |
| Remove seats | Remove users from the access group, then reduce your seat count at the next billing opportunity. |
| Move a user between plans | Assign the user to the Essential or Spark seat pool as appropriate — moving to Spark turns on Ask Dockli; moving to Essential turns it off. Files are unaffected either way. |
| Upgrade the whole organization | Change your plan on the subscription. See Purchasing and trials for Essential → Spark upgrades. |
Seat and plan changes take effect on the next entitlement check or reconciliation cycle — you don’t need to reinstall the app.
What happens when a subscription ends
When a seat is removed, a subscription lapses, or the trial ends without a purchase, Dockli’s licensed features stop for the affected users after the grace window (see Licensing and entitlement for the 10-day grace behavior).
Your files are never affected. Dockli is a window onto Microsoft 365 — it doesn’t store your documents, doesn’t sync copies to disk, and doesn’t own your data.
Your files always stay in Microsoft 365
Ending a Dockli subscription, removing a seat, or uninstalling the app removes nothing from SharePoint, Teams or OneDrive. Every document continues to live in Microsoft 365 exactly as before — you simply lose the Dockli experience for that seat.
Where to go next
- The token, refresh and grace-window details → Licensing and entitlement
- Setting up the Entra group → Access groups and seats
- Buying seats and trials → Purchasing and trials
- Comparing what each plan unlocks → Plans