SkieDoes replacing a device free the old seat or cost an extra licence?
It does not cost an extra licence. When you replace a device, the old device's seat is freed and the new device uses it, so a student still holds one seat. Skie licences are one device per seat, and the replace flow keeps that count right without you adjusting anything.
A seat is one enrolled device for one student. During a replacement, two devices briefly exist for the same student, one broken and one new. The replace flow resolves that by retiring the old device and releasing its seat when the new device is provisioned, so the count stays at one.
You do not ask the owner for an extra seat, and you do not have to delete the student first. If you did it the other way, deleting the student and enrolling a new one, you would lose the history. The replace flow is the correct route because it keeps the history and the seat count tidy.
There is one practical point about timing. The old seat is freed as part of the replacement, so if your organisation is exactly at its seat limit, the replace flow still works. The licence check at provisioning compares against the seats after the old one is released.
What does not free a seat is a reset of the same device. A reset device is recognised by its IMEI or serial and does not take a second seat, but it also does not give one back. And a device that is simply sitting unused in a cupboard still holds its seat until you reassign it or remove it.
Practical tip: do an end of term review of devices that no longer have a user and either reassign them or use Remove Skie, so the seats are not tied up. See how many seats a run uses and seats freed on loss.
- Old seat is freed on replacement
- No extra licence for the new device
- Works even at the seat limit
- Idle devices still hold a seat until removed