Today we spoke with Esri Customer Service, got quick, clear and simple answers to our questions, then followed their simple instructions to accomplish everything.
Payment for a Single Use license and annual maintenance for ArcGIS for Desktop automatically includes an ArcGIS Online organization account/subscription. We thought that was the case, but only needed to confirm it. No additional purchase is necessary to get started from the beginning. Of course, adding tokens, etc., requires additional purchases.
Upon request by the ArcGIS for Desktop licensee, Customer Service will send an email providing a webpage link to follow and an activation code to enter for the new ArcGIS Online organization account/subscription. When the linked webpage is reached, the licensee enters the activation code and there choses whether they want to create a new organization account or convert an existing public account to an organization account. If the choice taken is to convert an existing public account to an organization account, then the licensee simply logs on using the same user name and password they used for the public account, and the public account is automatically converted to an organization account, and all their old public account information is automatically transferred over to the organization account.
This worked like a charm for us.
