Welcome to the September 2024 edition of Partner Center Technical Corner. This month, we are excited to highlight our actions to protect identities and secrets, along with several recently released experience improvements for our partners. As always, you can find the most up-to-date technical roadmap and essential Partner Center resources at the end of the blog.
Securing the channel
Partner Center Security workspace: The Security workspace in Partner Center provides Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners with a centralized view for all security actions and resources. Two new roles, Security Administrator and Security Reader, have been added, allowing detailed access management without needing the admin agent role.
Azure authentication and fraud discretionary credit criteria changes: Starting September 2024, the criteria for assessing refund eligibility for a one-time discretionary credit related to fraudulent activity on individual Azure customer tenants is now updated to comply with the Microsoft Partner Agreement, including the requirement for multifactor authentication (MFA). To be eligible for the credit, MFA must be enabled when fraudulent activity begins. Additionally, starting October 2024, as part of the Secure Future Initiative, Microsoft will enforce MFA for all users signing in to the Azure portal.
Tenant creation and program enrollment security: All Partner Center experiences have recently transitioned to a bring your own Microsoft Entra tenant model, including new partner onboarding and sandbox account creation. The experience is now secured with payment instrument-based identity verification. This verification step is now mandatory for the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, including CSP authorized partners enrolling after September 6, 2024, as well as partners who intend to modify the legal business information of their existing accounts.
Just released
Improved visibility of price list changes: Partners have long requested a simplified approach to managing price lists in new commerce. To address this, we've introduced a new change indicator in the license-based price list, making it easier for partners to quickly identify whether a product has been added, changed, deleted, or remains unchanged since the previous publish. A similar feature is present in the legacy license-based price list, and partners rely upon that data to minimize the effort required to understand month over month changes for legacy offers.
This feature builds on the legacy license-based price list, where partners have relied on similar functionality to simplify the process of tracking changes month over month. We've enhanced the new commerce implementation to also highlight changes in the SKU title field, as well as indicate add, delete, or unchanged for each line item.
Data analysis shows that over 99% of the line items in the new commerce license-based price list remain unchanged in September (compared to August). With the new change indicator, partners can easily filter out unchanged items and focus on offers that have been added, changed, or deleted—saving time and effort by eliminating the need for comparisons.
One of our pilot users commented that this change indicator feature is "a game-changer and will drastically cut down on catalog loads." Try this new capability for new commerce license-based price lists published on September 1, 2024, or later.
New ChangeIndicator column in the new commerce license-based price list
New commerce license-based subscription management: Partner Center has recently revamped the experience of managing subscriptions by simplifying upgrade actions, term duration, and billing frequency management. The update also delivers faster page loads and introduces new cautionary prompts for mid-term changes.
Enhanced partner-to-partner license-based subscription transfers: Since the launch of license-based subscription transfers in June 2024, the experience has been further refined with improved support for partner audit logs as well as a new webhook capability. With these improvements, partners can more easily track incoming and outgoing transfers for their customers.
Key update on public sector offers migration to new commerce: As a reminder, starting August 1, 2024, new subscription purchases for available public sector product SKUs can only be made via new commerce. The August price list preview, published on July 1, shows these legacy offers as deprecated (DEPR). Microsoft-led migrations for public sector offers began September 1 and will continue as all offers renew throughout the 2024 and 2025 calendar years.
Automatic redemption of Visual Studio benefits: Partners who renew Solutions Partner benefits or transition from legacy gold/silver status within the same solution area (for example, from Business Applications to Business Applications), or within the same offering (for example, Solutions Partner designation in Azure to Modern Work), no longer need to reassign licenses. Now reassignment is only necessary for renewals into a different solution area or upon loss of qualification for a Solutions Partner designation.
Co-sell referrals flow: Microsoft Commerce Incentive engagements now create automated referrals for partner claims from partner-led activities, which are then directed to the Microsoft sales organization. This referrals flow drives alignment between Microsoft sales teams and partners for partner-led customer conversations, and the activities are tracked in both Partner Center and Microsoft Sales Experience.
Unified lead management: Partners can now manage all their leads in the Referrals workspace within Partner Center. Discover the new capabilities that help you convert leads into co-sell opportunities, make bulk updates to leads, as well as view and manage Microsoft-led marketing campaigns in the lead queue.
Partner Center resources
Prepare your organization for success with Microsoft by reviewing the following resources:
Stay tuned to our blog for more information that will help you make the most out of your partnership with Microsoft.