Our goal is to make Partner Center the most effective digital tool in our ecosystem, enabling you to take advantage of all the opportunities in the Microsoft partner ecosystem. Partner Center facilitates business transactions, promotes relationship building with other partners and provides robust analytics. To help you get the best from your partnership with Microsoft across each stage of the partner journey, it must continuously integrate the latest information, processes, and partner feedback as we evolve the overall partner experience. Having made incremental adjustments over the last several years, I am excited to be unveiling a reimagined user experience that offers intuitive navigation, a more consistent experience, and a guided path to finding the most relevant information and completing the actions you need to take in Partner Center.
Today, we will start rolling out the first of several phases in a new user experience for Partner Center. The signature characteristics of this update are workspaces, which are a new way of organizing assets and information by workflow. Implementing a structure built around workspaces allows for deeper personalization and makes it easier for partners to use Partner Center—benefits that are based in express requests from users. We will continue to make additional changes to improve the performance and reliability of each workspace. Grounded in our commitment to strengthen our digital capability, we are confident that our investment in this update will support you in dynamically accelerating your business growth.
Let’s take a closer look at the advantages of the new structure, the rollout process, and the resources to help you get familiar with the new experience.
Introducing workspaces
The new Partner Center interface is built around a set of workspaces, which will appear on your home page. Within each workspace, you can find the tools, links, reports, and information associated with the topic of the workspace. The workspaces you have access to will be personalized based on your organization’s business with Microsoft.
- Benefits
- Billing
- Customers
- Insights
- Incentives
- Membership
- Offers
- Payouts
- Pricing
- Referrals
Below is an example of what a partner in the Cloud Solution Provider program may see in Partner Center, with the new experience.
These changes stem from partners’ feedback and are designed to make Partner Center more intuitive to navigate. The changes we’re making will also bring Partner Center into alignment with other Microsoft portals (such as the Microsoft Azure Portal or Microsoft 365 Admin Center) and resource libraries you may be using, which will allow you to make business decisions more efficiently.
Transitioning to the new user experience
Starting today, September 27, all partner organizations and users will have access to the new user experience. When signing in to Partner Center, you may still see the current view, but can click the “workspaces” button on the top right of the page to toggle between the old and new interface. We’ll be progressively rolling out the new experience over the coming weeks until November 15, 2021, and during that time, you’ll continue to have the option to toggle between the old and new experiences.
On November 15, 2021, we will have completed the rollout of the new user experience and we will remove the ability to use the previous version.
Our team will continue to update the user experience during and after this rollout based on user data and direct input and feedback. By toggling back to the existing user interface, you will be presented with a “Provide Feedback” window which you can use to reach our development team.
We have compiled resources to support you in becoming familiar with your redesigned Partner Center. While there is parity in datapoints and features between the old and new interfaces, you may need to allow for time to learn where to find certain information. To help you understand the new structure, each workspace will have a hovercard which, when you hold your mouse over it, will provide a brief description and useful links. You can more detailed Partner Center information here.
To maximize your Partner Center experience, now is also a good time to ensure your business profile is up to date, review information on managing user roles, and double-check the security requirements for using Partner Center or Partner Center APIs. Keeping your account up to date will guarantee that the most relevant information is populated on your new dashboard.
Whether you are building a solution, going to market, or co-selling with Microsoft, the new Partner Center experience is designed to streamline productivity. Informed by and tailored to your organization and role, this update is our latest investment in our partnership. Enhancing Partner Center is just the beginning of the next phase of our future together, and my team and I look forward to hearing how it elevates your practice.