At Microsoft, we recognize and appreciate the value our partners bring to our joint ecosystem. We are starting this Technical Corner blog series to make it easier for partners to stay up-to-date with Partner Center releases—to understand what’s coming (or was recently released), how it works, and the impact it may have on your organization and how you get things done in Partner Center. We will share information on new and improved technical capabilities in Partner Center, calls to action, and other Partner Center-related information we think will help you make the most of your partnership with Microsoft. This first edition will focus on updates that are relevant to Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners.
Partner center resources:
Bookmark this link to stay up to date with the latest Partner Center announcements at any time.
Call to action: Secure your customers and your organization by taking these three steps:
- Update your security contacts today!: The Security Contact in Partner Center is a recent addition that allows you to tell Microsoft who we should contact in the event of security related issues through manual or automated notification. The content we share could include new security-related capabilities, action your team needs to take, or security alerts. You can enter the email, phone number, name of the individual, distribution list, or IT Service Management (ITSM) intake resource for person(s) responsible for responding to security incidents at your company in all your Partner Center instances.
- Protect every user in Azure AD with multi-factor authentication where Partner Center is used: When we analyze hacked accounts, 99.9% of these accounts do not have MFA. That is why it’s critical that partners enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all user accounts in Azure AD tenants where Partner Center is used and in their customer’s tenants as well. This can be accomplished easily by using the security defaults feature in Azure AD or other methods as documented here: Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication for your organization. For more details:
- Take the necessary steps to transition to GDAP: We have made a business decision to provide partners extended time to make the transition from delegated admin privileges (DAP) to granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP). New timelines will be announced for the following milestones by early October. We encourage you to continue taking the necessary steps to transition to GDAP by following the steps below:
What’s coming soon and recent updates:
Coming soon:
The partner center roadmap below provides a view on what’s coming in the next ~month for Partner Center, including technical availability as well as policy implementation timelines. Here is a link to the Partner Center roadmap.
Recent updates:
Incentives:
Workshops - all up claims release: Partners can claim customers for specific Workshop engagements. With this update, partners with incentive admin and incentive user access now have access to an all-up view claims page with all the customers they have claimed across all earning opportunities. In this view, partners can access, filter, sort, and export claims data; create new claims; and associate new customers to claims. For more details sign in to Partner Center and review: MCI engagements overview and eligibility.
New commerce experience migration:
Partners can now configure the custom Term End Date to align with new commerce subscription end dates. New Commerce subscription end date can be set to align with an existing non-trial OnlineServicesNCE subscription or calendar month. There are various benefits and reasons to align your subscription term end dates, including: add-on management, align subscription renewals with fiscal year, consistent & efficient invoicing, and flexibility for end dates. The change is reflected on the Partner Center portal and API starting from Sept 12, 2022. For more information you can view create a new commerce migration API to align subscription end dates in Partner Center.
Workspace access:
General availability of My Access feature: My Access enables all Partner Center users to manage their workspace access more easily. You can find your organization’s workspaces, the workspaces that you have access to, and request access to a new workspace. For more details view the Partner Center guidance ‘Find your workspaces, roles, and admins in Partner Center.’
Finally, we want to hear from you! Give us feedback: We appreciate the feedback and engagement we get from our partners. Please continue to give us feedback by using the "smiley face 😊” located at the top right of the navigation in Partner Center.
