Welcome to the latest edition of our Technical Corner blog, where we showcase the essential features and functionalities available for our partners to explore and harness within Partner Center.
This edition will spotlight the new security alerts launched to help partners protect against Microsoft Azure fraud. We will also highlight the Action Center and how it can help partners stay up to date on important Partner Center communications. Additionally, we will explore recent updates and expand upon the rationale behind these enhancements. Toward the end of the blog, we provide convenient access to the comprehensive technical roadmap and essential Partner Center resources.
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Sign up for new security alerts to help prevent unauthorized party abuse
Starting June 1, 2023, all Cloud Solution Provider partners now have visibility into new security alerts. We recently launched these alerts to help partners detect and protect against Azure fraud. The detections are based on a set of anomalies across ARM (Azure Resource Manager) activities, billing meter consumption, identity risk signals, crypto mining, and quota increase requests. Partners should immediately take action to adopt the new security alerts in the Partner Center portal and/or API to mitigate any monetary loss.
Partners can log into Partner Center to review and resolve alerts. API partners will need to make API changes to get the new alerts. To learn more, see Azure fraud detection and notification.
Streamlined partner communications with the Action Center
Partners receive a lot of time sensitive and critical information from Partner Center, including information about fraud events, payouts and incentives, co-sell opportunities, tax invoices, and commercial marketplace. Action Center organizes all these essential actions and makes them readily available with just a click on the bell icon on Partner Center. You can see notifications relevant to your role, filter what is most relevant, and prioritize with workspace tags and categories. Notifications and actions are categorized as Mandatory, Recommended, Promotional, or Transactional.
Further customizations under the My Preferences page enable you to set language preferences, update email recipients, and opt in or out of specific notification categories. You can learn more about the Action Center with the Action Center overview.
Recently launched in Partner Center
Securing the channel
Microsoft-led migration from DAP to GDAP started in May. Microsoft will be assisting Jumpstart partners who have not already begun transitioning from delegated access protocols (DAP) to granular delegated access protocols (GDAP). The migration will be on hold for the month of June to support the month-end process, and migration will restart in July 2023. For more details, read the FAQs at Microsoft-led transition from DAP to GDAP and Security February 2023 announcement.
Remember to add a security contact to be notified about Azure fraud. For additional security calls to action, see important actions to secure the partner ecosystem.
New commerce experiences in CSP
Total order price is now visible in the order confirmation and checkout cart API response. This feature will enable partners to verify purchases and quickly rectify any accidental transaction errors.
The Customer list page has been redesigned with a fresh look and new capabilities. Based on feedback, we have enabled partners to create orders directly from the Customer list instead of having to go into their customer’s subscriptions. Partners can now also manage customer tags for better organization and navigate directly to Service Management. Lastly, we have simplified data tables to improve usability. Also, check out the improved workflow to create, manage, and assign user licenses on the Users and licenses page.
The final SDK was published at the end of May. As previously communicated, Microsoft will transition away from supporting .NET SDK this month. Partners are encouraged to transition to Rest APIs.
Rewarding partner performance
A new claims history view has been enabled for partners in the Incentives workspace. With this update, partners will be able to see the details of all actions taken on the claim, including the creation and approval/rejection progress. There will be dates shown for each step. This will increase the transparency for partners and allow for easy tracking of claim progression.
In the Incentives workspace, we have updated the add/claim customer workflow with claim friendly names enabling easier tracking for larger partners who have many claims open simultaneously and messaging improvements when the customer domain and tenants are mismatched. The new messaging will clarify when partners can proceed with their submission or if additional action is required. For more information on these updates, see CPOR associations overview.
Membership
Select ISV Success benefits can now be redeemed in Partner Center, removing the manual process where partners had to email Engagement managers to activate these benefits, reducing time to activate benefits from over a day to just a few minutes.
Benefits workspace pages have been redesigned to provide a new user experience along with improved performance. The revamped experience makes it easier for partners to work with benefits, for instance, a step-by-step guide in the activation experience to help partners avoid mistakes during benefit redemption, guidance on extending the license end dates versus the number of seats for Cloud benefits, and more. For additional information see Azure benefits.
Partners aspiring to attain Solutions Partner designations can now leverage contextual recommendations launched in the Membership workspace. This feature gives custom recommendations to partners on how to boost their scores to achieve Solutions Partner designations. Currently this feature is in pilot in select markets and will be expanded to more partners in the upcoming months.
Co-sell
The initial phase of the capability co-sell feature launched in early April. This allows Microsoft sellers to discover and share deployment services opportunities with endorsed partners across multiple countries and solution plays. The launch also makes it easy for sellers to discover services partners with Microsoft Cloud Partner Program designations such as Azure Expert MSP and specializations. Now, services partners no longer need a marketplace solution to engage in co-selling with Microsoft for their customized service offering.
Check out the new Referrals workspace redesigned with performance improvements. Co-sell opportunities, deal details, business profile, and leads pages have been redesigned to enable easier user navigation, including new grid views with preview cards, column chooser, and better filters. Quick filters and actionable insights will help partners either complete the task with ease or equip them with additional insights that can help close the deal with the customer. Quick filters allow partners to one-click filter for referrals that are pending expiry or for registered deals that have some action pending. With actionable insights, we recommend deals that are registered by the partner as partner-led but have a higher probability of winning if promoted to a co-sell opportunity. For more information, see Customize your grid view.
Microsoft commercial marketplace
To provide increased deal-making capabilities, during the offer creation, Multi-Year SaaS is now configurable for App Source offers. Previously only available for Azure Portal, this feature allows for 2-year and 3-year commitments, offers upfront, annual, or equal monthly payment schedules, and gives the ability for customers to decrement their cloud consumption commitment upfront or over time. To learn more, see Create new SaaS offer plans.
To help streamline the License Management experience, we are now offering the new capability for ISVs to leverage the license management capabilities of Microsoft where customers can manage and assign licenses — directly in MAC, or Teams Admin Center for Teams ISVs. To learn more, see ISV app license management.
To allow publishers to customize notifications, we have introduced the ability to customize publishing and certification notifications to a product-specific audience in the Action Center. This will allow publishers to reduce the noise for non-relevant audiences and ensure that recipients have the right access levels at the time of configuration.
Partner Center Technical Roadmap and resources
For a centralized view of what’s coming next to Partner Center, please review the Partner Center Technical Corner Roadmap June Edition.