Microsoft Partner Program Updates: 8 Opportunities Solution Providers Need To Know

Promotions for Microsoft Copilot and Windows 365, a new way for partner customers to verify purchases and an update to the Partner Center AI assistant are among the updates.

Promotions for Microsoft Copilot and Windows 365. A new way for partner customers to verify purchases. And an update to the artificial intelligence assistant inside Partner Center.

These are some of the recent updates to Microsoft’s channel partner programs and tools for partners that require changes made by solution providers–and could even yield new business opportunities.

The updates come from Microsoft’s online Partner Center announcements and information from Microsoft conference calls with partners reviewed by CRN.

Microsoft Partner Program

CRN has reached out to Microsoft for further comment.

Ryan Lee, senior solutions architect at Montvale, N.J.-based Gotham Technology Group–No. 156 on CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 and a member of CRN’s Security 100–told CRN in a recent interview that Azure has been a big part of the company’s growing developer operations (DevOps) and developer security operations (DevSecOps) practice.

“We’ve been doing infrastructure-as-code for several years now, and we’re now pushing forward and leading with that,” he said. “We’re doing a lot in that space, and we’ve also got a huge security practice.”

Read on for more information on these Microsoft partner program changes and updates.

Microsoft has increased the license cap for a 15 percent off “Getting Started” promotion for its Microsoft 365 Copilot artificial intelligence offer.

The promotion was expanded to a maximum of 2,400 licenses for 12 months, according to Microsoft. The previous limit was 300. The minimum number of Copilot subscriptions to receive the discount remains 10.

The promotion lasts until June 30–the end of Microsoft’s fourth fiscal quarter. The 15 percent is applied to the net partner price on new Copilot subscriptions.

Copilot licenses are only available as an annual commitment, but customers can pay an extra 5 percent for month-to-month payments instead of an upfront cost.

New Billing Reconciliation API

In an April conference call held with partners just before the Monday retirement date of Microsoft’s legacy application programming interfaces for billing reconciliation in Partner Center, the vendor revealed that only about 68 percent of solution providers have moved to the newest version of the API.

For partners who haven’t made the migration, this could mean disruptions for partners using the now-deprecated version one APIs for their next billing period, according to Microsoft, which has been advocating for partners to migrate to the new APIs since last year.

On April 21, Microsoft stopped providing access to four APIs for reconciliation line items for billing periods from April 2025.

“They are almost like 85 percent faster than version one,” Sourish Deb, a Microsoft program manager, said on the April conference call. “They provide the data in a very compressed way. … You will be really happy that you switched to the newer version.”

Microsoft has verified consistency between the two versions, Deb said. The data model hasn’t changed.

The four retired APIs are:

“Get invoice line items API”
“Invoicing and reconciliation v2 API (beta)”
“Get invoice billed commercial consumption line items”
“Get invoice unbilled commercial consumption line items”

Partner Center AI Assistant Upgrade

This month, the Partner Center AI assistant received an upgrade, allowing it to support duplicate subscription cancellation after a midterm upgrade–with more upgrade paths expected to come for the AI assistant by May.

The assistant, which is still in preview and only available in English, should reduce processing support tickets for canceling redundant licenses to less than four days, according to the vendor. Duplicate or redundant new commerce subscriptions sometimes happen when solution providers perform an upgrade in Partner Center.

For this to work, the upgrade must have happened in the past six months, must include all products and services from the duplicate or original subscription, must have the same or a greater number of licenses compared to the duplicate or original and the same or a longer billing term compared to the original or duplicate, according to Microsoft.

Both subscriptions should be on the many-to-one upgrade path or midterm upgrade product list. The AI assistant doesn’t support upgrades done outside of Partner Center UI or API. It also doesn’t support new purchases.

Partners can activate the AI in the subscription management page in Partner Center by clicking “get cancellation help” on the banner at the top of the page.

On an April conference call with partners, Sourish Deb, a Microsoft program manager, said that more solution providers leveraging the AI assistant will free up time for the Microsoft support team.

He encouraged partners to provide customer and subscription information at the start of an assistant session so that the assistant can find details quickly, solve the issue faster and get applicable refunds processed faster.

Microsoft POR Pause

Microsoft has moved the start date of the updated Partner Location Account (PLA) API and UI in Partner Center meant to simplify how distributors and other “indirect providers” assign indirect resellers as a customer’s partner of record (POR) for new Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) subscription orders.

The change is now set to start June 2 instead of April 14, Cecilia Mastin, a Microsoft partner enablement manager, said in an April conference call with partners.

“This is part of our efforts to continue to grow a secure ecosystem,” she said.

A Microsoft post about the upcoming changes says that the UI and API will see if the reseller has a valid CSP reseller authorization, an active CSP reseller tenant, is in the same region as the indirect provider, has accepted the Microsoft Partner Agreement (MPA) for indirect resellers and is associated with a valid PLA.

“If the system indicates that one or more of these requirements isn’t met during subscription orders (with the UI or API), the system displays an error message explaining the issue,” according to the Microsoft post. “Indirect providers must work with the reseller in question to correct the error, or assign a different, valid POR to the purchase.”

If the system detects that the reseller tenant is suspected, the partner loses granular delegated admin privileges (GDAP) across all customer accounts.

Microsoft EA To CSP Effort

Microsoft has launched a new guided Partner Center user interface (UI) so that partners’ customers with certain expiring Enterprise Agreements (EAs) reaching end of sale (EOS) can renew into the Cloud Solution Provider program–giving CSP members a way to bring customers that still have a Microsoft enterprise suite bundled with Teams into CSP.

The UI will help customers with EOS subscriptions of Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 with Teams and Office 365 E1, E3 and E5 with Teams, according to the vendor. Microsoft stopped selling net new Teams bundles last year to appease antitrust concerns in Europe.

Partners can use the new UI to help customers choose an annual or monthly subscription of M365 or O365 with Teams in CSP, according to the vendor. Partners can move EA subscriptions that are expiring or in the 90-day EA grace period into CSP. After the grace period expires, partners can’t see the EA subscription in the new UI.

The renewal into CSP functionality is available for license-based, per-user subscriptions only. Partners need a reseller relationship with customers before they can renew a subscription from EA into CSP.

Tim Kaye Mellor, a Microsoft partner operations manager, said on an April conference call with solution providers that customers renewing a subscription with a different partner will keep the Teams bundle entitlement.

He added that for now, the functionality doesn’t apply to Azure products. “We have heard your feedback, and we’re aware that that is an ask,” he said. “As of now, that is not currently a capability.”

Renewed CSP subscriptions start the EA expiration day or the day after the partner triggered the process if in the grace period, he said. Partners should also mind that customers in an extended period term are out of EPT before the CSP transition to avoid double billing, he said.

The function is only available in Partner Center, not through API support, for now. It doesn’t modify or update EA subscription data. Renewals into CSP of EA not yet expired can take up to 72 hours. Renewals of expired EA subscriptions into CSP can take up to 96 hours.

These renewals into CSP can only happen on expiration, not mid-term. And these CSP renewals can’t be undone, but partners can cancel new subscriptions within seven days.

Brent Serbus, a Microsoft program manager, said in an April conference call with solution providers that the function is not meant for a high volume of licenses. “Partners should work very closely with their customers,” he said. “This is not the kind of feature that partners would go into and create whatever they can.”

Security Solutions Provider SMB Path

On May 1, Microsoft will launch its path for partners working with small and midsize businesses (SMB) to qualify as a security “solutions partner.”

To attain this ranking, partners need a score of 70 points, one or more points in net customer adds, intermediate certifications, usage growth and deployments.

An example of the difference between SMB track and enterprise track is SMB track requires solution providers to get points from five customers as opposed to 10. SMB track also requires at least one person complete the Azure Security Engineer Associate certification and at least one person complete the Microsoft Security Operations Analyst certification.

The enterprise track, in contrast, requires two people to complete each of those two certifications.

The SMB path takes the eligible Azure Consumed Revenue (ACR) to between $750 and $12,000 in the trailing 12 months. Enterprise path only allows customer tenants contributing ACR of more than $12,000 the past 12 months.

Cropped shot of businessman greeting a young professional around the table in office. Close up of business people shaking hands in office.

Customer Agreement Partner Attestation News

On May 7, Microsoft will move its bulk attestation tool for Microsoft Customer Agreements (MCAs) to read-only before finally retiring the tool in January. Microsoft will retire the current Partner Center user experience (UX) and application programming interface (API) for MCA attestation on Oct. 7.

Instead, starting Oct. 7, customers will have to directly accept net new purchases or use a new partner attestation API. The new API combines the three existing methods of API, UX and bulk attestation into one to simplify the process, according to the vendor. Microsoft will block net new orders not attested by a partner or directly accepted by a customer.

The new API is also “a more compliant and reliable way to capture and relay customer acceptance information, ensuring a smoother and more consistent experience for both partners and customers,” the vendor said in an announcement about the change

“Microsoft runs on trust,” according to Microsoft. “Operating compliantly is essential to maintaining trust with our customers, and partners play an important role in ensuring compliance. … Ensuring customers review and accept the MCA is essential for upholding their terms.”

The new API is available in sandbox for partners to integrate and test if they want to continue attesting to customer purchases.

Partners won’t need to reaccept MCAs after Oct. 7 if they used the old attestation process or if a customer directly accepted the agreement through the M365 admin center. The change is for net new customers, according to Microsoft.

Two Partner Opportunities Lasting Until June

During a recent presentation to Microsoft solution providers, Andrew Boe, Microsoft’s director for worldwide partner strategy for SMB, Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365, alerted the crowd to two Microsoft promotions that are set to last until June–with possible extensions into the next fiscal year.

One is the ability for Azure “solutions partners” on Microsoft’s SMB path to leverage Azure Migrate and Modernize and Azure Innovate, which open up funding support, AI and cloud training resources, access to Microsoft experts and frameworks.

Microsoft usually considers partners SMB if they have less than $1 million in Azure Consumed Revenue in the trailing 12 months and 80 percent customer count in the SMB or small and medium corporate (SMC) categories.

Another is a 15 percent promotion for Windows 365 Cloud PCs for customers of CSP partners. These products are meant to help customers with remote workers and workers who aren’t always in the office.

The promotion applies to all W365 editions for new customers on CSP. W365 Enterprise requires customers to have a license to at least Windows E3, Intune or Azure AD P1–which are covered by Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3 or E5.

The promo works for annual or monthly subscriptions, according to Microsoft.