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Date: 28 25 Apr 2017 

Microsoft Cloud Germany provides a separate instance of Microsoft Azure and Office 365 delivered from the above German datacenters. A designated German company, controls access to customer data and the systems & infrastructure that hold customer data. The German data trustee controls and supervises all access by Microsoft or others to equipment used to store customer data for Microsoft Cloud Germany. All German data trustee personnel adhere to the exact standards for datacenter operations put forth by Microsoft.

As a result, commercial customers in the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) can store and manage customer data in compliance with applicable German laws and regulations as well as key international standards. Microsoft personnel cannot access customer data without approval from and supervision by the German data trustee or customer.

How interworks.cloud platform integrates with Microsoft German Cloud?

interworks.cloud is the first to successfully implement the integration of Microsoft Cloud Germany within its cloud platform for CSP. Activating the integration with German Cloud is similar to the activation process for the global Microsoft services.
You need to define a new partner Center instance in Cloud BSS > Setup > System Options > Applications Setup > Microsoft Cloud Services by using the credentials of the a global admin user in German Cloud Partner Center.

Then, by running the Get Services Definitions action the system will create the products you can offer from German Cloud. This means that if you have activated also the integration with global partner center, you will have two sets of products in Cloud BSS: one set for products provisioned in global partner center and one set for products provisioned in German Cloud. For more details, please check Configuring the Integration with Microsoft German Cloud

Support for Multiple Microsoft Partner Center Instances

From this release, interworks.cloud platform supports concurrent access to multiple Microsoft partner centers. This is very useful if you operate in different geographical regions and you have a different partner center account per region. By integrating your Cloud BSS with all partner center accounts, you can have a single Storefront for all your customers, aggregated sales reports from all your regions and of course less maintenance work since you'll have a single interworks.cloud platform instance instead of an instance per region. You can also map your customers to the correct partner center account by using different pricelists. For enabling multiple partner centers, the process is the following:

1. For each Microsoft partner center account create a new instance in Cloud BSS > Setup > System Options > Applications Setup > Microsoft Cloud Services. 
   
   
2. interworks.cloud platform will create multiple copies of Microsoft plans and add-ons, depending how many instances you have defined.
3. Create a pricelist for each partner center account for grouping together all products that must be provisioned to the same partner center account
4. Relate each reseller / direct customer with the corresponding pricelist based on his geographical area. Then, your customers will be able to purchase only services that are offered from your regional partner center account.

For more details, please check Support for Multiple Partner Center Instances

Adding a Credit Card Payment for Increasing your Credit Limit

For customers that are not paying by default using a credit card, we implemented the feature the customer to make ad hoc credit card payments for increasing, when necessary, their credit limit.

If the customer places an order in Storefront that exceeds his available credit, the system allows him to make a credit card payment for increasing his credit limit and proceeding with the checkout. 

Upon successful completion of the payment, the order will be executed and the customer will be able to use the services he purchased. For more details, please check Adding a Credit Card Payment for Increasing the Credit Limit

Improvements in Microsoft Cloud Services Integration Layer

In this release, we did the following improvements:

• Use of Partner Center API. We have migrated most of our integration code from MS CREST API to MS Partner Center API. This new API is more robust and offers better error handling and new methods for supporting extra functionality. 
  
  
• Automatic cancellation of Microsoft plans and add-ons. Until this release, all cancellation requests submitted by the customers where sent to back office users for review. From this release, you can select how the system will treat the cancellation requests. In product type view page, the cancellation options are unlocked for setting your cancellation policy.
  
  
  
  

• During Azure subscription creation, the owner role is applied to all global admin users. From this release, when a customer purchases Azure, we apply the owner role to all global admin users found in partner center for customer's tenant. This role enables the global admin users to access Azure portal for setting up the resources.
  
  
• Handling of errors of type "Account with MPN ID ‘XXXX’ is not valid for offer "YYYYYY". The most common reason for this error is when a reseller just went through all the MPN work to become an Advisor Partner but the benefits are still finishing the process to be enabled. We handle such errors by creating the subscription without relating it initially to the reseller:
  1. We create the end customer subscription in partner center but we don't relate it with reseller's MPN ID, but with CSP's MPN ID. 
  2. We dispatch a notification to a BSS user informing him for the raised error. We are sending the system notification "Reseller has an invalid MPNID"
  3. When reseller informs the CSP that his ID is now active, the CSP must relate the subscription with the reseller from inside partner center.

interworks.cloud Billing API new Method

The following methods have been added in our API:

• Get Account Service Totals
• Get Account Service Totals by Subscription