Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.
Excerpt

In this page you can find the analysis of the End Date Alignment feature that is enabling the NCE Coterminosity, along with its benefits, rules, and the method of ordering and managing coterminated NCE subscriptions.

What is the End Date Alignment (Coterminosity)


The End Date Alignment is enabling NCE Coterminosity and has been designed to enhance the Marketplace experience for your customers and streamline the billing operations both for you and your customers. More specifically, the End-Date Alignment is designed to enable partners to align a new NCE seat-based subscription to an existing NCE subscription’s end date. A major issue that is addressed now is that of the end date alignment of a base and an add-on subscription.

Rw ui textbox macro
typenote

Availability of the End-Date Alignment Feature

Currently, the End-Date Alignment feature is only available via Storefront, only for new NCE seat-based Subscriptions with a one-off payment Billing Plan, for root/parent organizations and , Standard Resellers. As we do not yet support Tenant Resellers, we also do not support the conversion from Lite Reseller to Tenant Reseller.
However, in the upcoming releases, the feature will become available also to Tenant resellers, and Tenant Resellers.

Rw ui textbox macro
typeinfo

Activating End-Date Alignment

To make the End-Date Alignment feature available in your organization, you must run the Get Services Definition action on every Microsoft Service Manager Instance.

Rules for Coterminating NCE Subscriptions


The existing NCE subscriptions from which the user may select and coterminate a new NCE subscription with, uphold the following rules:

  • The existing NCE subscriptions must be active,either base subscriptions or add-on subscriptions.

  • Active subscriptions purchased with flexible billing plans (monthly or annual installments) may also be eligible for selection.

  • Existing active subscriptions across the same MSFT tenant are eligible for selection.

  • Existing active subscriptions across the same MSFT tenant and under the Reseller’s MPNID are available for selection.


The End-Date alignment is not available for the following cases:

  • Trial subscriptions cannot be coterminated with an existing subscription.

  • Subscriptions from any other product type, other than Microsoft NCE Online Services.

  • Software Subscriptions/Perpetual Licenses are not eligible for the End-Date Alignment.

  • Subscriptions of any other status other than active.

  • Subscriptions of any other provisioning sync status other than Synchronized.

  • Legacy subscriptions.

The first term after setting up the End-Date Alignment can be shorter than the full term to align the renew renewal date with an existing subscription. After the first renewal, the subscription will run for the full term only. The charges will be prorated for the first short term. Please see the examples presented below.

Rw ui textbox macro
typewarning

End Date Selection for Coterminating a Monthly NCE Subscription

After a discrepancy has been found between the public documentation of Microsoft and the actual functionality in the Microsoft Partner Center for New Commerce Experience (NCE) subscriptions with term duration “month”, the platform does not support the creation of a coterminous NCE monthly subscription with an End Date on the 28th, 29th, or 30th of the month. This means that every other end date,before or after the aforementioned dates, is available and permitted for the creation of a coterminated NCE subscription with a monthly term duration. Any other term duration (annual, triennial) is not limited by the aforementioned dates.

Ordering NCE Seat-Based Offerings and Aligning the End-Date


Storefront Buyers have the option, while ordering New Commerce Experience (NCE) seat-based products (either for personal use or for reselling), to choose if they wish to align the end date of the subscription, which is about to be created, with the end date of an existing active NCE subscription, that upholds the aforementioned rules.


In the following table, you can better understand the relationship between the existing NCE subscriptions and the new NCE subscription, which is about to be created with coterminosity.

Existing NCE Subscription

New NCE Subscription

Terms

1-Month

1-Year

3-Years

1-Month

YES

NO

NO

1-Year

YES

YES

YES

3-Years

YES

YES

YES


The End-Date Alignment feature is available in the Storefront Basket Items page only on eligible NCE products. This means that for every order item that supports the end date alignment feature, a toggle buttonappears (and is off by default) next to the wording End Date Alignment, underneath the friendly name of the subscription.

Rw ui textbox macro

Scheduled Orders & Cotermination

Currently, the feature of End-Date Alignment is incompatible with the feature of Scheduled Orders. As a result, a Storefront Buyer user can choose to either utilize the End-Date Alignment feature or the Schedule Orders feature, but not both.

Once the toggle button is turned ON, a pop-up window appears, allowing the Storefront Buyer user to align the subscription end date with another existing NCE subscription, which will be chosen via a list of available subscriptions. The list of available subscriptions is populated based on the rules mentioned above.

On this drop-down list, Storefront Buyer users can see the existing subscriptions that fit the profile already mentioned, their subscriptions' friendly names-name, billing cycles (terms), and end dates.

In case of no eligible active NCE seat-based subscription availability, an informative message appears within the pop-up stating: “No active non-trial NCE subscriptions to align with”.

Rw ui textbox macro
typenote

Suspending/Cancelling the Existing Subscription during Ordering

In the rare case that the existing subscription that is selected from the list of available subscriptions is suspended or canceled during the order process, and before the final checkout, an error will occur with the following message “The custom end-date for {productName} does not match with the end-date of any active non-trial New Commerce Experience subscription“.
This error will appear only if no other subscription has the same end date for the same Microsoft Tenant on MPC. Otherwise, if there is another subscription with the same end date, no error will appear and the checkout will continue as expected."

Once the Storefront Buyer user select selects a subscription to align with, they can see the new end date of their subscription to be created on a preview, on the same pop-up window, under the section called Adjustment Preview.

When the Storefront Buyer user have has selected a specific end date from an existing NCE subscription and click clicks on the Save button, the pop-up window closes, and they can see their chosen end date next to the End Day Alignment toggle, along with a pencil icon, in case they wish to re-edit the end date of the subscription.

If Storefront Buyer user users no longer want to apply the End-Date Alignment, they can simply switch the toggle button OFF again, and the subscription end date will return to its original value.
Once the Storefront Buyer user successfully complete completes the checkout process, the new NCE subscription will be created and will have the same end date as the existing active NCE subscription that the user had previously chosen.

NCE Coterminosity Examples


In this section, you can find five tabs with end-date alignment examples from the Microsoft documentationto better understand how the actual NCE Coterminosity functions.

Rw ui tabs macro
Rw tab
title1-Month to 1-Month
Rw tab
title1-Month to 1-Year
Rw tab
title1-Year to 1-Year
Rw tab
title3-Years to 1-Year
Rw tab
title1-Year to 3-Years

Managing Coterminated NCE Subscriptions


The following bullet points briefly explain how the coterminated NCE subscriptions are managed.

  • Invoices: The prorated amount of a coterminated NCE subscription is calculated similarly to a subscription with proration, which essentially creates a mini billing cycle at from the beginning(first billing cycle) until the second billing cycle, when the two subscriptions will be fully aligned.

  • Upgrade: The full and partial upgrades of coterminated NCE subscriptions are fully supported since they create a new subscription from scratch, and that new subscription has as the Start Date the date of ’s end date of the coterminated NCE subscription was based on.

  • Suspension: The new commerce experience (NCE) suspension policies also apply here, as well. Microsoft Partners can suspend and then resume a coterminated NCE subscription at any time without cancellation or termination. However, the billing of the Partner continues during the suspension.

  • Cancellation: The new commerce experience (NCE) cancellation policies also apply here, as well. Therefore, the new coterminated NCE subscription has a 7-day cancellation window, within which it can be canceled, in the prorated way. As a result of a cancellation within the allowed timeframe, a prorated credit invoice is created and is based on the number of active days in this first (short) billing cycle.

  • Installments: Currently, the feature of coterminosity is incompatible with the feature of Installments. However, in the upcoming releases, it will become available.

  • Import Customers Tool: Coterminated NCE subscriptions are fully supported on the Import Customers Tool.

  • Health Check Mechanism: The Health Check Mechanism (HCM) fully support supports coterminated subscriptions.

  • Price Protection: The coterminated NCE are price protected with the same rules that apply to for all NCE subscriptions. Since the first billing cycle of the newly created coterminated NCE subscription is short, the price protection effective end date also follows that logic. On renewal, the subscription will enter a new price-protected period, and the protected prices will be the prices that are in effect on renewal.

For example:

  • Let’s assume you are ordering an NCE Product with a price protection term=12 on an annual unit.

  • The existing NCE subscription End Date (the one that you want to be aligned to) is 31/10/2023.

  • The new NCE subscription is eligible for cotermination and has a Start Date of 20/6/2023.

➡️ The first (short) billing cycle of the (new) coterminated NCE subscriptions is: 20/06/2023 - 31/10/2023

➡️ The second (normal) renewed billing cycle of the (new) coterminated NCE subscription is: 01/11/2023 - 31/10/2024

Therefore, the prices of the (new) coterminated NCE subscription will be protected during the first (short) billing cycle, and on subscription renewal, the latest prices and price protection will be automatically retrieved one last time, and those new price-protected prices will be applied for the rest of the term, which in this case is 12 months.

Coterminosity for Tenant Organizations


Storefront users of a tenant reseller organization can create an NCE subscription with a coterminated end date through coterminosity with an existing subscription. However, for coterminosity to be available for tenant reseller organizations, a root organization that never had enabled coterminosity before has to perform a Get Services Definition action in the respective instance. Afterwards, the products that have been imported to the catalog via the Get Services Definition action and have the Enable Custom End Date feature set to True on the root organization need to be transferred as such to the tenant organization, as well.

  • For existing tenants (existing before the coterminosity feature was enabled in the root organization), an 'Update Tenant' action needs to be executed within the root organization to enable coterminosity in the Tenant Organization.

  • For new tenants (created after enabling coterminosity in the root organization) will automatically inherit the coterminosity settings during their creation.

Furthermore, concerning the invoicing and backordering of coterminated NCE subscriptions from tenant organizations,they are back ordered as such back to root organization. Different time zones between the Root and the Tenant organizations do not influence end-date alignment in any way. Also, the coterminated end date is the same as with Microsoft Partner Center in both the root and tenant organization when backordering is active.

Table of Contents


Table of Contents
maxLevel6
minLevel1
include
outlinefalse
indent
excludeTable of Contents
typelist
printablefalse
class