We are totally focused on providing you with the automation needed to start selling NCE products as quickly and as easily as possible. We are bringing into the interworks.cloud platform new features and functional changes under a phased approach, to ensure the smooth transition and complete alignment with Microsoft’s finalized requirements and technical automations published.
So, we move carefully and start releasing NCE functionalities, starting from mid-November. Our platform releases will be phased and will continue within 2022, along with the milestones set by Microsoft for switching to NCE. Core functionalities that are considered as business must have’s are highly prioritized.
Our high-level roadmap is depicted in the following high-level picture.
Our interworks.cloud NCE Technical Preview Release will allow you to:
New feature/change | Current experience | New Commerce Experience | interworks.cloud Technical Preview Release V1 & V2
| interworks.cloud integration V3 - January 2022 | interworks.cloud NCE integration V4 - February 2022 | interworks.cloud NCE integration V5 - March 2022 | interworks.cloud NCE integration V6+ |
Product availability | Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 aimed at small and medium organizations | Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 aimed at small and medium organizations | Enrich your products portfolio by adding NCE products: Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 aimed at small and medium organizations. Commercial license type will be available, as per Microsoft’s availability. | Rest Qualifications will be available, as Microsoft releases them. | |||
Subscription term |
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| NCE products will be available for purchase with
| Expecting for the 36 month term products | |||
Billing Options | Upfront |
| NCE products can be billed only upfront for monthly and annual subscriptions |
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Pricing | Pricing files included all 15 CSP currencies | The price list includes per market pricing for the products, SKUs and terms to purchase. This pricing is in the currency of the market where the partner is selling. To get the price lists, partners will need to select the market of the customer | The pricing is in the currency of the market where the partner is selling to. Our first versions of NCE release will allow you to select one country for which you wish to launch NCE products. If you also wish to update a currency different than that of the pricelist shared by Microsoft, we will provide you the tool to define the currency and the exchange rate to convert the currency of the pricelist to the one of your preferences! |
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Price list integration via API | Not available | Partner APIs provide online monthly pricing lists instead of partner processing lists manually | Our platform will allow you to automatically update products and prices through APIs, so that you will no longer need to process lists manually and upload excel files! Prices will be updated via an automated tool, upon your selection on market country and currency. | Prices are updated automatically when you run the Get Services Definition process | |||
Suspend/resume subscriptions |
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| You will be able to suspend and then resume an NCE subscription at any time through your BSS; Billing continues during suspension. | Suspension will also become available through your Marketplace | |||
Promotions | Only the monthly billing plan is eligible for promotions | New commerce promotions will be implemented as a percentage off a given subscription (monthly, annual, or multi-year). These promotions will have varying discount amounts and durations. New commerce promotions will automatically be applied if the partner’s customer is eligible. | Promos are not yet supported automatically by our platform technical release V1 and are currently under development for being released with the following versions. If a subscription is eligible for a promotion, then our system will not automatically adjust the price for now. | As the first release of promotions support coming with V3, you will be able to see in each subscription, some extra fields to verify if a promotion is applied in MS, without having to check to the Partner Center. So, the Promotion ID, the End Date and the Discount will be visible as information and you will be able to adjust the subscription's price (if you want to do so). Otherwise, your customer/ partner will not be able to see if a promotion is applied. |
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Cancellation policy enforcement | Partner could suspend the annual subscriptions at any time without penalty or early termination fee. However, partner did not have the option to cancel the subscription immediately. | Cancellation for seat-based subscription in new commerce is limited to the first 7 days of any term, with full refund for the 1st day and prorated refund for day 2, 3, 4, 5,6 and 7. Same 7 days policy applies to cancellation of additional seats (support request required). |
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Trials |
| New commerce trial offer 25 licenses and lasts for 30 days. Trials can be converted to a paid subscription at any time during the trial and trials cannot be canceled. By default, auto-renew is turned on and trials will auto-renew to paid offers after 30 days. When converting from a trial to a new paid subscription, at minimum, all 25 seats need to be converted to the new paid subscription. Upon converting from a trial to a new or existing paid subscription, the 72-hour cancellation window opens up. This is when the partner can modify the number of seats, increasing or decreasing as needed. | Not supported in technical preview V1 & V2 | Not supported in V3 | Not supported in V4 | Not supported in V5 | Supported by our platform in the upcoming releases |
Billing Cycle | Varies on each partner’s CSP billing cycle. | Billing Cycle: The number of days that are in the monthly term billing depends on the purchase date and the month length Calendar Month: 1st to the end of month | Changes will occur to Billing Cycle. Our platform will be fully aligned with Microsoft’s NCE subscription cycle, in order to match on subscription dates, support the narrow cancellation window and provide a better reconciliation experience.
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Add-ons sold separately from base offers | Add-ons are purchased only in conjunction with purchases of the add-ons’ base SKUs from the same partner and were not displayed in the CSP catalog or shopping-cart UI | Add-ons are listed in the catalog and shopping-cart UI along with base SKUs and can be purchased separately and independently. The customer must already have a prerequisite base subscription (which can have been purchased from any source) before buying the associated add-on. | Add-ons will be listed like the rest of primary products and can be purchased separately and independently.
| Add-ons and primary products will be interconnected into the platform so as to be promoted during purchase through an info panel | |||
Mid-term Updates | Increase seats at anytime Decrease seats mid-term and at renewal |
| Midterm increase of seats is available through BSS and Storefront
| More mid-term changes, such as upgrades, change of billing plan, term, etc will be released as we move on with the NCE implementation. | |||
SKU upgrades | Full upgrade or greater at midterm |
| Not supported in technical preview version V1 & V2 | Not supported in V3 | Not supported in V4 | Not supported in V5 | SKU upgrades will be made available in the upcoming releases |
Ability to schedule changes at subscription renewal | Not available | Partner can schedule different seat counts, SKU conversions, term-length renewal changes, renewals to different billing option. | Not supported in technical preview version V1 & V2 | Not supported in V3 | Not supported in V4 | Not supported in V5 | Supported in upcoming releases |
Automatic seat assignment with full upgrade | Only available with SMB SKUs. | Seats can also be assigned automatically at upgrade with Enterprise-level SKUs. | Not supported in technical preview version V1 & V2 | Not supported in V3 | Not supported in V4 | Not supported in V5 | Supported in upcoming releases when upgrade options will be supported. |
Auto-renewal option | On as a default. Cannot be turned off | On as a default. Can be turned off | On as a default. Available to toggle on/off through BSS. Need to also toggle it off through Partner Center manually. | Available to toggle on/off through BSS and information passed automatically to Microsoft. | Available to toggle on/off through Storefront | ||
Migration of Subscriptions from Legacy to NCE | Supported by our platform in the upcoming releases, following the General Availability launch | Migration Tool will is available for bulk transition of Legacy subscriptions to the NCE on a customer level. | |||||
Tenant Organizations |
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| Your tenant organizations will be able to work and manage NCE offerings and subscriptions, supporting all features provided to your parent account. | ||||