Your customers can schedule a change in the number of licenses, the billing plan, and the billing term of NCE subscriptions via the Storefront, without going through any lengthy processes or workarounds, either when viewing the subscription, or through the list of subscriptions.

The option is not available if there is a pending request, for pay-per-use subscriptions, assets, or for subscriptions with a quantity limit of 1.

Applicable Scenarios while Creating Future Requests

When creating a future request, one of the two following scenarios is applicable, depending on the product type and the Service Manager:

• Changes to the amount of licenses, billing plan, and billing term are not applied immediately, but rather when the billing service runs at the end of the current billing period, and the corresponding Service Manager is updated.

• As soon as the future request is submitted, the API call to provision the service is made instantly.

Unavailable Actions with Pending Future Request

When a subscription has a pending future request, the following actions are not permitted and will either not be available or result in an error:

• Buy licenses

• Upgrade/downgrade

• Enable/disable auto-renewal

• Suspend

• Cancel

You can note, in the following screenshot, the error message in case one of the actions listed above is selected while a future request is pending:

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Change the Number of Licenses And the Billing Plan of a Subscription

To increase or decrease the number of licenses, change the billing plan, and change the billing term of a subscription at the end of the billing period via the Storefront, go to the subscription view page, click on the I want to… button, and then select the Manage Renewal option.

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In the dialog box, specify the new amount of licenses, the billing plan (when applicable), and the billing term (when applicable), and then click on Submit.

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Of course, users can change either the Number of licenses, the Billing Plan (when applicable), or the billing term (when applicable), a combination of those, or all at once.

It is also possible to click on the three dots … button, located in the Subscriptions list view, under the Actions column, and then select the Manage Renewal option.

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Edit or Cancel Existing Requests

You may check the status of the request under the Requests section. To change a request, you can select the Edit option, under the Actions column, or select the Cancel option to cancel and delete the request.

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Tenant Resellers Managing Future Requests

Tenant reseller users cannot schedule a change to their billing plan or billing term, but they can schedule an increase or decrease in the quantity of their subscriptions, which will take effect upon renewal, by using the Manage Renewal option. This option is available for both Simple and Country Tenant Resellers.

Possible Errors While Scheduling Subscription Changes with Future Requests

There may be cases where, during the scheduling of subscription changes toward a renewal, certain errors can appear. These can be the following:

• Billing plan does not match term: In the event that the scheduled billing frequency (plan) does not match the billing term (i.e., Annual term, 36-month billing frequency), the user will receive the following message;

  • “The chosen billing frequency is not valid for the current subscription term.”

• Billing term & Billing plan combination is not valid: In the event that the scheduled billing term does not match the billing frequency (i.e., Annual term, 36-month billing frequency) OR vice versa, the user will receive the following message;

  • “The selected combination of billing term & billing frequency is not valid.”

• Platform or External ID are not the same as when the scheduled change took place: Should the external (Microsoft) ID or platform ID of the subscription be different on revoke from when the scheduled change took place, the user will receive the following message;

  • “Cannot revoke the change for this subscription.”

• Attempting to schedule a change for a subscription containing a discontinued product: If a user attempts to schedule a change for a subscription with a discontinued product, they will receive the following message;

  • “An error occurred while communicating with Microsoft. Please contact your CSP administrator.”

• Communication error with Microsoft: In the event that there is a communication error with Microsoft, the user will receive the following message;

  • “An error occurred while communicating with Microsoft. Please contact your CSP administrator.”

• The request has failed to be processed: Managing Renewals for NCE Subscriptions | Request Execution.

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