The interworks.cloud Platform NCE Compliance & Roadmap

New feature/change

Legacy CSP

New Commerce Experience

AVAILABLE

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

ROADMAP

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 offerings:

• Seat-based Commercial license are available, as per Microsoft’s availability: Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Windows 365 aimed at small and medium organizations.

• Perpetual Licenses for all qualifications and currencies

• Software Subscriptions for all qualifications and currencies

• Seat-based Public Offers (Education, Non-profit)

• NCE Special Offers

Government Offers

Subscription term

• 12 months for all products

• 36 months for some products

• 1 month or 12 months for all products

• 36 months for some products

NCE seat-based products are available for purchase with:

• 1 month term

• 12 months term

• 36 months term

Billing Options

Upfront

• Upfront for monthly subscriptions

• Monthly or annually for annual subscriptions

• Monthly or annually for the triennial subscriptions

NCE seat-based products can be billed:

• Upfront for monthly subscriptions

• Monthly/ Annually for annual subscriptions

• Monthly, annually, upfront for the triennial seat-based subscriptions

• Selection of monthly payment option on a customer level

NCE software subscription products can be billed:

• Upfront for annual/triennial subscriptions

For all subscriptions with flexible billing plans:

• Apply an extra Charge on subscriptions with monthly billing plan (selection on a customer level)

Monthly or annually payment option for Software Subscriptions

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

For seat-based NCE offerings:

• Multiple market countries and multiple currencies are supported automatically

• A tool is released to help you use currencies that are unsupported by Microsoft for a given market country (for example sell in USD in Germany)

• Promotions are automatically applied to the sell price.

• Pricing is calculated automatically during purchase based on product’s attributes, such as market country, currency, promotion available, etc.

For software subscription NCE offerings:

• Pricing is automatically calculated during purchase

Price list integration via API

Not available

Partner APIs provide online monthly pricing lists instead of partner processing lists manually

For seat-based offerings

• Prices are updated automatically when you run the Get Services Definition process for all currencies/ countries supported

For software subscription NCE offerings:

• Catalog & Pricelist update is automatic via an API integration with the Get Services Definition Process

For the Perpetual Licenses

• Pricing update is automated when you run the Get Services Definition process

Coterm a new or renewing subscription with an existing subscription

Not Available

• Coterminosity can be activated when a subscription is created or when it is renewed.

• A new or renewing subscription must be aligned to an existing subscription; there is no option to simply pick any date from the calendar to align to

Your Resellers or Customers are able to align a new commercial seat-based subscription end-date with an existing one’s end date.

• Available through your Marketplace or BSS

• Available for new NCE Subscriptions purchased with all payment Billing Plans.

• The End-Date Alignment is Available for your Tenant and Standard Resellers.

The End-Date Alignment available for renewing subscriptions through the “Manage Renewal” functionality

Suspend/resume subscriptions

• To pause subscription, partner must suspend it, and then reorder it if subscription terminates after end of term.

• Partner billing is paused during suspension.

• Partner can suspend and then resume a new commerce subscription at any time without cancellation or termination;

•  Partner billing continues during suspension

You are able to suspend and then resume an NCE subscription at any time through your BSS; 

Billing continues during suspension.

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.

• Promotions are automatically applied to the sell price.

• Pricing will be calculated automatically based on product’s attributes, such as market country, currency, promotion available, etc.

• Promotions are applied also to migrated subscriptions

• Extra fields (Promotion ID, the End Date and the Discount) in Subscription View to verify if a promotion is applied in MS, without having to check to the Partner Center.

Show promotions available for each SKU

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).

• Cancellation window is 168 hours / 7 days

• Cancellation window is displayed for each subscription in BSS and Marketplace

• Cancellation of a subscription is available through BSS and Marketplace

Trials

• Availability for some products at 25 seats

• Cannot change seat count or cancel trial

• Convert trial to paid with same or different seat count, during trial period

• Manual conversion only

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.

With this feature, interworks.cloud platform supports the NCE Trials functionality through the Storefront component:

• Trials are automatically created as products trial option with GSD

• Trials are available in Marketplace for self-activation

• Microsoft Rules supported (25 seats, 30 days, no cost, no cancellation, no suspension)

• Auto-renew is set to Off automatically by our platform, right after activation

• Trial Expires after 30 days

• Reseller/ Customer can purchase a new paid subscription after expiration with all options available and promotions automatically applied

• When a Trial is active, the Customer cannot activate a paid subscription for the same product.

Purchase a paid subscription during Trial

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: 1^st to the end of month

• Monthly

• Annual

• Co-terminosity for new Subscriptions

Alignment with Calendar Month

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 are listed like the rest of primary products and can be purchased separately and independently.

• During the purchase phase, our system checks if a prerequisite base subscription exists, so that the purchase of add-on can be completed or not.

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 conversion enhancements: Midterm free to paid and paid to paid with 2+ intents (change quantity, SKU, term, billing plan)

• Switch billing plans mid-term without resetting of term

Midterm increase/ decrease of seats is available through BSS and Storefront

Mid term Changes in Billing Cycle supported in upcoming versions

SKU upgrades

Full upgrade or greater at midterm

• Partial or full upgrades at midterm

• Schedule upgrade with a lower or higher quantity of seats at renewal

• Immediate Full/ Partial Upgrade into a new subscription

• Immediate Full/ Partial Upgrade into an existing subscription

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.

• Resellers or Customers can Schedule Changes in the number of seats (addition/ reduction) upon renewal from the Marketplace

• CSPs can Schedule Changes in the number of seats (addition/ reduction) upon renewal from their BSS administrative platform

Change Billing Cycle & Term upon Renewal

More Scheduled Changes available on Renewal:

• Change End Date

• SKU (Scheduled Upgrade)

Automatic seat assignment with full upgrade

Only available with SMB SKUs.

Seats can also be assigned automatically at upgrade with Enterprise-level SKUs.

Available based on Microsoft’s eligibility check

Auto-renewal option

On as a default. Cannot be turned off

On as a default. Can be turned off

• On as a default for seat-based offerings and software subscriptions.

• Available to toggle on/off through BSS (for you as a CSP) and your Marketplace (for your Resellers/ Customers).

• Provisioning information is passed automatically to Microsoft.

Migration of Subscriptions from Legacy to NCE

• Migration Tool available through BSS and your Marketplace for bulk transition of Legacy subscriptions to the NCE on a customer level.

• Creation of a new subscription is supported

O365 User Management

NCE O365 user licenses can be managed through the “My Workspace” Section in the Marketplace

GDAP Enablement / DAP deprecation

With Delegated Admin Privileges (DAP) most users of a CSP have wide access to perform administrative functions on behalf of their customers. That access does not auto-expire . Specific users can access all customer tenants by default with no partitioning according to employee, customer or workload.

GDAP is a security feature that provides partners with granular and time-bound access to their customers' workloads in production and sandbox environments.

With GDAP, partners no longer have access to all customer tenants across Azure subscriptions through Admin agents by default

With the GDAP enablement feature, the CSPs using the interworks.cloud platform can define the GDAP Roles that they want to automatically request to any newly created/synced customer.

In this way, they do not have to do it in the Microsoft Partner center each time, CSPs can automate their process and save valuable time!

DAP is deprecated from November 1st 2023

Tenant Organizations

Your tenant organizations will be able to work and manage NCE offerings and subscriptions, supporting all features provided to your parent account.