Retrieve Indirect CSP Tenants & Initiate Import for End-Customers

Owned by Panagiotis Papanastasiou
Last updated: Mar 27, 2024
16 min read

How to Retrieve Indirect CSP Tenants & Initiate Import for End-Customers

After selecting the corresponding instance and subsequently clicking the Get Hierarchy button, the tool retrieves the instance's Indirect CSP MS tenants along with their end customers by obtaining only those MPN IDs from which their subscriptions belong to one or more Indirect CSPs (resellers) and displays them on the following list under the columns:

  • Check-boxes: No checkbox will be displayed since we do not support import for resellers but rather for their end customers.

  • Type: The Type for Indirect CSPs will be reseller. 

  • Reseller / Customer Name: This column displays the Microsoft Partner Center tenant's name. You can use filtering.

During the parsing of the resellers when the "Get Hierarchy" function is initiated, what happens is that the mechanism checks all the MPN IDs of all the end customers' subscriptions residing in Microsoft's side and matches them with the corresponding reseller MPN IDs, from the chosen instance. Then the end customers are being assigned under their corresponding reseller (based on the MPN ID). The names of the resellers are also being collected, at the same time, with the use of an equivalent procedure in which an API call is being sent to Microsoft in order to determine which name, from all the resellers, matches the given MPN ID.

For example, the parsing of a given instance has found that a reseller has three end customers which their MPN IDs match that of the reseller. The list above will display the name of the reseller under the Reseller / Customer Name column (i.e. Interworks S.A.) and the total number of end customers of that reseller will be brought together under the End Customers column (i.e. View(3)).

  • Related BSS Account*: The following sub-bullets describe the possible values that will be presented inside the fields under this column.

    • The actual name of the "Related BSS Account" will be displayed when the BSS reseller's account was created previously in our BSS platform with the displayed MPN ID. 

    • If there are at least two BSS accounts that match the reseller's MPN ID, then this error message appears "More than 1 account match reseller's mpn id".

    • When there is no BSS account related to the specific MPN ID, then this error message appears "No BSS account found".
      *No filtering will be displayed in this column.

  • Customer Identifier: This is Microsoft's Partner Center account id and is not applicable to the resellers.

  • Country: This column does not have a value as it is addressed to the end customer(s) list page.

  • Mpn Id: This is the MPN ID of the reseller's BSS account. You are able to use filtering.

  • End Customers: This column contains links such as View (#) in case a reseller is qualified with the MPN ID rule, otherwise this column will not contain a link, and then you will not be able to continue with the import of the end customers.    

  • BSS Subscriptions: This column does not have a value as it is addressed to the end customer(s) list page.  

  • Not Imported Subscriptions: This column does not have a value as it is addressed to the end customer(s) list page.

  • Status: This column normally does not have a value as it is addressed to the end customer(s) list page. However, there is an exception in the case of Unknown type where the status column will contain the value UnSynced. The following note, below, explains this exception.

 

 

How to Manually Associate a Reseller with an End Customer 

Due to the fact that there are cases where the MS import tool lacks the automatic collection(via the "Get Services Definition" process) of resellers and tenants that don't have a related active subscription within the MS Partner Center, we have designed two extra options that provide you the ability to manually create resellers and then assign tenants (end customers) to them. Please continue to the "Manual Association of a Reseller with an End Customer" page for finding out an analytical guide to the above-mentioned extra options.



Error Scenarios & Handling

  • If the BSS account has no MPN ID saved, the corresponding Related BSS Account field will display "No BSS Account found".

To eliminate the issue, you must create a reseller account in BSS and save, under the Sync Options of this newly created account, the MPN ID. Then the reseller's account name will be displayed under the column field named Related BSS Account, which indicates that the relationship between the reseller and its end customers has been corrected.

  • If more than two BSS accounts are related with the same MPN ID, the corresponding Related BSS Account field will display "More than one account match reseller's mpn id". 

To eliminate the issue, you have to delete one of the two accounts that are associated with the same MPN ID.

  • If the specific country of a customer or an end customer of an indirect reseller (at least one during mass import) is not already activated on the BSS organization, the error message reads “Country: <Country> of customer is not activated on your BSS organization. Please activate the country and try the import process again.“ As a result, the subscription import will fail and no account will be created in the BSS - the tenant will not be imported.

To address this issue, activate the specified country and try again.

 

Configure Import Options for Indirect Reseller End Customers 

By clicking to view a reseller's end customers (e.g., View (3)), you are redirected to the end customers page (which will remain on the same tab, and a new page will be loaded), where you are able to select the end customers you want to import.

You are also able to select the Separate Invoices option (which will be false by default) and also select a Price list which by default, as preselected, is the reseller's price list. However, please note that no price list will be added either to the end customer or to their reseller since the price list will be added only to the subscription to be imported. You can find more information on the creation of a price list by continuing to the Pricelists page. 

Inside the end customers' page, you will find the results being displayed under the columns:

  • Checkboxes: Are used either for the distinct selection of one or more end customers or for selecting all end customers at once.
    If an import is under the Status: Completed / In Progress / Pending, there will be no checkbox for selection. In the event that a Microsoft tenant in the Microsoft Partner Center does not have a BSS account, nor a subscription, the checkbox will be available in order to create that tenant as a BSS account into the BSS platform; even if no subscriptions are available for import.  

  • Customer Identifier: This column displays the Microsoft Partner Center account's id of the end customer. You are able to use filtering.

  • Customer Name: This is the Microsoft's end customer name. You are able to use filtering. 

  • Related BSS Account: During the import of one or more MS tenants (end customers) from this list, BSS accounts are generated and become associated with the respective MS tenants.  Therefore, a link will be created by the importer and depicted under the field Related BSS Account. The BSS account name will obtain the end customer's name. The field will hold a link value only when the account was created by the importer. When the link is clicked, you will be redirected to the account's view page. As long as an MS tenant is not imported, this field will be empty. There will be no filtering for this column because the entities are links. 

  • BSS Subscriptions (Available after the import): This column will obtain a value only when the import has run, and there are imported subscriptions inside our BSS. It displays the number of subscriptions the import has created inside the BSS platform. You are able to use filtering.

  • Not Imported Subscriptions: This column contains the existing subscriptions of the end customer in the Microsoft Partner Center, that do not exist in our platform. You are able to use filtering. 

  • Status: 

Status States:


Status States' Explanation: 

The import is in the queue. 

The import is in progress and the status will be changed when the import gets completed.

The MS tenant (end customer) is synced successfully with our BSS.

The MS tenant (end customer) is synced with our BSS even if there were errors during the import.

The MS tenant (end customer) is not synced with our BSS. It is the initial status prior to import.

Distinguishing New End Customers From Existing End Customers

New tenants (end customers) in the table are denoted with the color white, in their row on the table. The green color denotes the end customers that have already executed imports successfully, whereas the red color denotes end customers who have executed imports, but with errors.

As you can witness from the above screenshot, the 1st-row end customer, marked in green highlight, is an existing customer with a related BSS account, and it has three synced BSS Subscriptions and four Not Imported Subscriptions in the Microsoft Partner Center. This means that four subscriptions are not yet imported into the BSS, and that is why the checkbox at the beginning of the row is available, although the Status column indicates that the subscriptions are Synced. The status is displaying the fact that four out of the total of seven subscriptions are Not Imported Subscriptions since this end customer had successfully imported in the past three subscriptions into the BSS platform, while the checkbox indicates that more subscriptions can be added to BSS. Therefore, by selecting the checkbox of the first row, the import tool will try to import to BSS the remaining subscription that currently resides only inside the Microsoft Partner Center. 

 

Import of New & Existing End Customers Simultaneously

When multiple tenants(end customers) are being imported at the same time, chances are that some of them are existing end customers with new subscriptions, and some of them are new end customers with new subscriptions. Since mass import is a very common business scenario, the tool can easily distinguish which tenants are existing and which ones are new to correctly apply the selected Import Options to them. So, the Separate Invoices and Price list options will be unlocked and editable for all end customers.


After the configuration of the aforementioned options, as well as choosing the end customers (of a reseller) to be imported, you can either proceed with the import process by clicking the Start Import button or return back to the Indirect MS tenant's list of the import tool, by clicking the << Back button.


Initiate Import of Indirect Reseller End Customers

After defining the above steps and once you have clicked the Start Import button, the actual import process begins its execution inside our BSS platform.

During this phase, you get informed with a pop-up message writing "Import process has been initiated, you can see the progress in the Import Results page.".

When you close the pop-up window, you remain at the same end customers' list. Accounts that have been selected for import will not have a checkbox, and their status will be updated during the import process. 





In order to correct any error(s) that may occur, you can go to the Import Results Page and, from there, navigate to the end customer's import that was completed with errors in order to click the name under the column Type from which the below pop-up window appears. By clicking the black arrow (highlighted in green), you can expand and reveal the log of the import and examine the reason(s) of the error(s) in detail (highlighted in yellow), as exemplified below. 

 

For the import results of the end customers of an Indirect CSP tenant, you must continue on to the "Import Results Page" page.



Retrieve & Manage Multi-Tier CSP Partners & Initiate Import

As explained further above, upon selecting the corresponding instance and subsequently clicking the Get Hierarchy button, the tool retrieves the instance's CSP MS tenants by obtaining all the subscriptions belonging to Direct CSPs as well as Indirect CSPs. Since there are some cases where the chosen instance accommodates both Direct as well as Indirect CSP MS tenants and their end customers, the list that will be displayed will look like the example below, having its columns populated differently depending on the type of the CSP tenant that each row contains:

This list's columns, populated by the corresponding Direct and Indirect CSPs, offer a combined view of the Direct and the Indirect MS tenants' retrieval, analyzed during the previous sections of this page. The columns of this multi-list have been thoroughly analyzed in the following two links: "Direct CSPs' Columns Explanation" and "Indirect CSPs Columns Explanation".

 

In the case of Multi CSP tenants, you can choose to either import the Direct CSP tenants or the Indirect reseller's end customers, in whichever order you prefer.