Ordering NCE Products

The ordering method for purchasing NCE Commercial and Public Sector products is the same as the one used for purchasing legacy Office 365 products, and it is described in detail in the KB section Ordering an Office 365 Service. All the business rules that apply now for the legacy products (acceptance of MCA, INN validation, etc.) are also in place for the NCE products.

The major difference is that the prices are calculated automatically (except for the Specialized Offer NCE products) based on the country of the end customer, and any promotions (whenever applicable) are applied automatically (but with limitations* for the triennial NCE products and the Specialized Offer NCE Products). When your resellers and customers login into your Storefront, they will see an indicative price, and the correct price will be calculated on the first page of the basket.

Prices Calculation for NCE Products

The system calculates the cost and sell prices of the NCE products (excluding the Specialized Offer NCE products) with the following process:

• End Customer’s currency is included in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published for the end customer’s country.

  1. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the Microsoft pricing file

  2. Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.

  3. Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
     
     

• Microsoft does not support the End Customer’s currency

  1. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the Microsoft pricing file. We retrieve the prices in the currency the exchange rate has been set up and from the Microsoft pricing file defined in the tool (the “Market Country Pricelist”).
     For example, If you have defined for the Mexican pesos an exchange rate with the USD currency and Mexico as the Market Country Pricelist, we will retrieve the USD prices from the Mexico pricing file.

  2. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are calculated for the customer’s currency using the FX rate defined in the conversion tool.

  3. Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied for calculating the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.

  4. Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.

Prices Calculation for Discontinued NCE Products

Customers cannot purchase a Discontinued NCE product (also known as End-of-Sales [EoS]) after Microsoft has marked it as such. However, for existing and active subscriptions containing a discontinued NCE product, the following logic applies:

When a Microsoft NCE product is marked by Microsoft as discontinued, its pricing information, from the Microsoft Preview Pricing Excel file, is saved internally to our platform. This includes the latest effective cost and sell prices for each Microsoft-supported currency and country of your Microsoft instance(s) that you sell to. The stored cost and sell prices of the discontinued products are then utilized for existing subscriptions (which contain these products), for invoicing and renewal purposes. This means that when a subscription is up for renewal, our platform automatically retrieves the correct price, so there is no need to handle pricing manually. It's important to note that adding or reducing licenses for existing subscriptions with discontinued NCE products is unaffected. NCE subscriptions are price-protected throughout their effective period, and any applicable promotional discounts will still apply. Also, cancelations and suspensions are unaffected. However, upgrades to discontinued NCE products are not allowed.

The system calculates the cost and sell prices of the discontinued NCE products with the following process:

• The End Customer’s currency was included in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published for the end customer’s country, once the NCE product was marked as discontinued.

  1. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the stored location inside the platform since the pricing mechanism already knows that these NCE products are marked as discontinued from Microsoft and do not have prices anymore inside Microsoft’s pricing Excel file.

  2. Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.

  3. Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.
     
     

• Microsoft does not support the End Customer’s currency in the Pricing Excel file that Microsoft has published, once the NCE product was marked as discontinued.

  1. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are retrieved from the stored location inside the platform since the pricing mechanism already knows that these NCE products are marked as discontinued by Microsoft. Also, the system retrieves the non-supported prices in the currency the exchange rate has been set up and from the Microsoft pricing file defined in the tool (the “Market Country Pricelist”).
     For example, if you have defined for the Mexican pesos an exchange rate with the USD currency and Mexico as the Market Country price list, the system will retrieve the last USD prices that are stored inside the platform from the Mexico pricing file.

  2. CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices are calculated for the customer’s currency using the FX rate defined in the conversion tool in addition to the utilization of the stored supported prices.

  3. Should a promotion discount exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the discounted CSP cost and Microsoft SRP prices.

  4. Should the customer’s pricelist exist, it is applied to the stored (last effective) prices to calculate the order item’s unit cost and unit price.

Therefore, even if an existing active subscription contains a discontinued NCE product, our pricing mechanism can support it, even upon renewal, using either the stored Microsoft Excel pricesheets or the Foreign Exchange (FX) rate tool of our platform, in case the currency is unsupported by Microsoft.

Ordering via Storefront

Once the NCE commercial products are published to Storefront and their prices are added either automatically (for supported currencies) or manually via the currency conversion tool (for unsupported currencies), they are ready for ordering. The NCE products are easily distinguishable from their prefix and suffix, differentiating them visually from the rest of the Microsoft SKUs.

The Add to Basket step looks like this for NCE products:

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• You will notice that there isn’t any add-ons list available on this page since add-ons are not defined as add-ons anymore on our platform. We will explain in the next paragraph the ordering experience for the add-ons.

• All NCE products are available in monthly or annual billing cycles. Moving on with our next versions, we will support both triannual billing cycles and billing frequency options for the annual and triannual cycles. For more information regarding the billing cycles of NCE subscriptions, please check Managing NCE Subscriptions.

NCE Products Under Promotion in Storefront

When a customer orders an NCE product in Storefront, the message Promotional discount included is displayed when that product is under promotion. Otherwise, no such message is displayed. The customer will see in the basket the final price. It is calculated by first applying the promotion discount and then using the price list of the customer.

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Ordering Triennial NCE Subscriptions with Automatically & Non-Automatically Applied Promotions

As we have analyzed under the NCE Promotions | Automatically & Non Automatically Applied Promotions to Triennial NCE Subscript... page, the two kinds of promotions that exist for triennial NCE subscriptions, it is important to also clarify which triennial NCE products can be purchased and which cannot, yet. More specifically:

1. Ordering Triennial Products with Auto-Applied Promotions: Overall, these products are available for ordering. Currently, such a product that may receive such an automatically applied promotion is the: Microsoft Teams Premium - CFQ7TTC0RM8K:0002.

2. Ordering Triennial Products with Non-Auto-Applied Promotions: Currently, our platform does not allow the purchase of triennial NCE products with non-automatically applied promotions since these promotions require from the BSS user to import them manually to the platform. We are currently working hard to provide you with the tools to manage those kinds of promotion imports. You will be notified in the shortest of time via one of the upcoming releases. For now, since both platforms do not allow the ordering of such triennial NCE products, the following messages appear in the Storefront and in the BSS, respectively.

Purchasing NCE Products Under Promotion in Storefront for Unsynchronized Customers

Keep in mind that until reaching the point of selecting the customer for which to create an NCE subscription, the cost and sell price of an NCE product may not be correct, because the system can not know beforehand the country of the customer as well as whether a customer is eligible for a promotion or not. Therefore, when a reseller checks out (at least one) NCE product for a new end-customer or an existing unsynchronized end customer or the reseller is unsynchronized or the direct customer is unsynchronized, then the Service Details step appears during the checkout. Under the Service Details step, the customer (reseller, end customer, direct customer) receiving the NCE product(s) must be synched.
However, after the successful sync with Microsoft, if this tenant is eligible for a promotion, the unit price of the NCE product is automatically updated accordingly. For this to happen, the Storefront user is redirected back to the basket items step, after the MCA agreement is signed (if it is not already signed for the specific MS tenant), so as for the unit price to be updated with or without the promotion (depending on the tenant's eligibility).

During the redirection, a message titled Why was I redirected to this step? appears where it briefly explains the reason for the redirection.
Consequently, the Storefront user must pass through the Storefront checkout process from scratch, but without the Service Details step since the customer is now synchronized.

You can also check inside the two following tabs the two videos about ordering NCE products either as a Direct Customer or as a Reseller.

Ordering NCE Add-ons

NCE add-ons are now displayed as distinct products, meaning that they are also displayed on the BSS and Storefront as standalone products that have base-subscription dependencies to be purchased. Therefore, those add-ons are not depicted anymore as available add-ons under an overview of an NCE product in Storefront, and additionally, those add-ons (now in the form of a product) have actual NCE products as prerequisites for being purchased.

For the legacy add-ons, the partner applies the add-on to a base-offer subscription after that base subscription has been purchased. In the New Commerce Experience, partners purchase the add-ons from the catalog itself. However, since the NCE add-ons have NCE product prerequisites, users must ensure that the prerequisite products are met. Otherwise, our system will not allow users to order an NCE add-on without having first purchased at least one of the prerequisite products. During checkout, we check whether the customer has at least one active subscription for one of the prerequisite products, and only then do we allow the user to complete the checkout process. Otherwise, we display the error message “The addon is not purchasable without a compatible base subscription”.

You can also check the following video on ordering add-ons for an NCE subscription.

Enforcing the Minimum & Maximum Number of Seats

When creating a new NCE subscription (or executing an order or checking out an NCE product), a first check is made on whether the number of seats to be provisioned is within the min and max values allowed for the specific SKU and then a second check is made, whether the number of seats to be provisioned exceeds the maximum amount of seats allowed across tenants (partners).

However, when updating an existing NCE subscription by increasing/decreasing its seats, the only check our system makes is for the min/max quantity allowed per SKU. We do not check the maximum number of seats allowed across tenants.

If a user tries to place an order for an NCE product that has restrictions for the minimum or the maximum number of seats a tenant can purchase, our system will terminate the process by displaying the error message “Item ‘<NCE Product Name>’ supports quantity range between <min quantity> and <max quantity>.”

Ordering via BSS

When it comes to ordering an NCE commercial product via BSS, the only available method is the creation and execution of an order. However, for new customers, certain preparation steps are required to be able to place an NCE order via the BSS platform.

• Preparation steps before the creation of an order (applicable only to new customers): Preparation Steps for Creating an Order in the BSS Platform

• Creation and execution of an order: (Relevant training videos are also available at the end of this section, marked with the icon.)

You can also check inside the following two tabs the respective videos on ordering an NCE product via BSS and executing that order.

Billing Plan Options While Ordering Triennial NCE Products via Storefront & BSS

Most of the triennial NCE products offered by Microsoft can be ordered via Storefront and BSS by utilizing either the one-off charge (without installments) or the annual charge (with 3 annual billing installments), or the monthly charge (with 36 monthly billing installments). However, there are about 7 NCE products that don’t offer all three payment options. They usually offer two out of the three payment options, be that one-off and monthly charges or one-off and annual charges. One such product is the “Dynamics 365 Team Members for Migration“. Therefore, if you or your end customers choose to purchase one such triennial NCE product and you reach the point where you have to choose the Billing Plan, please choose one of the available ones.

Billing NCE Subscriptions

Microsoft NCE subscriptions are charged either monthly or annually, depending on their unit, and they are always aligned with Microsoft billing cycles since we don’t allow any prorated charges. The pricing information imported automatically from the Microsoft Partner Center API call is both the cost prices (i.e., what Microsoft charges you as a CSP) and the retail prices that match the country of the end customer, containing any applicable promotions (if any). This means that you have the flexibility to bill your resellers and your customers either by setting a margin above your cost or by defining a discount for Microsoft's retail price, exactly as you do for the legacy Office 365 plans. Similarly, since the Specialized Offer (NCE) subscriptions are based on SKUs that have specific descriptions, terms, and billing plans, their billing will correspond to the terms and billing plan of the purchased SKU.

Price Protection for NCE Subscriptions

All the NCE subscriptions (with Commercial NCE and Public Sector NCE products) are created under price protection till the end of their billing cycle, meaning that any price change on the product will not affect the NCE subscription within its billing cycle. A monthly NCE subscription gets price protection for one (1) month, whereas an annual NCE subscription gets price protection for twelve (12) months. The same logic applies to triennial NCE subscriptions, which get the price protection for (36) months.

On both platforms, the NCE subscription is under price protection which is displayed in the green-highlighted sections on the above screenshots.

Invoicing NCE Subscriptions

Concerning the invoicing of the NCE subscriptions, we are invoicing the NCE subscriptions typically.

Country Tenants & Tenant Resellers

Concerning the automatically retrieved and applied pricing for NCE products, the tenant reseller organizations as well as the country tenants, inherit the configuration of the pricing of those NCE products from their Parent organization. Therefore, the automatically applied prices to tenant organizations that are also based on the applied pricelists (root price list & tenant price list) allow them to order NCE products, for their end customers, as well as invoice them. Additionally, tenant reseller organizations can upgrade and downgrade NCE subscriptions while the parent organization is updated with those changes via backordering.

Backordering

Backordering is available for tenant reseller organizations, and the billing for the subscriptions created in the root organization is based on the pricing rules we use for all NCE subscriptions.

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