Microsoft-led Migration Process in the Partner Center

Owned by Panagiotis Papanastasiou
Last updated: Aug 22, 2024 by Apostolos Karakaxas
5 min read

On this page, you can find an extended analysis of what the Microsoft-led Migration is, its inerworkings as well as examples.

 

Microsoft-led Migration Overview

Microsoft's migration to the New Commerce Experience starts January 11, 2024 for commercial subscriptions and September 1, 2024 for public sector subscriptions. All active legacy license-based subscriptions will be automatically transitioned at the end of their respective terms.

This automatic migration process involves Microsoft creating a scheduled migration at the end of the legacy term. Therefore, instead of being renewed to a new legacy term, the subscription will be migrated to the respective New Commerce Experience (NCE) for the next term. Moreover, Microsoft-led migrations carry over the legacy subscription's properties. This includes license counts (seats), the term, and the billing frequency. Almost all legacy subscriptions are annual terms, but some partners have been reselling them to customers as monthly terms. The migration from legacy to new commerce resets the Microsoft partner term to an annual term, so after migration, the new commerce subscription will always be annual.

How Microsoft Identifies Legacy Subscriptions that are Suitable for Auto-Migration

Migratable subscriptions refer to the legacy subscriptions that can be migrated to New Commerce Experience products. The list of legacy offers that are available for migration can be found in the Legacy Offer Matrix file, which is available in the Microsoft Partner Center pricing workspace. These offers are referred to as migration-enabled offers. Any offers not listed in the Offer Matrix NCE Mapping file will not be migrated by Microsoft. To know which subscriptions Microsoft intends to migrate, partners can refer to the Microsoft-led migration data export.

Microsoft shared a list of legacy subscriptions to be migrated.
👉 Visit your Microsoft Partner Center under the section Customers/Microsoft NCE Migrations to check them. 

 

Microsoft-led Migration Process Rules

The process rules for the automatic migration in the Microsoft Partner Center are the following:

  • At least one active legacy subscription exists.

  • That legacy subscription is not a trial.

  • That legacy subscription renews after January 11, 2024.

  • That legacy subscription is suitable to be migrated based on the migration-enabled subscriptions list.

If all four rules above are true, then the automatic Microsoft-led Migration process will commence for the legacy subscription(s) in your Microsoft Partner Center at the end of each legacy subscription's term to be migrated to the respective New Commerce Experience (NCE) offer(s), after January 11, 2024.

 

Microsoft-led Migration Execution & Results

Migration execution time depends on multiple factors, but generally, it usually takes from zero to six hours. In some cases, migrations take up to 72 hours. When a migration execution commences, the legacy subscription is set to a suspended state.

  1. Successful Migration: If the Microsoft-led migration is successfully completed with the status Complete, the legacy subscription is set as Canceled, and the corresponding newly created NCE subscription is set as Active.

  2. Failed Migration: If the migration status is Failed where the legacy subscription is Suspended, and the system is still processing the migration, partners should let the migration continue as Microsoft diagnoses and corrects the issue if needed during the 72-hour window. Microsoft either corrects the error and completes the migration (successfully creating the migration's corresponding NCE subscription) or reverts the migration after 72 hours. If Microsoft successfully completes the migration within 72 hours, no further action is required by the partner. If the migration is reverted, the legacy subscription is set back to Active again, and partners can manually retry the migration in this scenario. Also, If the legacy subscription is reverted to a premigration state (effectively rolling back the migration request), billing of the legacy subscription resumes when the legacy subscription is Active again; no charges are made for the period where the legacy subscription was suspended without a corresponding NCE subscription created.

 

Microsoft-led Migration Example

A Microsoft-led migration is created on the last day of the legacy subscription term and is executed the day after the legacy subscription term ends. For example, if a subscription ends on January 17, 2024, the Partner Center user interface shows the end date in the partner's local time. However, the API returns the UTC end date time. The migration starts at the UTC end of the term and could take up to 72 hours to complete. The following is an example of the API view of a Microsoft-led migration and how the dates and times of the migration are reflected:

  • Partner Center user interface shows the subscription term ending on 01/17/2024.

  • Partner Center API subscription's TermEnd: 01:17:2024 T23:59:59 UTC

  • Partner Center API subscription's ScheduledRenewal Created: 01:17:2024 T:00:00:00 UTC and 01:17:2024 T23:59:59 UTC.

  • Partner Center API subscription's ScheduledRenewal Executed: 01:18:2024 T00:00:00 UTC - 01:20:2024 T23:59:59 UTC.

 

Subscriptions Not-Automatically Migrated by Microsoft

Some subscriptions are excluded in Microsoft-led migration. Microsoft-led migrations target active legacy base subscriptions. If the base subscription has migratable add-ons, both the base subscription and add-on subscriptions are migrated simultaneously. These subscriptions are migrated together because legacy add-ons and the parent base subscription have the same renewal date.

  • Scenario #1: Migratable base subscriptions with ineligible add-ons won't be migrated. For example, if the base is commercial but has an education add-on that isn't supported in the new commerce experience.

  • Scenario #2: A partner has already scheduled a subscription's migration. Microsoft detects existing scheduled migrations created by the partner but not yet executed. In these cases, Microsoft-led migration won't occur as Microsoft prioritized the partner-led migration schedule.

Microsoft’s Cancellation Window After the Microsoft-led Migration

Legacy license-based subscriptions allow the partner to cancel anytime throughout their term. New commerce subscriptions have different rules determining when a partner can reduce seat counts or make changes. These new commerce cancelation rules are enforced seven days after the acquisition of the subscription. After migration to new commerce, partners have a limited amount of time (seven business days) to reduce seats or cancel their subscriptions. After the seven-day window, the new term is enforced for the remainder of the subscription's term.