Scheduling Subscription Changes with Future Requests
- Panagiotis Papanastasiou
This page contains information on how to schedule a change in the subscription in the Storefront.
Your customers can schedule a change in the number of licenses and billing plan 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 and billing plan 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:
Please note that actions listed above may be blocked by future requests made in the BSS, in addition to those made with the Manage Renewal option in the Storefront.
Change the Number of Licenses And the Billing Plan of a Subscription
To increase or decrease the number of licenses and change the billing plan 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.
In the dialog box, specify the new amount of licenses and the billing plan (when applicable), and click on the Submit button.
Of course, users can change either the Quantity of licenses or the Billing Plan (when applicable), or both 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.
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.
For auto-provisioned services (e.g., NCE), the Edit function is not yet available. For such services, the request must be canceled and created anew.
Note that partial cancellation at the end of the billing period will not be possible via the I want to…. → Cancel the subscription option, and selecting the option will result in an error.
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.”
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 error;
“Cannot revoke the change for this subscription.”
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.