Microsoft Health Check Mechanism
- Panagiotis Papanastasiou
- Oleg Melnykov (Deactivated)
- Apostolos Karakaxas
This page describes the purpose and function of the Health Check Mechanism, which is used to monitor Microsoft subscriptions and assets for provisioning discrepancies.
What is the Health Check Mechanism?
The Health Check Mechanism (HCM) is a feature that checks certain Microsoft subscription and asset product types for provisioning discrepancies, such as their status and number of licenses, between their records in the BSS and the Microsoft Partner Center (MPC).
The HCM runs automatically four times a day and collects Microsoft subscriptions and assets from all instances which have been created or updated in the BSS since the last check. Items can also be added to the HCM manually. This list is then emailed to all BSS administrators.
Checks Performed by the HCM & Eligible Product Types
First, corresponding MPC items are identified and cross-referenced with their counterparts in the BSS. Then, the BSS checks if certain parameters are synchronized on the two platforms. The current eligible product types and the parameters checked by the HCM can be seen in the following table:
Eligible Product Type(s) | Parameter | Description |
|---|---|---|
New Commerce Experience (NCE) | Status | The status of the subscription |
Subscription SKU (BSS)/OfferID (MPC) | The SKU of the subscription in the BSS is compared against the OfferID in the MPC | |
Quantity | The amount of licenses. | |
MPNID | The Microsoft Partner Network ID. | |
Billing Cycle (BSS)/Term (MPC) | The billing cycle of the subscription in the BSS is compared against the term in the MPC. | |
Billing Frequency / Plan | Based on the status of the billing frequency, whether there is one or not, the comparison may or may not happen. | |
Promotion ID | The promotion ID in the BSS is compared against the promotion ID in the MPC when an ID exists and the End Date has not passed. | |
Auto-Renew option | Ensures that the Auto-Renewal option, for paid and trial subscriptions, is consistent between MPC and BSS. | |
Microsoft Cloud Services & Microsoft Dynamics | Status | The status of the subscription. |
Subscription SKU (BSS)/OfferID (MPC) | The SKU of the subscription in the BSS is compared against the OfferID in the MPC. | |
Quantity | The amount of licenses. | |
MPNID | The Microsoft Partner Network ID. | |
Add-on Status | The status of the add-ons of the subscription. | |
Add-on Quantity | The quantity of the add-ons of the subscription. | |
Perpetual Licenses | Quantity (of respective order item) | The quantity of the respective order item. |
Perpetual ID (BSS) / Subscription ID (MPC) | The Perpetual ID (ProductID:SKUID:SegmentID) of the subscription in the BSS is checked against the Subscription ID in the MPC | |
MPNID | The Microsoft Partner Network ID | |
Microsoft Azure Reserved Instances & Azure Plan Reserved Instances | Quantity | The quantity of the asset(s) |
MPNID | The Microsoft Partner Network ID | |
Reservation/Reserved Instance Reference Order ID | The reservation ID or reserved instance reference order ID | |
Expiration Date | The expiration date of the asset | |
Monthly Charges Plans | The HCM also inspects that the Monthly Charges Plans section of an Azure Plan Reserved Instance asset or an Azure Reserved Instance asset is created in BSS after executing an order, based on the reservations Billing Frequency charge plan, for either of those assets. |
New Commerce Experience (NCE) Subscriptions & Subscriptions Migrated to NCE
New Commerce Experience (NCE) subscriptions are fully supported.
Legacy Microsoft (cloud-services & dynamics) subscriptions that are migrated via the Migration Tool for Existing Microsoft Subscriptions to their respective NCE subscriptions are ignored* by the Health Check Mechanism, based on the following two rules:
The migration, via the NCE Migration Tool, is completed.
The BSS subscriptions is suspended and the respective subscription in the Microsoft Partner Center is suspended.
Please note that billing cycles are not checked for legacy Microsoft subscriptions by the Health Check Mechanism.
However, billing cycles for New Commerce Experience (NCE) subscriptions are checked by the Health Check Mechanism.
Actions Which Make Subscriptions/Assets Eligible
Subscriptions and Assets are automatically included in the HCM when the following actions are taken:
Subscription Create Actions
Create subscription
Create a trial
Execute order
Storefront checkout
Asset Create Actions
Create Asset
Execute order
Storefront checkout
Subscription Update Actions
Change quantity
Suspend subscription
Reactivate
Cancel subscription
Add addon
Change addon quantity
Cancel addon
Upgrade trial to paid
Upgrade/downgrade subscription
Auto-renew trial subscriptions
Auto-renew paid subscriptions
Asset Cancellation
Enabling the HCM for Your Organization
Initially, for the HCM to check your Microsoft Subscriptions and Assets, the HCM must be manually enabled for your BSS Organization. The HCM is disabled by default to avoid feeding unnecessary data into the mechanism.
To view the HCM page, enter the BSS Setup and navigate to Tools → Health Check Mechanism.
To include your organization in the HCM, and thus enable it, select Yes as shown in the figure below:
Please note that if a BSS user excludes the BSS organization while there is a health check in progress, then this organization will be excluded from all subsequent checks when the one that is in progress concludes. Also, whenever a BSS user includes or excludes their BSS organization from the tool, these actions are reported on the Logs tab.
The HCM runs approximately 4 times a day. It begins by finding all the items which are eligible for the check, and then runs the checks per customer (rather than in chronological order).
Viewing HCM Discrepancies & Logs
The HCM page contains three tabs, Current Check, Previous Checks, and Logs. The first two tabs are utilized to differentiate between items for which actions must be taken, whereas the third tab is utilized for BSS users to check the exact actions the tool performed.
Current Check Tab
The Current Check tab shows all the items with discrepancies between the BSS and MPC detected last time the HCM was run. Any items detected in previously run checks which have not been corrected will remain on the list.
You can export the list of items with discrepancies, as seen in the figure above, to Excel by selecting Export to Excel.
Previous Checks Tab
The Previous Checks tab lists the items with discrepancies found in previous checks, excluding the most recent check.
The tabs contain the following columns:
Comments: The discrepancies found between the BSS entry and the Partner Center entry. These can be expanded by clicking on the arrow at the beginning of the row.
Check Date: The date the discrepancies were found.
Description: The subscription/asset name in the BSS - this is a link to the subscription/asset view. Hovering over shows the BSS ID.
Product Name: The product name as displayed in the BSS.
Product Type: The product type of the subscription or asset.
Customer: The name of the account in the BSS that purchased the item.
Quantity*: The quantity of the subscription/asset in the BSS.
Billing Cycle: Unit of measurement of the item (Monthly/Annually/One-time).
Status*: The status of the subscription/asset in the BSS.
Microsoft ID: The subscription ID for subscriptions or order ID for assets in the MPC.
Tenant ID: Partner Center customer ID.
*Values of fields marked with asterisks (*) are not live. These values were found during a check and are accurate only for that specific point in time.
Logs Tab
The Logs tab can be used for troubleshooting purposes since it lists every action of the HCM tool, from the time it is automatically initiated until the time it finishes, for every run.
The tabs contain the following columns:
Creation Date: Is the date and time (BSS organization time) that the subscription or asset was added for a health check.
Log Type: This column displays one of the following values depending on the state of the mechanism in the given timeframe.
Mechanism: This value contains a variety of meanings such as when the organization was included or excluded from the HCM tool, whether there was a general system error, whether there was a corrupted (incomplete) run, and when the service of the mechanism was started, stopped, and restarted.
Buffering: This value appears when the HCM starts or finishes the process of collecting and loading the data before the actual health check occurs.
Add to Buffer (1/3): This value appears when subscriptions or assets are collected which is part of the overall buffering.
Checking: This value appears when the HCM starts or finishes the comparison of subscriptions and assets with the Partner Center.
Add to Buffer (2/3): This value appears when subscriptions and assets are loaded to the tool after being found as problematic during checking.
Add to Buffer (3/3): This value appears when subscriptions and assets are manually inserted into the tool by the BSS user (via the Add to Health Check button), this has Check ID= On-demand.
Notification: This value appears when the notification email is dispatched to the BSS admin(s).
Check ID: Is the ID of each run of the HCM. This field can be utilized for filtering out a specific run.
Tenant ID: Is the Microsoft Tenant ID from the Partner Center.
Customer: Is the name of the BSS account.
Description: Is the BSS name of either the subscription or the asset.
Product Type: Is the product type of the product inside of the subscription or asset.
Status: Is the status of each Log Type value. The available statuses are the following:
Completed: This value appears when the Log Type value is completed.
Started: This value appears when the Log Type value has started.
Ended: This value appears when the Log Type value has ended.
Failed: This value appears when the Log Type value has failed for the reason described under the Comments column.
Skipped: This value appears when a notification email cannot be dispatched for the reason described under the Comments column.
Warning: This value usually appears when the mechanism stops.
Comments: These are user-friendly details about each entry.
The logs will be sorted by date and time, starting from the most recent entry.
HCM events first occur in their own time and are recorded, and then they are sent to the Logs tab to be displayed. This means for example, that for a health check all the events, like Buffering and Checking, are shown in the Logs after the check finishes. Therefore, since these events are not reported in real-time, an error in the Logs might not necessarily mean an error in how the actual HCM functioned.
Viewing Discrepancy Details
To view the discrepancy details of a specific Subscription or an Asset, click the arrow located at the beginning of the row.
Please note that add-on discrepancies will be reported under their parent subscriptions.
In the BSS, in the Subscription or Asset view, any items found to have discrepancies are marked with a yellow ribbon. The ribbon contains a link to view the item on the HCM page.
Viewing the Details from MPC
Click on Show to see the details of all items with the selected item’s SKU from the MPC in a pop-up window.
The pop-up window shows additional details:
This pop-up window has the following columns, all with data retrieved from the MPC:
ID: Is the subscription ID or order ID for assets.
Name: Is the product name.
Offer ID (SKU): Is the SKU ID from Microsoft.
Quantity: Is the quantity of the subscription.
Status: Is the status of the subscription or order.
Start Date: Is the date when the subscription has begun.
Please note the following when deciphering IDs:
For assets, the Offer ID (SKU) is the Microsoft Asset Offer ID and consists of: ProductID:SKUID:AvailabilityID (e.g.: DG7GMGF0D7FT:0002:DG7GMGF0DT2L)
For subscriptions, the Offer ID (SKU) is Offer ID in the MPC (e.g. 5C9FD4CC-EDCE-44A8-8E91-07DF09744609)
Hovering over More Details in this pop-up shows a tooltip with additional information.
Details displayed for subscriptions:
Unit Type: The type of unit for the current subscription.
Auto-Renewal: Whether auto-renewal is enabled or not.
End Date: The end date of the subscription.
Details displayed for assets:
Availability: The Availability ID.
Additional Functions
There are some additional functions to make the entries more legible and to organize the data.
You can sort the entries by selecting the column to sort by or selecting the filter icon on a column and specifying an alphanumerical string to filter the results. Up to ten(10) filters can be active for a single column at the same time.
The HCM shows up to 25 results per page of results dating back to a maximum of 3 calendar months.
Adding Subscriptions or Assets to the HCM
It is possible to manually add items to the next health check mechanism to ensure that there are no discrepancies for the specific item. To add an item to the health check mechanism, click on the Add to Health Check button in the Subscription or Asset view page from the Shortcuts menu.
If the Add to Health Check option does not appear in the shortcut menu, run the Get Services Definition process in the Microsoft Service Manager for the Instance you wish to monitor.
Subscriptions or Assets with Provisioning Sync Status Failed, which do not have external ID in the MPC, as well as back-ordered items, cannot be added to the HCM tool.
If you click the button Add to Health Check while your BSS Organization has been excluded from the HCM, a message will prompt you to include it.
HCM Notification
An email notification is dispatched daily containing the results of the most recent check.
The notification is sent to all admin BSS users who have an address in the system. It is sent at 08:00 AM in the time zone of your BSS Organization.
