Recent Discussions
Microsoft Elevate Partner Community Call for May 2026 - Don't Miss!
⏰REMINDER⏰- The Microsoft Elevate Partner Community call is coming up next week. Connect with fellow partners, ask questions, and stay up to date on programs and investments that support your nonprofit and education impact. Sign up here for the monthly series.
Marketplace offers as transactable and azure benefit eligible
Query about Marketplace listings - I want to upload a new offer as SaaS. I want to make sure it's transactable and also have the azure benefit tag added to it. I have the banking and tax profile approved and completed. I'm unable to find how do I get the Azure benefit eligible tagged to this offer (or is there a pre-requisite). I have reviewed the Marketplace best practices but unable to find how do I exactly go about doing it.Partner perspective: How Breakthru uses App Advisor and AI-listing optimization to drive growth
Optimizing a Marketplace listing isn’t just a marketing exercise—it directly impacts discoverability, demand, and revenue. But knowing what to change (and when) can be challenging for software development companies. In this partner‑written blog post, Marketplace software development company Breakthru shares firsthand experience using AI‑powered listing recommendations in App Advisor to move from guesswork to confident, data‑driven optimization—without risking listing performance. Dan Langille also reflects on how App Advisor became a core part of their business, what’s working in practice, and how AI is changing how teams iterate on their Marketplace presence. 👉 Read the partner story here: Improve Marketplace outcomes with AI‑powered listing recommendations in App Advisor Discussion prompts for the community: Would AI‑driven recommendations change how often you iterate on your listing? Have you used App Advisor for selling and growing app and AI agent sales? Curious to hear how other Marketplace partners are approaching listing optimization today!
How to turn co-sell readiness into consistent Microsoft Marketplace revenue growth
Achieving co-sell readiness is a critical milestone, but many software development companies struggle to translate that status into consistent pipeline and meaningful Microsoft seller engagement. Join Microsoft partner and special guest Trunal Bhanse, CEO and co-founder at Clazar, as he shares practical insights on how to move beyond readiness to build active, revenue-generating partnerships with Microsoft sellers. Drawing on real-world experience from marketplace partners, the session will explore the operational strategies, processes, and habits that drive stronger collaboration with the Microsoft field, faster deal velocity, and increased opportunity creation. Attendees will also learn how to create seller-focused collateral, improve referral response times, and work more effectively with Partner Development Managers. Whether you are refining your co-sell motion or looking to unlock more value from Microsoft Marketplace, this session provides actionable guidance to help you operationalize your strategy and drive repeatable growth. Register for the online webinar on May 7th | 8:30 AM PDT: Turning co-sell readiness into real Microsoft Marketplace revenue You can also learn more tips and best practices for by reading From co-sell ready to co-sell active: How to drive Microsoft seller engagement | Microsoft Community HubDesign predictable usage-based billing for AI apps and agents in Microsoft Marketplace
Discover how to design predictable usage‑based billing for AI apps and agents selling in Microsoft Marketplace. This Marketplace Community article explains why traditional software pricing models break down for AI systems and how usage‑based billing can align costs with real customer value. As AI apps and agents reason, infer, and operate dynamically at runtime, usage—and cost—can vary significantly. Clear plan design, well‑defined metered dimensions, and pricing models aligned to business outcomes help customers understand what’s included, forecast spend, and trust how charges are applied as usage scales. Learn how to design billing that customers can explain to finance teams, procurement can approve, and Marketplace solutions can scale without surprises. Read more: Design predictable usage‑based billing for AI apps and agents selling in Microsoft MarketplaceICYMI | New eligible workloads for the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications
Check out the new blog on partner news, be sure to click "follow" in the top right corner so you don't miss out on future announcements! New eligible workloads for the Solutions Partner designation for Business Applications | Microsoft Community HubHow to choose the right Marketplace offer type for your AI app or agent
Selecting the right Microsoft Marketplace offer type is one of the most important—and often most complex—decisions when bringing AI apps and agents to market. In this latest Marketplace blog article, you’ll learn how different offer types align to AI delivery models and why this choice directly impacts architecture, security boundaries, customer experience, and monetization strategy. The article breaks down key considerations across SaaS, Azure Managed Applications, containers, and virtual machines, helping software development companies understand how to balance control, scalability, and operational ownership. It also highlights how offer type decisions influence where AI workloads run, how data is managed, and how customers deploy and interact with your solution. If you’re building or publishing AI solutions in Microsoft Marketplace, this guidance will help you make informed decisions early—before development, security, and go-to-market plans are locked in. Read the full article: Marketplace Offer Types for AI Apps and agents: SaaS vs Managed App vs ContainersMicrosoft Marketplace at Channel Partners Conference
Microsoft Marketplace was a first-time sponsor of the 2026 Channel Partners Conference & Expo—the world’s largest channel event—held in Las Vegas, April 13-16. With 59% of cloud marketplace revenue expected to flow through channel, this event provided a clear opportunity to reinforce Marketplace as a core platform for channel‑led growth. The channel is central for customer Frontier transformation, and Marketplace helps power the commercial foundation, connecting partners, software companies, and customers through flexible, channel-led sales models that scale. Our team really enjoyed the conversations we had after our sessions, on the expo floor, and in private meetings! Did you attend Channel Partners Conference this year? We'd love to hear your takeaways! And if you missed the event, check out this article on the keynote delivered by Microsoft's Kevin LeBlanc, GM of Partner and Marketplace Marketing. Resources for software companies and channel partners are always available on our partner site.Tech Talks presents: Building Secure, Intelligent Power Pages sites with Agents
Join us on Thursday, April 23rd at 8am PT as Nagesh Bhatt, Senior Product Manager, Power Pages and Bipul Deora, Principal Product Manager, Power Platform present 'Building Secure, Intelligent Power Pages sites with Agents'. We hope to see you there! Call to Action: Click on the link to save the calendar invite: https://aka.ms/TechTalksInvite View past recordings (sign in required): https://aka.ms/TechTalksRecordingSecuring and governing AI agents before deployment
April 30 | 2:00-3:00 PM (GTM +10) Join this live webinar to learn how to secure and govern AI agents before they go live. Explore how to provision agents with Entra Agent ID, manage identities and credentials, enforce least-privilege access, and prevent risks like Shadow AI and agent sprawl. Join to gain practical guidance on governing AI agents across their full lifecycle—so you can deploy with confidence. To view the session live, register here: Securing and Governing AI Agents Before They Go Live You can view previous Security for Software Development Company series sessions on demand here: Security for Software Development Company Series: Securing the Agentic Era
ASfP policy for non-decrementing tickets
Hello Community! We recently found our ASfP support access disabled. According to the ASfP PSAM team, it's because we have exceeded the case creation allotment. It also appears that there is a discrepancy between the number of non-decremented tickets the PSAM team sees, vs the number of tickets the system says we have associated with the contract adding some additional challenges. We requested a report of the tickets that are counting against the agreement from the PSAM team several months ago, shortly after the ASfP agreement renewed, and are still in the process of locating someone from the PSAM team that can help us with this information. Last year we also identified an issue with the case report provided by our PSAM where the "company name" was things like "AppRiver" which is another partner, not the name of one of our clients, and we ended up generating a report ourselves. My question is this, Is there a way for us to identify the non-technical (Ibiza cases) that are counting against our allotment via APIs or another channel that doesn't involve going through the ASfP PSAM team? Thanks! -jonHow to design production-ready AI architectures for apps and agents on Microsoft Marketplace
As organizations accelerate the development of AI-powered applications and agents, moving from prototype to production requires a strong architectural foundation. This article explores what it takes to build AI solutions that are ready for enterprise deployment through Microsoft Marketplace—where reliability, security, scalability, and operational readiness are essential. Learn why “production-ready” architectures are critical to meeting customer expectations, how early design decisions impact long-term success, and what patterns software development companies should consider when aligning solution architecture with Marketplace offer types. The article also highlights key considerations around ownership, runtime environments, and operational responsibilities that shape how AI solutions are deployed and supported. Whether you are building your first AI app or scaling an existing solution, this guidance provides a practical foundation for designing trusted, enterprise-ready offerings that customers can confidently run in production. Read the full article: Production ready architectures for AI apps and agents on Marketplace | Microsoft Community Hub
CSP Account suspended without notification, no explanation given
Hello Microsoft Community, I'm hoping someone here has experienced something similar and can point me in the right direction. I have been a Microsoft Partner since 2019. This past January I renewed my Partner Success Core Benefits pack. A couple of weeks ago I noticed I had lost access to all my benefits. I opened a support case, and after going back and forth I still have no resolution. The only explanation I've received is a reference to section 4.b of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program Agreement, which states that either party can terminate the relationship with 30 days' notice and without providing a reason. No notification was ever sent to me. No 30-day notice. I simply woke up one day with no access. At one point I was told I could re-enroll under a new tenant. I tried this, and it didn't work. When I followed up, the support team went back to citing section 4.b and closed the door again. I understand I'm a small partner in Microsoft's ecosystem, but I've invested years building my business around this partnership, renewed my benefits in good faith just a few months ago, and I would love to find a constructive way forward. My questions for the community: 1. **Is there a formal escalation path** beyond standard Partner Center support cases? 2. **Has anyone successfully re-enrolled** after a suspension of this kind, and what was the process? Any guidance, shared experience, or contacts would be enormously appreciated. I am not looking to complain, I just want to understand my options and get back to serving my customers. Thank you in advance.Feedback on Partner Benefit Renewal Experience
I wanted to share a bit of feedback on the partner benefit packages based on our experience. In the past we used the Action Pack and it worked very well for us. Renewal was simple and everything that was already configured just continued into the next period without any extra work. After it was discontinued we moved to the Partner Success Core Benefits package. Our experience has been less smooth, especially with how the Azure credits are handled. The credit must be assigned to a specific user, and if that user already has Azure credit it cannot be applied until the current one expires. When the credit expires, the subscriptions funded by it automatically switch to Pay As You Go. After that we need to contact support to convert the subscriptions back to Azure Sponsorship before the new credit can be applied, which involves several support teams and can take a few days. We also then need to ask support to cover the temporary Pay As You Go usage. As you can imagine, this turns what should be a simple renewal into a fairly time consuming process. Ideally, renewing the benefit package would just extend the existing setup, similar to how it worked with Action Pack, so everything continues without needing support involvement.Scale manufacturing AI from pilot to production with Microsoft Marketplace
Manufacturers are facing growing pressure from labor constraints, rising costs, and increasingly complex supply chains—while expectations for AI-driven efficiency continue to climb. Yet many AI initiatives never move beyond the pilot stage due to fragmented data environments and the complexity of deploying solutions across production systems. In this latest Marketplace blog, we explore practical insights shared during a recent Microsoft Marketplace customer office hour on what it takes to move manufacturing AI initiatives from proof-of-concept to scalable, production-ready deployments. Learn why establishing a unified data foundation across systems such as ERP, MES, IoT sensors, and asset management platforms is essential to unlocking real operational impact—and how Microsoft Marketplace can help organizations scale AI in a governed, sustainable way across plants and environments. Read the full article: How manufacturers can scale AI from pilot to production with Microsoft Marketplace
Direct Bill Partner Status - Terminated
Hello, I'm writing here after four months of unresolved escalation through every standard support channel, and after reading the recent threads from ShayD , swathen , and ElDani . Our case appears to belong to the same family of issues, and I'm hoping raising it publicly will help both reach the correct internal Microsoft team and establish the broader pattern that seems to be affecting multiple partners across different markets. Who we are We are a longstanding Microsoft CSP partner based in Mongolia. We are the only Direct Bill CSP partner in the country, one of our market's top CSPs overall, and a multi-time Microsoft Country Partner of the Year. We service a large active customer base across enterprise, public sector, and SMB segments. What happened February 2, 2026: Original support case opened regarding a billing report discrepancy that surfaced in our Partner Center data. March 31, 2026: Microsoft formally acknowledged, in writing, in case #2602020010000623, that the discrepancy was caused by a Microsoft-side reporting error — not by any action or non-compliance on our part. April 1, 2026 — one day after the written acknowledgment of fault: Our Direct Bill Partner status was revoked by the system, and our Partner Center management capabilities were disabled the same day. We can no longer provision, modify, or service customer subscriptions. Since April 1: We have opened five separate support cases attempting to resolve the revocation. Each has been force-closed with instructions to file a new one. None has produced a named owner, a timeline, or a resolution path. Responses have consistently been variations of "under review" or "identifying the correct team." A TP&D ticket filed on the recommendation of our ASfP support manager was closed as out-of-scope. Our ASfP manager has confirmed that they cannot identify the correct internal escalation path, and mentioned that similar cases have been observed in other markets recently. Current impact A large base of end customers — including public sector and enterprise accounts — can no longer be properly serviced through their established CSP relationship. As the only Direct Bill CSP, our incapacitation effectively means Microsoft currently has no functioning Direct Bill CSP coverage in an entire country. Any customer requiring services through this channel has no path to receive them at the moment. Customer impact is accelerating each week the situation persists, and the reputational consequences are extending into the local market more broadly. What we're asking for Escalation of the above tickets to the appropriate CSP Accounts & Enrollment team, or to whichever internal Microsoft team owns erroneous Direct Bill revocations arising from billing report errors. Reinstatement of our Direct Bill Partner status, given that Microsoft has already formally acknowledged in writing that the root cause was an internal reporting error. Assignment of a named owner with authority to drive this to closure — not another ticket transfer into a queue. A broader note for Microsoft and the community In the past several weeks, multiple partners have posted here about erroneous or unexplained Direct Bill terminations. ShayD 's thread (resolved after Microsoft formally acknowledged the termination notice was sent in error), @swathen's thread (revenue classification / visibility gap causing an eligibility review failure despite provable revenue), and ElDani 's thread (Direct Bill account suddenly suspended April 1, 2026 — same date as ours) all share meaningful structural similarities with our case. Our situation makes at least the fourth public report of a similar pattern within roughly the last two months. I'm raising it here not to escalate emotionally, but because it genuinely seems worth Microsoft's internal attention that this may be a systemic issue in the billing classification or partner status pipeline, rather than a set of unrelated isolated cases. If anyone at Microsoft is tracking this pattern internally, our case is one more data point and we'd welcome being part of whatever review is happening. Any Microsoft employee who can help route this to the right team, or any partners who have successfully navigated a similar situation, please reach out. Full case documentation — including Microsoft's written acknowledgment, the complete chronological case history, and supporting materials — is available on request through direct message. Thank you for reading.
How are Dynamics 365 partners handling complex legacy-to-cloud transitions today?
Hi all, I’m interested in understanding how partners are currently approaching complex ERP modernization scenarios, especially when working with long-standing legacy systems and heavily customized environments. From a partner delivery and strategy perspective: Are you seeing more clients choosing full reimplementation vs phased migration? How are you handling deeply customized legacy environments during transition to D365 Finance & SCM? What’s the biggest challenge today, technical complexity, client mindset, or cost justification? Are clients more open to cloud now, or still preferring hybrid/extended legacy setups? How are you positioning value when clients feel their current system is “good enough”? Would be great to hear real partner experiences across industries.Adding Azure into your multicloud strategy
Building a multicloud strategy? Learn why Azure plays a critical role in accelerating Marketplace success. Join WeTransact at the April 2nd Microsoft Marketplace webinar to explore how aligning Azure with your multicloud approach can help you increase deal size, unlock co-sell opportunities, and move faster using Microsoft tools, funding, and incentives. You’ll gain practical guidance on replication, modernization, and next steps to drive long-term Marketplace momentum. Learn more and attend: Why Azure belongs in your multicloud strategy - Microsoft Marketplace Community
Events
Achieving co-sell readiness in Microsoft Marketplace is only the beginning. Many software development companies reach this milestone but struggle to translate it into meaningful pipeline and consiste...
Online
Tune in for updates, insights, and live Q&A to help you sell through the Microsoft Marketplace. Learn how to bring your innovations to businesses, organizations, and government agencies around the wo...
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Recent Blogs
- The recent Channel Partners Conference & Expo brought together thousands of channel leaders, technology providers, and ecosystem partners to explore what’s next for the channel—and how partners can a...Apr 30, 2026
- 15 MIN READLearn about 155 new offers that went live in Microsoft Marketplace, a single destination to find, try, and buy cloud solutions, AI apps, and agents to meet your business needs.Apr 30, 2026
