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Esben315's avatar
Esben315
Copper Contributor
Sep 25, 2025

Deployments calculation for Modern Work

Deployments score is calculated by dividing the Active usage values by the Qualified usage values and multiplying by 100 - this result must be greater than or equal to 40 percent, in order for achieving points required for membership qualification, 

If the results are less than 40 percent, then the customer in question will not meet the basic requirements, and no points are given. 

 

As of now, the Active usage value is the number of licenses available on a tenant, and not the actual amount of active users with a valid license assigned. 

Customers often have licenses with yearly commitment and also have an overage of MS 365 licenses, due to employee hirings and layoffs. This means that the calculated usage percentage if mostly lower than the real life percentages and can never reach 100%. 

 

If a customer has a negative development in employee count during the year, it can result in a declining usage score, negatively affecting the points required for the Partners membership eligibility.  This even if the actual usage percentage in the customer's end is increasing. 

 

We think that the calculation for Deployment score should be changed to reflect the number of acutal active and licensed users (like the Active usage value) , and not be based on the number of licenses available on the tenant. 

CSP
Indirect reseller
Partner question

6 Replies

  • Esben315's avatar
    Esben315
    Copper Contributor
    Oct 14, 2025

    Yes, I meant the Partner designation.

    In the long run it is hard to create growth, so every little thing counts pointwise, and with the current calculation method it is close to impossible to reach 100%.  

    I hope indicators such as churn will also be included in the future. 

  • MartijnBreet's avatar
    MartijnBreet
    Iron Contributor
    Oct 13, 2025

    Hi Esben,

    Few comments:

    You link the deployments score to qualifying for membership, however deployments count for solution partner designations, not membership. 

    With the Modern work you need three indicators to go up:

    • number of customers ('customer adds') (measured in #tenants)
    • number of TENANTS which have workloads deployed ('deployments') reaching at least 40% MAU
    • number of active USERS across all tenants need to increase compared to year before (MAU growth)

    The general concept of these metrics is flawed in the long run anyhow, because it becomes nearly impossible to grow year on year on year. Certainly considering growth is naturally capped at 100% of licenses and orgs would need to grow/buy more licenses to be able to grow in MAU. 

    For the SMB track all customer tenants between 11 - 300 seats count.

    When adding customers they are preferably spread across various industries with high/lows in different months...in that case you might be able to mitigate the patterns which occur a bit. 

     

    Regards,

    Martijn

     

  • MartijnElfers's avatar
    MartijnElfers
    Bronze Contributor
    Oct 08, 2025

    Not sure what you're trying to say here. You can disagree with how the points are calculated, but you can't change it. It is what it is... 

     

    Deployments look at used workloads within a purchased license. Eg. if a customer purchased 100x M365 E5 licenses, but non of the users actually use Teams Phone (which is included in the license), then no points are earned for the Teams Phone deployment. 

    If the partner that starts to implement Teams Phone and provides adoption of the using Teams Phone service, the usage will grow at the customer's side. If the customer that has over 40 users actually using the service, the threshold is reached and the partner earns points. 

    So earning points at Deployments is directly impactable by the partner by enabling customer to adopt more workloads in the licenses they've purchased. From my point of view, the Deployment points do work as intended and it makes sense. 

     

    I can't imagine a customer purchasing 100 licenses, but actually only needing/using 35 licenses, just to keep an overage of licenses available for hiring/layoffs. 

    And if a customer having 100 licenses with 95 active users, but then drops to like 30 active users due to layoffs, I think the least problem for both the partner and definitely the customer would be the Designation points. Probably the customer is in financial crisis and isn't even able to keep paying their invoice of the 100 licenses anymore, which they won't be needing either  

    • Esben315's avatar
      Esben315
      Copper Contributor
      Oct 09, 2025

      I raised the question with Partner support, and they recommended I bring it up here. 

      I am referring to general customer observations, not customers going bankrupt. 
      Example: 

      Beginning of year 
      Active usage is at 9
      Licensed active users is 21
      Number of licenses is 21
      Real usage and calculated usage is 42,8%

      End of year

      Active usage is at 8
      Licensed active users is 18
      Number of licenses is 21
      Real usage is now 44,4%, but calculated usage is 38,09%

      So even though the actual usage percentage has increased, the calculated usage that is the metric for partner eligibility has decreased. 
      You could argue that the partners responsibility is to make sure, that there are no unused licenses on the tenant, but that is next to impossible with yearly license commitment. 

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