Forum Discussion
The announcement regarding self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products??
Just found this in the message center: " Self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products will be available for commercial cloud customers starting 11/19. Today, individuals within your organization are unable to purchase subscriptions or assign licenses for themselves or their departments without contacting you, their admin. Based on customer demand, we’ll soon be enabling self-service purchase and license management capabilities, which will allow users within your organization to purchase products directly, starting with the Power Platform family of products: Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow."
Does anyone have more info on this? Does this mean that end users willing to pay for a license will be able to connect company data to other sources and bypass their admins altogether? I'm finding this to be a bit insane - would love to hear other feedback. adam deltinger ChrisWebbTech adding you both to this as you always provide great insights. Thanks in advance!
At Microsoft, we’ve been listening to all of the feedback regarding the rollout of our self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products. To those of you who provided your input, thank you! Based on your feedback, we’ve adjusted our approach to better address the needs of both IT admins and end users within organizations. We’re making the following changes to our plan:
- On November 19th, we will provide IT admins a way to turn off self-service purchasing on a per product basis via PowerShell.
- To provide more time to prepare for this change, we are updating the launch for self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products to start with Power BI on January 14th for all commercial cloud customers.
You can find more details about self-service purchase at the Self-service purchase FAQ. Thank you again for taking the time to provide your feedback. We look forward to a continued partnership to help empower all organizations to achieve more.
64 Replies
Microsoft heard the voice of the community and released a dedicated PowerShell module 'https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/MSCommerce/' to manage Office 365 Self-service Purchase.
https://blog.admindroid.com/block-self-service-purchase-for-power-platform-products-using-powershell/
If you have decided to turn-off self-service purchase for your organization, then you shall disable it now.
Not to much to add, but I want to track this issue, so I continue to document it here:
Microsoft Releases Control for Self-Service Purchases in Office 365 Tenants
The prospect of allowing user-controlled purchases of Power Platform apps in an Office 365 tenant maddened many administrators. Microsoft promised to release a method to allow administrators control self-service purchases in a tenant. The MSCommerce PowerShell module is now available. Here’s how to use it to disable self-service purchases.
https://office365itpros.com/2019/11/20/microsoft-releases-control-self-service-purchases/
I'm unable to Connect to MSCommerce. I installed the module (no errors), I import the module (no messages or errors). When I run Connect-MSCommerce I get this error:
New-Object : Cannot find type [Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirectory.PlatformParameters]: verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded.
At C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\MSCommerce\1.2\MSCommerce.psm1:91 char:21
+ ... ormParams = New-Object "Microsoft.IdentityModel.Clients.ActiveDirecto ...+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidType: (:) [New-Object], PSArgumentException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : TypeNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewObjectCommandCannot find an overload for "AcquireTokenAsync" and the argument count: "4".
At C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\MSCommerce\1.2\MSCommerce.psm1:93 char:3
+ $token = $authCtx.AcquireTokenAsync($Resource, $ClientId, $Redirect ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MethodCountCouldNotFindBestConnect-MSCommerce : Unable to establish connection
At line:1 char:1
+ Connect-MSCommerce
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,Connect-MSCommerceThoughts?
Alex Carlock Did you happen to try to connect during the outage from Microsoft? That could have been the issue.
I was able to connect and see all of the Power Pack Applications set to allow to be purchased.
Hi Kelly_Edinger, With an environment strategy in place, couldn't the risk of data loss/misuse be significantly mitigated? (https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/establishing-an-environment-strategy-for-microsoft-power-platform/) When you have the underlying structures and governance in place, if a maker can only design and make in an environment they have been granted access to through an AAD security group, would this self-service of licenses continue to be a big issue?
- Even with proper data governance this will persist to be a HUGE issue for orgs that have procurement requirements, not to mention that this is the commoditization of shadow IT (no if and or buts about it) which IT will eventually have to support/manage.
Hi Robyn Eisler - yes that could help mitigate. Happy that Microsoft reversed their stance on this, but my two main issues were: 1. The 1st time we heard about it was a quiet post to the message center, not a major announcement 2. most IT depts are not ready - they're still trying to keep up with all the changes in O365 in general.
Kelly_Edinger we're annoyed when Microsoft announced this feature. Now, We're glad to know that Microsoft updated policy to control self service. Thank you Microsoft.
They listened - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/subscriptions/self-service-purchase-faq
- On November 19th, we will provide IT admins a way to turn off self-service purchasing on a per product basis via PowerShell. More details will be forthcoming.
- To provide more time to prepare for this change, we are updating the launch for self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products to start with Power BI on January 14th for all commercial cloud customers.
- Matthew Kotler
Microsoft
At Microsoft, we’ve been listening to all of the feedback regarding the rollout of our self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products. To those of you who provided your input, thank you! Based on your feedback, we’ve adjusted our approach to better address the needs of both IT admins and end users within organizations. We’re making the following changes to our plan:
- On November 19th, we will provide IT admins a way to turn off self-service purchasing on a per product basis via PowerShell.
- To provide more time to prepare for this change, we are updating the launch for self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products to start with Power BI on January 14th for all commercial cloud customers.
You can find more details about self-service purchase at the Self-service purchase FAQ. Thank you again for taking the time to provide your feedback. We look forward to a continued partnership to help empower all organizations to achieve more.
Matthew Kotler While it's nice when Microsoft takes user feedback seriously and withdraws from a position that embarrassed the company, it would be so much better if some folks in Redmond asked people in the field before making assumptions that Office 365 tenants would like this sort of thing.
Thank you, Microsoft!
I agree with the sentiment of the others. Our jaws dropped. Its a bad idea on so many levels, driving shadow IT and creating challenges for customer IT support teams, as well as generating hidden costs and risks to future deployments/changes.
Kristin_L_365I don't know if anyone saw it but Microsoft just announced that our end users can license Microsoft Teams to function with the enterprise on their own and do not have to wait to be upgraded.
MC194285: Updated Feature: Microsoft Teams self-service access for users in partially synced tenants.
This is a disturbing trend by Microsoft.
Shaun Jennings Fantastic, let all the horrific announcements come out at once, just in time for Halloween... Ugh.
Kelly_Edinger I am in agreement with you. This announcement came as a complete shock. Coupled with not having the ability to disable this feature does not sit well with me or my organization.
While I understand that Microsoft is wanting to push the Power Platform but some organizations are not ready for that level of technicality and they will need to slide into using it. Power BI is enough and dealing with sprawl is awful. We have to have time to put governance in place before we release anything to the organization.
I did put in a dislike on the Message Center announcement and explained my choice. I also voted on the User Voice to add in the disable feature. I hope there is a ton of backlash on this announcement because they have a lot to explain during Ignite next week about this decision.
Kelly_Edinger It's very concerning that Microsoft is not providing a way to disable this feature should agency/company policies mandate centralized management of all licensing and purchases/expenditures in general.
To add to this mess, I read the Self-Service Purchase FAQ and found these lovely nuggets (red-highlight mine):
What happens to a self-service purchase if a user leaves the organization?
Valid users will continue to have full use of the self-service purchase for the duration of the subscription. The subscription remains active until the purchaser directly cancels it or an admin requests that the subscription be cancelled through customer support. Admins may also choose to assign a centrally purchased license to users of the cancelled subscription.
Are customers’ IT departments or partners expected to support products bought through self-service purchase?
IT departments and partners aren’t expected to provide support for products bought through self-service purchase. Microsoft will provide standard support for self-service purchasers.
So now Microsoft is not only going to encourage rogue purchases but officially sanctioning shadow IT? And dealing with customer support to manually cancel subscriptions?
Of all the half-baked ideas...
GLISIT wrote:What happens to a self-service purchase if a user leaves the organization?
Valid users will continue to have full use of the self-service purchase for the duration of the subscription. The subscription remains active until the purchaser directly cancels it or an admin requests that the subscription be cancelled through customer support. Admins may also choose to assign a centrally purchased license to users of the cancelled subscription.
No thanks, I rather keep paying the subscriptions fees than go through customer support again. 😂
DanielNiccoli In this regard, it is sad but true that dealing with Microsoft support is more of a waste of time (and therefore money) than paying for the subscription until it expires. Of course, there's always the option to cancel the credit card, LOL.
- Yeah, I just entered the dislike in the O365 message center and voted for the option to disable this feature. This is what I wrote in the message center down vote:
You can't let anyone purchase software for the business just because they THINK they need it. That is ridiculous! Like new hires know what they need? OR that they should not be playing with reports in BI if their job is to go to the field and do data collection... We also have very specific purchase procedures to ensure we bill things properly to our clients- allowing the Wild West without the ability to turn off the feature is irresponsible. And this isn't just about a blatant money grab attempt, but we try to keep employees focused on their duties so they can advance- and this creates non-billable distractions. It would be like if you allow your MS Office developers to install XBox and xbox games- as much as they want- onto any of their own company computers - as much as they see fit. You would think that is an awful idea, just like this one.
I hope after reading all the comments from admins around the world that you understand things like this makes us second guess the trust we have placed with Microsoft and O365. Kelly_EdingerIt's an outrageous plan. I raised a ticket from the tenant to say so. I hope they at least take note.
- I have posted a feedback in message center and received this bs reply:
Thank you for your feedback. We have put together a document capturing frequently asked questions from the community, which is available at https://aka.ms/selfservicefaq. We have read through your comment and will continue to evolve the document based on the questions and feedback we receive.It would be nice if the FAQ was coherent or informative. It fails on both counts.
