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 channel partners participate in multiparty private offers
Multiparty private offers in Microsoft Marketplace enable software companies and channel partners to work together to create customized offers for customers with negotiated pricing, terms, and billing options. Watch this short video to learn the role of channel partners in the multiparty private offer process, including providing required Marketplace and customer information, reviewing pending partner actions in Partner Center, applying eligible pricing adjustments, adding custom terms or supporting documents, and submitting the offer for customer review. Whether you're new to multiparty private offers or looking to better support joint sales opportunities, this walkthrough provides an overview of the key steps channel partners complete before an offer can be shared with a customer.
Can Marketplace Become the Trusted Delivery Ecosystem for Specialized Microsoft Services?
Over the past several years, Azure Marketplace has become an increasingly important mechanism for connecting customers, partners, publishers, and Microsoft. As Marketplace adoption grows, I have been reflecting on one aspect of ecosystem collaboration. Many customer initiatives involve multiple organizations, each with different responsibilities, commercial models, onboarding requirements, and procurement processes. This raises an interesting question for the community: Can Azure Marketplace play a larger role in reducing operational friction between Marketplace participants who are already transacting through the platform? Potential outcomes could include: Faster customer project execution. Simpler cross-organizational collaboration. Greater adoption of Marketplace-transactable solutions. Reduced administrative overhead. Increased Marketplace transaction activity. From a Marketplace ecosystem perspective, reducing friction between participants may create value for customers, partners, publishers, and Microsoft alike. I would be interested in learning: Whether others have encountered similar challenges. Whether existing Marketplace capabilities already address this area. Which future improvements would have the greatest impact. Looking forward to hearing the community's perspective.Auto Activation for SaaS Private Offers is a Game Changer!
Shout out to Microsoft Marketplace for launching AUTO ACTIVATION for SaaS private offers. This has simplified our sales operations for Microsoft Marketplace private offers, as well as dramatically improved our seller and customer experience with by eliminating the #1 reason we've historically seen block customers from completing Marketplace SaaS private offer procurement. Auto activation for private offers allows customers to skip the step of going to our SaaS landing page and activate Marketplace SaaS billing by having to SSO with their AAD. The problem with this step is that most of our customers are in regulated industries, and their AAD admins do not allow SSO on SaaS landing pages without enabling profile sharing, which requires a Global Admin to enable. We've encountered far too many times where our customer is scrambling to find their Global Admin so that they can complete the final steps to finish the steps to activate Marketplace SaaS billing. This also puts our sellers in the awkward position of having to help customers diagnose and troubleshoot the situation, which as a rule they are not equipped to, or find a Microsoft resource to help. Now, with this new feature the whole SSO to our SaaS landing page and associated problems are eliminated. Ever since we started using it our customers' procurement experience has been faster and smoother. I'm looking forward to more improvements to the Marketplace experience! Here is the feature: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/marketplace-offers/create-new-saas-offer-plans#configure-auto-activationA cautionary tale if you have customers who use Coupa
We learned the very very very hard way that next-day Marketplace invoicing does NOT play nicely with Coupa. Here's what happened: Back in April, we closed a Marketplace transaction via private offer with one of our enterprise customers. Not a new customer, either - this was for a license extension with a current customer with which we'd transacted through Marketplace twice before. 30 days go by, and Partner Center still shows the invoice as 'uncollected.' 60 days go by, and Partner Center still shows the invoice as 'uncollected.' I open a ticket with Marketplace support. And kudos to them, they pick up my ticket within an hour. "Customer hasn't paid the invoice," they tell us. So now we are forced to take on the role of collections agency for a Microsoft invoice our customer hasn't paid and for which we don't know why they haven't paid. (Partner Center's Revenue reports are rather light on useful details.) Our buyer inside the customer also has no idea why the invoice wasn't paid: She sits far away from the folks who pay the Microsoft bills. Her colleague in IT who pushed the buttons to purchase the private offer likewise has no idea why the invoice wasn't paid: He too sits far away from accounts payable. We're baffled because never before have we had any delay in getting our payouts for this customer's Marketplace purchases. Our first thought is okay, maybe they now have custom net 60 payment terms with Microsoft. (A different issue we experienced on a different delayed payout back in January!) After ten days of intensive investigations involving nearly a dozen different people, we finally discover the source of the issue: The customer pays its Microsoft bills through Coupa, BUT: they did NOT know about nor integrate into Coupa workflow the (relatively new) next-day invoicing mechanism for Marketplace transactions. For their accounts payable team, if an invoice doesn't land in Coupa, it doesn't exist. The invoice for this Marketplace purchase was generated, but it got sent . . . nowhere, I guess? So in picking up my support ticket, Marketplace Support could only say "Customer hasn't paid the invoice." They probably had no way to know the correct response was "Customer hasn't received the invoice." Moral of the story: Ask your customers if they use Coupa. And if yes, prepare them for the possibility they might not receive the invoice for your software.Multiparty private offers in Microsoft Marketplace are expanding to 30 countries across Europe
We're excited to share that beginning on May 27, multiparty private offers through Microsoft Marketplace will expand to 30 countries in Europe. Further expansion to Australia, Japan, and South Africa will be available July 15—with more markets to follow. Multiparty private offers empower channel partners to bring vetted solutions to their customers to differentiate while companies developing software can lean on the partners’ local expertise to scale to new markets. Learn more: aka.ms/MPOEEAblog Additional resource: we recently hosted a Marketplace community event on Multi‑currency private offers in Microsoft Marketplace. Given this recent announcement about multiparty private offer expansion, I encourage you to access the recording. You will learn how to confidently navigate local currency transactions, understand how timing impacts payments, and apply best practices when executing deals across geographies.Turn your Azure commitments into smarter cloud investments with Microsoft Marketplace
Discover how organizations are using Microsoft Marketplace as a strategic procurement engine to optimize Azure spend, streamline purchasing, and accelerate time to value. Learn how aligning software purchases with Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) can unlock cost savings, improve visibility, and ensure every dollar of cloud investment is fully optimized—helping teams make more informed, outcomes-driven decisions. Read the full article: Optimizing Azure spend with Microsoft Marketplace | Microsoft Community Hub Watch the recorded conversation: Using Microsoft Marketplace to optimize Azure spend - Microsoft Marketplace CommunityLooking to Connect with Dynamics 365 Teams for Support & Delivery Collaboration
I’m reaching out on behalf of Array Platforms Pvt. Ltd., a Microsoft solutions team specializing in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. We’re interested in connecting with businesses and Microsoft implementation partners that need support with existing Dynamics 365 environments, ongoing maintenance, customizations, enhancements, or additional development resources. We’re also open to collaborating with implementation partners who need reliable delivery support to manage project workloads and ongoing client requirements. If your team is exploring ways to strengthen its Dynamics 365 support or delivery capabilities, I’d be happy to connect and explore potential collaboration opportunities. Looking forward to exchanging ideas with the community.
Learned something useful today about updating multiparty private offers
I needed to update a multiparty private offer in Azure Marketplace today, and a vendor showed me a simple way to do it as the reseller. While the offer is still pending customer acceptance, select the checkbox next to it in Partner Center and click Withdraw at the top. This lets you edit your part of the offer and send it back to the customer. If the change involves something the vendor controls, they’ll need to update it on their side. In other marketplaces I’ve worked with, this can involve getting a new resale authorization and creating a new offer, so I appreciated how easy this was. This feature has probably been around for a while, but I only learned about it today. A small thing that makes day-to-day work easier and helps move sales along. Thought I’d share!
