Build smarter, publish faster: Here’s what’s new in App Advisor
App Advisor just got a major upgrade - and it’s changing the game for software development companies building apps and agents for the Microsoft Marketplace. Since its MVP launch in January 2024, App Advisor has helped thousands of partners like you streamline their journey. 💬 What partners are saying App Advisor isn’t just a tool - it’s a game-changer. Here’s what partners have shared about their experience: “I appreciate that App Advisor curates the content for the partner since the amount of data available is just so vast. It does a great job of curating for them based on their goals.” Frank Valdivieso, President & CEO, Gryphon Consulting ⚡What’s new? Smarter focus, faster execution, and scalable growth Now, with six new features launched in the US (and global availability coming soon), App Advisor is making it easier than ever to stay focused, move faster, and scale smarter with apps and agents. Here’s what’s new: 🛠️ In-app marketplace offer creation Start your marketplace journey directly within App Advisor - no context switching required. You can now initiate offer creation for popular offer types without leaving the platform. Not signed up to publish - no problem! App Advisor can get you signed up and on your way to creating your offer. 🚀 Tailored recommendations by marketplace offer type Confidently align your app with the right marketplace offer and pricing model using our interactive wizard. Get personalized recommendations based on your app profile and program membership - and fast-track publishing to launch sooner. 📁 Multi-project save with Partner Center linking Advance multiple apps and agents from a single, centralized experience. Save guidance across projects and link each to its Partner Center offer for seamless continuity. 🎯 Membership-based guidance Receive personalized guidance based on your ISV Success or Marketplace Rewards membership. App Advisor adapts its recommendations to help you make faster, smarter decisions. ✅ ISV Success sign-up integration Sign up for ISV Success and resume your workflow without disruption. Unlock benefits like cloud credits, technical consults, and go-to-market resources - all without breaking your build flow. 🎥 Embedded video playback Explore how to build, publish, and grow your apps and agents with step-by-step video guidance. Watch demos and guidance videos directly within App Advisor. Stay in flow with seamless, distraction-free learning, all while keeping the AI-powered assistant visible and ready to help. Ready to accelerate your marketplace success? Dive into App Advisor today to build, publish, and sell transactable offers with clarity, speed, and confidence. Make sure you check out the new Microsoft Marketplace - the single destination to find, try, and buy AI apps, tools, and agents. Read the blog to learn more. Ready to level up with App Advisor? Watch this quick video and unlock what’s next!Lock in marketplace terms for up to five years with multiyear contract durations
Co-authored by Trevor_Yeats We’re excited to announce that the Microsoft marketplace now supports multiyear contract durations—enabling customers and partners to lock in terms and pricing for up to five years. New options include four and five-year terms for SaaS and Professional Services, and two, four, and five-year terms for Virtual Machine Software Reservations (VMSR). These contract durations are available globally across all marketplace-supported currencies. The value for your customers and for you With multiyear contract durations, customers can buy with confidence knowing they will have stability and continuity of service, making it easier to plan and forecast expenses and lock in substantial savings that often come with longer contracts. Partners benefit by supporting customers’ budget needs, strengthening customer relationships, reducing administrative burdens, and growing reliable revenue streams. “Our customers value five-year contracts for the stability and long-term value they provide. With multiyear contracts now available in Microsoft marketplace, we can better align with their operational timelines, reduce renewal cycles, and focus on building lasting relationships—while driving predictable revenue.” Sue Wilkinson, Global Director of Partners, IFS How it works To enable multiyear contract durations, software partners must take the following steps: Create a public offer with multiyear contract durations. Partners must ensure their public offers include extended contract terms before they can create private offers with those durations. Partners have two options: Update an existing public plan to support new options for extended durations (i.e., four and five-year options for SaaS offers and two, four, and five-year options for VMSR), or Create a new public plan that includes multiyear contract durations. Create private offers with multiyear contract durations. Once a public offer with multiyear contract durations is published, partners can configure private offers that leverage those durations. Notes: Existing customer agreements cannot be modified mid-term to extend contract length. Customers must cancel their current plan and purchase a new one that includes the desired extended duration. Multiyear contract durations for CSP offers will be enabled later this summer. Until then, partners can create new offers without opting to resell through CSP to take advantage of extended contract durations. Creating multiyear contracts with flexible billing schedules Partners can create private offers that combine multiyear contract durations with flexible billing options—like quarterly, semiannual, or bimonthly—making it easier to align with customer needs and streamline sales. “Microsoft’s recent launch of multiyear contracts and flexible billing has been a game changer, simplifying the buying process and enhancing the customer experience. We can now build private offers in the Microsoft marketplace in a more natural way that mirrors our contracts in the platform.” Sue Wilkinson, Global Director of Partners, IFS Learn more about flexible billing schedules and capturing the marketplace opportunity. Eligibility for multiyear contracts and how to get started Any company who is part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program can sell on the marketplace with multiyear contract durations. Details are provided in our documentation, but at a high-level: Be a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program (it’s free to join) Sign the marketplace publisher agreement Publish your public offer with multiyear contract durations. Sell private offers with multiyear contract durations. In addition, we have many support resources for partners depending on where they are on their marketplace journey. For example, software development companies can join ISV Success, within the Partner Program, for tools and resources that help them publish their solution and maximize reach through the marketplace. Learn more by visiting: Microsoft commercial marketplace transact capabilities FAQs: https://aka.ms/multiyear-FAQsThe Marketplace Partner Digest | May 2025
Welcome to the monthly partner release notes for the Microsoft marketplace! The marketplace is central to how we help you reach more customers, simplify sales, and drive growth. Dive into this month’s roundup of announcements and updates to stay informed about the latest marketplace developments. Don’t miss an update! Subscribe to the “Partner Digest” label to get notified whenever a new Marketplace Partner Digest hits the community blog. Check out this community post for how-to guidance on configuring your settings. 🚀 Noteworthy Highlights Flexible billing improvements now available in the marketplace We're excited to announce improvements to flexible billing for private offers are now generally available. With supported scenarios for quarterly, semiannual, bimonthly billing, and much more, flexible billing for private offers makes it easier to align customer payments to unique budget cycles. The value for you and your customers: With flexible billing schedules, customers can buy with confidence knowing that private offers can be customized for virtually any contract value and billing timeline to align with their requirements. For partners, you can tailor customers’ private offers and multiparty private offers to meet unique business requirements, helping you to unlock larger deals by aligning with customer billing expectations, while streamlining sales and accelerating deal velocity. Resources: For more on how to build a flexible billing schedule, check out the documentation at aka.ms/flexbill-docs. Learn more by checking out these demo videos for examples of how partners and customers are using flexible billing. 🌟 ️Partner Resources Discover exclusive resources designed to help you maximize your success in the marketplace! Explore our latest resources, blogs, and much more below: Partner blog series: Capturing the marketplace opportunity by selling path Dive into our four-part blog series to explore how you can grow your business across different marketplace selling paths. Whether you're just getting started or refining your marketplace strategy, these blogs are a great place to find guidance. Part one: Explores how adopting the marketplace as a core go-to-market strategy can help you close deals faster and increase deal sizes. Part two: Delves into the power of always-on selling with the digital self-serve motion to help you grow your pipeline. Part three: Offers tips and insights to maximize success when selling with channel partners through multiparty private offers. Part four: Focuses on strategic co-selling with Microsoft field sellers to accelerate enterprise-grade deals through the Microsoft marketplace. Co-sell Coaching Series Hosted in the Marketplace Community, Co-sell Coaching features Microsoft partners walking you through their best practices on how to effectively co-sell through the Microsoft marketplace. These sessions also include live Q&A with Microsoft subject-matter experts. The next session is scheduled for June 18 th featuring Contentsquare. Stay tuned for this session and catch up on past sessions on-demand: Episode 1: Carve Partners Episode 2: Abnormal Security Episode 3: Silverfort Mastering the Marketplace webinars Whether you’re new to the marketplace or focused on growing sales, our Mastering the Marketplace webinars cover a broad range of business and technical session topics to help accelerate your marketplace success. Check out these upcoming webinars, register, and mark your calendars. All times are listed in Pacific Time. June 3 at 9 AM: Learn how to use the multiparty private offers campaign in a box June 9 at 9 AM: ISV to CSP private offers - experience walkthrough June 11 at 9 AM: Unlocking sales through the marketplace Access the full library of webinars, including live and on-demand options at aka.ms/MTMwebinars. 🔮 Marketplace Events Marketplace Office Hours June 12, 2025, 8:30 am PST: Customer office hours Q&A: what we learned at FinOpsX Get a recap of insights from the FinOpsX 2025 event on what we learned from practitioners on best practices to manage cloud, SaaS, and AI investments. Discover strategies we shared on how to unlock faster time-to-value by using the marketplace to source thousands of pre-vetted solutions that accelerate AI transformation while better managing technology spend. Invite your customers to register and view previous sessions office hours session on-demand here. Prepare for the 2025 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards (POTYA) are driven by a self-nominating process and acknowledge outstanding successes and innovations by partners across our global ecosystem. We especially encourage nominations for the Marketplace Partner of the Year Award, which recognizes partners that have embraced the Microsoft marketplace as core to their GTM strategy. The nomination window for this year’s program is June 18 – July 18, 2025, but you can prepare now by reviewing the guidelines for all awards. Partners can contact potyasup@microsoft.com with any questions. 💬 Share Your Feedback! We truly appreciate your feedback and want to ensure these Partner Release Notes deliver the information you need to succeed in the marketplace. If you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can continue to improve the content to best support you, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below! Thank you!Exciting updates to the ISV Success Visual Studio benefit!
We have some fantastic news to share with you. 🎉 The ISV Success Visual Studio benefit is getting an upgrade! Starting in March, you will still have access to Visual Studio Enterprise and Azure DevOps and we're rolling out a host of new training and community benefits that will supercharge your development experience. These exciting new benefits will be available in Partner Center, making it easier than ever to access everything you need to excel in your development journey. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming your way: New Training Benefits - Sharpen your skills with a variety of training courses tailored to help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving tech landscape with exclusive discounts on DevForge and DomeTrain. DevForge's expert led courses, featuring renowned educator Tim Corey. Unlock a library of developer upskilling resources, from comprehensive master courses to specialized trainings. Explore DevPass Dometrain Pro led by industry veteran Nick Chapsas, Dometrain courses are designed to teach you actionable skills and real-world practices, as if you were paired with a skilled senior engineer in a real modern company. Browse Dometrain courses New Community Benefits - Engage with like-minded professionals and get your technical questions answered in our vibrant community forums. Microsoft Q&A: Have a technical product question? Find it on Microsoft Q&A – the home for technical questions and answers at Microsoft. Microsoft Tech Community: Connect and engage with fellow users and Microsoft technical experts on best practices, design architecture and the latest updates. Developer Community: Post questions, find answers and share your knowledge in the Developer Community forums. Azure Community: Get help directly from the Azure team within these select forums. Concierge Chat: Available 27/7. Chat with us for assistance finding technical documentation product information or using your subscription benefits. Chat assistance is provided in English **Important ** Please be aware that, going forward, these benefits will not be available for previous versions of Visual Studio and Visual Studio for Mac. We're thrilled to bring you these enhancements and can't wait to see the amazing things you'll achieve with them. Stay tuned for more updates and happy coding!Exciting update: New Advanced Package benefit for ISV Success participants!
We are delighted to share yet another exciting benefit for our ISV Success program participants. In our ongoing commitment to support ISVs, we are introducing a new Advanced Package Benefit that could significantly enhance your development projects. NEW – Advanced Package Benefit - $25,000 USD ISV Success participants with an Azure, Security, or Industry AI certified software designation may now be eligible for additional Azure Sponsorship, providing another $25,000 USD, totaling an impressive $50,000 USD when combined with the Expanded and Core benefits packages. This substantial sponsorship aims to help you maximize the potential of Azure and drive innovation in your projects. Determine your eligibility To find out if you qualify for this advanced benefit, please reach out to your Build and Publish Engagement Manager. They will assist you in understanding the eligibility criteria and guide you through the process of applying for this additional Azure Sponsorship. At ISV Success, we are dedicated to offering valuable resources and support to help you achieve your development goals. Don't miss out on this exceptional opportunity to enhance your productivity and bring your projects to life with the power of Azure. To learn more about the ISV Success offering, go to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/isv/isv-successEnhanced marketplace value calculator now available
What’s new in the marketplace value calculator? The calculator keeps the features that we released in September 2024, including the ability to enter a few simple data points and see exactly how many direct value benefits, cloud, credits, and incentives your business can unlock with the Microsoft commercial marketplace. You’ll still be able to plug in projections and see how benefits and free products outweigh small marketplace fees. But we’ve enhanced the calculator to provide even more value: Optional logic built in for business cases: We know that not all businesses are the same. So, we’ve introduced additional logic to both the revenue and deal-based model. You can get a more granular picture of costs and benefits personalized to the expenses that your business has to make a better-informed decision. Exportable presentation-ready decks: Need to present on the business case and don’t have much time? No problem. You can now get a full deck to present (in addition to the one-page data breakdown) to show your team the value that Microsoft commercial marketplace affords you. No additional work is required from you, other than clicking a button. If you’d like to edit after you’ve download, you have the ability to edit, delete, or add slides as needed. Additional fees and benefits represented: The initial release of the marketplace calculator proved so popular that we’ve added more benefits and fees. These can help your team see a 3-year long-range view of fees including renewal fees, operational costs, and deal velocity. With these additions your team can get a clearer picture of how much your business can benefit from selling on the commercial marketplace. Check out the enhanced calculator. How it works The marketplace value calculator, found here, still works with a simple design. Start by choosing your benefits, enter a few pertinent numbers with your chosen revenue model, New: After entering your numbers, click on Optional fields to add more information (to get a more granular picture), After saving, you can click Calculate to see the projections for 3-year totals and by year, Click on Read full report to see a line-item calculation of costs and benefits, New: When you click on Export report, you’re given the choice of a pdf, line-item one-pager, or a Marketplace value presentation. This editable PowerPoint presentation is ready for you to hand off to your team or allows you to edit to add or change what you need. And that’s it, in under 10 minutes, you can have a full business case with data-driven specifics ready for your team to look at! What you’ll get when you use the calculator You still get a strong data-driven business case of working with Microsoft. However, you now have more than just numbers, you have a more robust picture of your business costs to be offset by all the benefits that Microsoft has for your business in offerings. So, what are you waiting for, go use the marketplace value calculator and wow your team today. We look forward to helping you build a more complete picture of how working with Microsoft benefits your business. You can also join ISV Success to get access to over $126K USD in cloud credits, AI services, developer tools, and 1:1 technical consults to help you replicate your app and publish to Azure Marketplace.The Marketplace Partner Digest | March 2025
Welcome to the monthly partner release notes for the Microsoft commercial marketplace! The marketplace is central to how we help you reach more customers, simplify sales, and unlock growth. Dive into this month’s roundup of announcements and updates to stay informed about the latest marketplace developments. Don’t miss an update! Subscribe to the “Partner Digest” label to get notified whenever a new Marketplace Partner Digest hits the community blog. Check out this community post for how-to guidance on configuring your settings. 🚀 Noteworthy Highlights ICYMI: Marketplace fiscal year closes May 31, 2025! Reminder that Microsoft offers a 50% reduced agency fee for all renewals done through private offers. This fee reduction automatically applies when you claim either an existing marketplace agreement or an off-marketplace sale as a renewal in Partner Center. This helps you maximize your margins—no extra steps required—while maintaining strong customer relationships. Resources: For steps on how to receive the discount, check out the documentation. Improvements to App Advisor App advisor is a self-serve, always-on tool that provides curated guidance, resources, and benefit information right when you need it, after answering a few questions. We’ve launched an improved version of App advisor—now available in the US, with a global rollout coming soon. This update provides a more intuitive and streamlined experience, ensuring you can easily get guidance within a user-friendly interface. Explore the updated App Advisor tool and take the guesswork out of getting your app to market. 🌟 ️Partner Resources Discover exclusive resources aimed at helping you get the most out of the marketplace! Explore these helpful resources, blogs, and much more below: Partner blog series: Capturing the marketplace opportunity by selling path Check out the first two blogs of a four-part series, where we break down how to maximize your marketplace opportunity across different selling paths: Part one: Discover how making the marketplace a core part of your go-to-market strategy can help you close deals faster and increase deal sizes. Read it now Part two: Learn how always-on selling with the digital self-serve motion can help you grow your sales pipeline. Read the blog. There’s still more to come! Stay tuned for the final two blogs coming in April and May, in which we’ll share tips and strategies to maximize success when selling with partners (through multiparty private offers and CSP private offers) and with Microsoft field sellers. New Co-sell Coaching series launching on April 2 Join us for the new marketplace Co-sell Coaching, where Microsoft partners will walk you through their best practices on how to co-sell effectively through the marketplace, and host a live Q&A along with Microsoft co-sell subject-matter experts. In the first event in this series featuring Carve Partners, you will learn how to get started the right way, unlock faster growth, maximize your impact, engage Microsoft sellers, and more. Register here. Mastering the Marketplace webinars Whether you’re new to the marketplace or focused on growing sales, our Mastering the Marketplace webinars cover a broad range of business and technical session topics to help accelerate your marketplace success. Check out these upcoming webinars, register, and mark your calendars. All times are listed in Pacific Time. March 25, 9:00 am: Developing your virtual machine offer March 26, 9:00 am: Developing your container offer March 27, 9:30 am: Get your SaaS transactable offer on Azure Marketplace in two weeks April 1, 9:00 am: ISVs - Learn how to use the multiparty private offers campaign in a box April 2, 9:00 am: Creating your first offer in Partner Center April 7, 9:00 am: ISV to CSP private offers - experience walkthrough For the complete MTM schedule, visit aka.ms/MTMwebinars. April customer office hours Invite your customer to our next office hours on April 30 at 8:30 am PT, the marketplace team will walk through new marketplace functionality that helps further streamline financial operations to help organizations be more efficient. We’ll also dive into new private offer enhancements in flexible billing and more that help safeguard organizations from shadow IT while fueling innovation. Register here. Channel partner office hours: New marketplace assets and ask the experts Q&A Join us on March 27 at 8:30 am PT to explore new marketing and product assets designed to help influencers and decision-makers better understand the Microsoft commercial marketplace. We’ll also discuss how to use the Modern Procurement Playbook to navigate the procurement process when closing your marketplace deals. Register here, and submit your questions in advance when registering. Pre-submitted questions will be addressed in the Q&A portion at the end of the event. ⏰ Recent & Upcoming Events Catalyst 2025 The Microsoft commercial marketplace team will be at the Catalyst conference, hosted by Partnership Leaders in Seattle on May 13 – 15, 2025. Join Jason Rook, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, for a conversation about the value of the marketplace and learn how to activate the channel opportunity. Register here. Microsoft Build 2025 Mark your calendars! Microsoft Build returns to Seattle on May 19 – 22, 2025. Visit the event page to sign up for registration notifications and to receive the most up-to-date information about the event. 💬 Share Your Feedback! We truly appreciate your feedback and want to ensure these Partner Release Notes deliver the information you need to succeed in the marketplace. If you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can continue to improve the content to best support you, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below! Thank you!
