This article addresses frequently asked questions about analytics in Partner Center.
General
Why am I unable to view my analytics data in Partner Center?
When I access the analytics pages, I see the following message.
Why you might be seeing this message:
- No acquisitions currently exist for your published offers in the commercial marketplace. This message could mean that your offers are live in the commercial marketplace, but customers didn't click on the offer.
- Your offer might be in the process of being published but isn't live yet. Customers can purchase only live offers. To check the status of your offers, see the Summary page in Partner Center. For more information, see Summary dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
- Your offers are listed as Contact Me, which are list-only offers. Customers can't purchase such offers directly through marketplace. You will receive the lead when a customer clicks on Contact Me. To check your offer listing type, go to the setup page for your offer.
I know I have analytics data, so why does the No Analytics Available message appear?
Why you might be seeing this message:
- If you're receiving this message, it means you don't have analytics data for the selected period. Select a different month range to view analytics data.
- Check if you applied some filters on the page. Try resetting the filter or make different selections from the filter.
How do I enroll in the commercial marketplace?
There are two ways to create an account:
- If you're new to Partner Center then you must have a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program account, continue to Create a Partner Center account and enroll in the commercial marketplace.
- If you're already enrolled in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program or a developer program, create an account directly from Partner Center. See Use an existing Partner Center account to enroll in the commercial marketplace.
Where can I create a commercial marketplace offer?
- Go to the commercial marketplace offers Overview page.
- Select + New offer.
- Select the type of offer to create.
I can't register and publish an offer using my personal email ID.
See Publishing guide by offer type to learn how to create, publish, and manage your offers.
What roles are required to view commercial marketplace analytics?
To learn more about roles required to view commercial marketplace analytics reports, see Assign user roles and permissions.
Can I view ratings and review of my offers listed in the Microsoft 365 and Copilot program?
No, currently we only provide ratings and reviews reporting to offers listed in the commercial marketplace program. For more information, see Ratings and Reviews dashboard for the commercial marketplace. Reviews and ratings of Office apps will be available soon.
Commercial marketplace offers are listed on Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace. They include Azure applications, Azure containers, Azure virtual machines, Dynamics 365 apps on Dataverse and Power Apps, Dynamics 365 Operations Apps, IoT Edge Modules, and Software as a Service.
Why do I see daily adjustments to estimated charges in my usage report?
The billed charges for current customer usage in an open month can have adjustments due to things like discounts and refunds. The accurate estimated charges in the usage report are reflected on the fourth day of the month following use of the offer.
How do I get started with programmatic access to commercial marketplace analytics reports?
Can I create custom queries apart from the listed system queries?
Yes, the system queries are only for reference purposes. You can either use system queries or create a custom query by selectively querying on specific attributes.
Revenue
Is estimated revenue the billed sales or amount invoiced to customers?
Estimated revenue is the amount billed to the customer who purchased an offer or consumed services.
What does Total revenue and Other revenue mean?
Total revenue represents the billed sales of purchases or consumption that have entries in the transaction history report. This represents the total billed sales for the following statuses only:
- Sent
- Unprocessed
- Upcoming
You can find corresponding detailed earnings entries in the transaction history report.
There can be some revenue portion that isn't yet processed by Microsoft and sent to partners. These revenue amounts are also not captured in the existing transaction history report. The Other revenue section brings visibility to this revenue portion.
What do different transaction statuses under “Total” mean?
This list defines the different transaction statuses under Total:
- Sent: Represents the revenue portion for which earnings have been sent to the partners
- Unprocessed: Represents the revenue portion for which earnings are in an unprocessed state
- Upcoming: Represents the revenue portion for which earnings are in an upcoming state
What do different transaction statuses under “Others” mean?
This list defines the different transaction statuses under Others:
- Uncollected: Represents the billed sales of an offer purchase or consumption for which a customer has not made full payment or has defaulted. This status represents a revenue portion yet to be collected from customers.
- Unreconciled: Offer purchase or consumption with entries that can't be reconciled between the revenue dashboard and the transaction history report are marked with the unreconciled status. It means that these entries have purchase record ID and line-item ID entries in the revenue dashboard but not in the transaction history report. status can occur for multiple reasons:
- Estimated revenue is generated but earnings aren't yet posted
- Some issues with software systems
- Rejected: The revenue for which payments or safe approval were rejected.
- Reprocessed: The revenue was under-reprocessed due to various reasons. For example, invoice cancellation or safe approval cancellation, and so on.
- Not eligible: The overall revenue for which a partner isn't eligible to receive pay outs. To learn more about eligibility, see Payout statements.
Is Purchase record ID the same as Order ID in the transaction history report?
Yes, the Purchase record ID refers to the same “Order ID” data field.
How can I reconcile payout reports with orders, usage, and the customer report?
The revenue dashboard provides a unified view of all analytic and payout reports. All transactions in the dashboard and downloaded report represent an aggregated summary of billed sales, orders, usage, and payments. You can verify the entries across reports using a combination of Purchase record ID and Order ID key.
Why is customer information blank in many rows of the revenue report?
Customer information such as email or customer name could be blank due to a customer not providing consent to share their personally identifiable information. In some cases, this could be due to a known technical limitation being addressed.
Does customer name represent bill to account, the end-customer, or the reseller information?
Customer name represents the bill to account details. For individuals, the customer name will be the end-customer's name. For a cloud service provider (CSP), the customer name will be the name of the CSP.
Can I use an API to download data from the revenue dashboard?
Yes. To learn about the analytics APIs, see Get started with programmatic access to analytics data.
How does the first-free month appear in the report?
If a partner selects offer listing as “Free” as the dashboard filter, all offer purchases or consumption with free trial will be displayed in the dashboard. The revenue for the first month shows $0.
Is there a suggested specific date for us to download the reports every month?
Yes. You can download the reports on the fourth day of each month to view accurate revenue figures for the offer purchases and consumption from the previous month.
Note
Revenue figures for subscription-based products are available in the same month of purchase.
Can the revenue dashboard show who is the end-user customer, the reseller, and the distributor?
Use the Sales channel field to infer whether the customer was an end-customer or a cloud solution provider.
Do we have “ship-to” address information (country/region, state, city, zip code) in the revenue dashboard?
The download report has the billed to address of customers. In future, we plan to show “ship-to” address as well.
What does “Billed Month” refer to?
Billed Month refers to the order purchase month or the offer usage month for which the billing is done. For example, if a customer used a consumption or usage-based offer in the month of January, on February 4, you can download an accurate January-billed revenue report.
Why do I see a steep drop in estimated revenue trend for current month?
A blue dotted line in the revenue trend represents figures for the current month. The steep drop could be due to the open month for usage-based offers for which billed sales isn't yet generated.
Can I sort the records in the customer leaderboard and the geographic spread widget?
Yes, you sort a column in the widget in ascending or descending order.
How should I read growth percentage change for Total and Others estimated revenue?
The growth percentage change in the revenue dashboard is defined in a similar way to other reports. It's the percentage of change between the value at the end of the selected month range and the value at the beginning of the selected month range.
Why does the estimated revenue timeline not change for different month range selections?
This is expected because all figures for future months are shown for the unprocessed and upcoming revenues until date.
Where are my downloaded reports?
To find your downloaded reports, go to the Insights > Commercial marketplace > Downloads section. The reports are available in .csv/.tsv format. To learn more about downloading reports, see Downloads dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
Can I apply filters to the report?
Yes. You can use the dashboard filters to view the widgets on the dashboard based on the filtered criteria you choose.
How can we reconcile this revenue report to the usage and transaction history report?
The primary purpose of the revenue dashboard is to enable partners to reconcile between billed sales, payouts, and analytics reports (such as orders, usage, and customers).
Use purchase record ID and line-item ID in the revenue report as the unique identifier to match entities across transaction history, usage, and orders reports. See this information on the data dictionary.
What is the relationship between the timing of the revenue report and the usage report? If the revenue report is based on billing, would we compare the current month revenue report to the prior month usage or the current month usage?
Revenue report for current month captures the billed amount for previous month offer consumption or usage. You can download the revenue report on or after the fourth of every month to verify accurate revenue figures for the customer's offer usage in the previous month.
What is the reporting logic for the revenue amount? Why are there are entries with revenue amounts but no transaction or earning amount?
The revenue dashboard contains information about billed sales. It might take some time for earnings to be realized due to the license agreement with the customer or the payment instrument used in the transaction.
The dashboard contains billed sales of all customer transactions, not necessarily those with entries on the transaction history report. The current transaction history report shows transactions for which earnings have been sent, are unprocessed. or are in upcoming status.
However, there can also be billed transactions with other statuses, such as uncollected, when a customer is yet to make a payment for their offer usage or purchase. See the Other statuses in the revenue dashboard.
How is the estimated payout month determined?
See the payout schedules for Enterprise agreement, Microsoft customer agreement, or CSP transactions at Payout schedules and processes.
Customer retention
How should I be using this dashboard?
This dashboard helps business teams understand customer behavior in terms of retention and churn after a customer has deployed your marketplace offer. Use it to answer questions like, “How many customers am I retaining, and for how long?” and “Compared to other offers in a category, are my retention numbers good or bad?”
Use the monthly tab to look at a group of users over a longer time frame. For example, if you run a promotional campaign in a certain month, you can see whether that month had higher retention than months when you didn't run the campaign.
What insights can I get from this dashboard?
Discover whether customers are continuing to use your VM offer over a period of time and whether they churn right away. When you identify which customers are churning, you can contact them or include them in a campaign.
Determine if your investments in marketing are working: the monthly view shows if months when you ran campaigns out-perform months when you didn't.
The retention widget looks like it's showing me 45 days of data. What day is it counting from?
Read Retained customers in the Customer retention dashboard. The data shown here's a normalized view of 18 months of customer data, and so isn't “to” or “from” a specific date.
Can I filter the graphs to show a specific date range?
No. As the documentation indicates, it's a normalized view of 18 months of data. The retention heat map shows monthly views, but you can't filter to specific dates.
What is the difference between Total offers and Offer count?
Total offers is how many there are in the entire category. For example, if you set the “category” filter to security, it's showing how many offers there are in the marketplace under the category Security. Offer count shows the count of offers in the category whose retention scores are above zero. So if you have the Category filter set to Security, the Y axis of the graph is showing how many offers in security have retention scores above 0.
What is the green or red arrow on retention rank?
The arrow shows the change in your retention rank. The time period is determined by the filter at the top; choose days, weeks, or months.
How do I know which customers are retaining and which are churning?
Customers shows this information.
What does dormant mean?
Dormant means a customer hasn't used that offer for several days. They aren't labeled Churned because they could reengage and start using the offer again.
I want to know about the orders or usage of these customers, but that data is in separate reports.
The best way to get that information is to download details from the orders or usage reports and cross-check based on a shared field: customer name.
Why does the retention percentage sometimes fluctuate in the monthly waterfall view?
Note the Cohort column. This tells you how many customers started using your offer in a month. If the column says 60 users in the cohort, then the percentage is calculated month-over-month by dividing the total number of users still using the offer by 60. If it's showing 35%, for example, that means 21 users are still using the offer. If the next month shows 40%, that means that three users came back (24/60). Retention percentages increase when users come back.
What does Cohort mean?
A Cohort is the number of customers who started using your offer in a given month.
How do you define a customer?
A customer is one billing account ID.
Can I filter this by a billing model? For example, can I see all my PAYGO or BYOL offers in one view?
No, you can only view one offer at a time.
Can I see the different SKUs/plans per offer?
No, you can only look at the offer level.
Can I see this data quarterly?
There's no quarterly filter. However, looking at the monthly view will help you see patterns over a quarterly time frame.
Do these views filter out internal users from my company who might be testing the offer?
No, the only identifier available for these users would be email domain; we can't know with confidence whether or not they're internal to your company.
Do these views filter out trial users or customers who are only doing a trial of my product?
No, the functionality to filter only paid customers isn't available yet.
Next steps
- For an overview of analytics reports available in Partner Center, see Access analytics reports for the commercial marketplace in Partner Center.
- For information about your orders in a graphical and downloadable format, see Orders dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
- For Virtual Machine (VM) offers usage and metered billing metrics, see Usage dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
- For detailed information about your customers, including growth trends, see Customers dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
- For a list of your download requests over the last 30 days, see Downloads dashboard in commercial marketplace analytics.
- To see a consolidated view of customer feedback for offers on Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource, see Ratings & reviews analytics dashboard in Partner Center.