Associate Microsoft Certification profile ID (MCID) to a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program

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Appropriate roles: All Partner Center users

This article describes how you can link or unlink your Microsoft Certification profile ID (MCID) with a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program account.

Assessments and certifications help organizations to upskill their employees and additionally helps these organizations to qualify for specific Specializations and Solutions Partner designations program. To learn the details of specific assessment or certifications or training requirements refer to Specialization or Solutions Partner designations pages.

Why this linking is needed

Individual users take assessment or certifications or training with their personal Microsoft Certification Profile ID (MCID). Since these MCIDs are owned by a specific individual, respective individual needs to log in Partner Center and must complete the association. Without this association, even if employees in your organization complete a certification or assessment or training you won't get credit for it.

Once associated, as and when the assessments or certifications are completed by individuals, these will be automatically reflected in Partner center. Your organization will achieve qualifying points for specific Specialization or Solutions partner designation program within ten days of completion of Certification or Assessment.

Note

One individual can link only one MCID (Certification profile) to Partner Center account.

Partner Center account access (prerequisite)

Before employees in your organization can link their respective MCIDs to Partner Center account, they need to have access to Partner Center. To get access to Partner Center reach out to Global admin/Account admin of your organization. Global admin/Account admin of your organization needs to create a user in Partner Center with your official email ID by following these steps. No specific role is needed to do the linkage, adding a user in Partner Center is enough.

Once you get access to Partner Center, use the following steps:

There are two ways a person can complete a specific assessment or certification or training:

  • Partner University account
  • Microsoft Learn account

Partner University account linkage to Partner Center

To link your existing Partner University account OR to get access (along with linkage) follow these steps:

  1. Sign into Partner Center My Learn profile page with your work account.
  2. Select Get Partner University Access. The Partner University page opens.
  3. Use your personal account credentials to log in or sign up.

Once the login is completed, your official work account in Partner Center will be linked to your personal Partner University account. You can browse through multiple certifications or trainings available in Partner University and complete them as required. When you complete these certifications/assessments, your organization will get credit within ten days of completion.

Note

If you want to remove the association between Partner University account and Partner Center account, log in Partner Center My Learn profile page and select Remove access from Your Learning section on the page.

Microsoft Learning account linkage to Partner Center

You'll need to have a Microsoft learning account before you can link it to your Partner Center official work account. Ensure that certification profile is complete and MCID is generated for your Microsoft Learning account. To check the same, log on to your Certification Dashboard and you can find your MCID by following these steps.

To link your Microsoft Learning Account to follow these steps:

  1. Sign into Partner Center My Learn profile page with your work account.
  2. Select Associate Microsoft Learning Account. Microsoft Learn login page opens.
  3. Use your account credentials to sign into your Microsoft certification profile (your MCID). Once the login is completed, your official work account in Partner Center will be linked to your personal Microsoft learning account. You can browse through multiple certifications or trainings available in Microsoft Learning account and complete them as required. When you complete these certifications/assessments, your organization will get credit within ten days of completion.

Can Global admin do the linkage for all the users?

No. Due to privacy considerations, Individual user needs to log in Partner Center and complete the linkage.

What's the time lag once a certification is taken or linkage is completed to get credit in Partner Center?

It usually takes around ten days once you have done the linkage or completed a fresh certification or assessments or training for it to be reflected into Partner Center Specializations or Solutions Partner designations programs.

Sign in to Partner Center My Learn profile page, then select Remove access. Due to privacy considerations, the user must complete the account linking process themselves.

In this case, individual user must link their MCID with new company B. Once the user links their MCID with company B, it will automatically be unlinked from company A.

The user’s Azure Active Directory (AAD/work) account must be deleted from the organization’s tenant by the Global Admin after they leave the company. Once deleted, their exams will be removed from the Skills Report on the data refresh date that is around the 10th of the following month. For example: User left the company on January and their AAD/work account were deleted on the same month. The changes will be reflected on the Skills Report after February 10.

The admin provided sign-in details for a work email account to an individual user but they've had no response.

The admin should first verify the email address used, and then should contact the user to which the account information was provided.

I'm receiving a message that their association is limited. For example, "You've attempted to associate with a partner organization. However, we require a period of 30 days between associations. Your next available date for a subsequent association is XXX"

To protect against abuse, an individual has a limited number of three associations allowed each year. In addition, there's a 30 day cool off period between each association, which starts at the beginning of the association. Each user can check the date in their profile to see when they can start a new association.

Next steps