Create and manage an Azure IoT Central application from the CSP portal

The Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is a Microsoft Reseller program. Its intent is to provide our channel partners with a one-stop program to resell all Microsoft Commercial Online Services. Learn more about the Cloud Solution Provider program.

Warning

You'll need Contributor level access to your Azure Subscription to create an IoT Central app. While there may be alternative access levels to create an app, having Contributor level access to the subscription is the recommended path. If you created the subscription yourself, you're automatically an administrator with sufficient access.

As a CSP, you can create and manage Microsoft Azure IoT Central applications on behalf of your customers through the Microsoft Partner Center. When Azure IoT Central applications are created on behalf of customers by CSPs, just like with other CSP managed Azure services, CSPs manage billing for customers. A charge for Azure IoT Central appears in your total bill in the Microsoft Partner Center.

To get started, sign-in to your account on the Microsoft Partner Portal and select a customer for whom you want to create an Azure IoT Central application. Navigate to Service Management for the customer from the left nav.

Microsoft Partner Center, customer view

Azure IoT Central is listed as a service available to administer. Select the Azure IoT Central link on the page to create new applications or manage existing applications for this customer.

Azure IoT Central available to manage

You land on the Azure IoT Central Application Manager page. Azure IoT Central keeps context that you came from the Microsoft Partner Center and that you came to manage that particular customer. The Application Manager page header shows the Microsoft Partner Center context. From here, you can either navigate to an existing application you created earlier for this customer to manage or create a new application for the customer.

Create Manager for CSPs

Screenshot of the IoT Central application manager page.

To create an Azure IoT Central application, select Build in the left menu. Choose one of the industry templates, or choose Custom app to create an application from scratch. You must complete all the fields on the Application Create page and then choose Create.

Application name

The name of your application is displayed on the Application Manager page and within each Azure IoT Central application. You can choose any name for your Azure IoT Central application. Choose a name that makes sense to you and to others in your organization.

Application URL

The application URL is the link to your application. You can save a bookmark to it in your browser or share it with others.

When you enter the name for your application, your application URL is autogenerated. If you prefer, you can choose a different URL for your application. Each Azure IoT Central URL must be unique within Azure IoT Central. You see an error message if the URL you choose has already been taken.

Directory

Azure IoT Central knows the customer you selected in the Microsoft Partner Portal, so you see just the Microsoft Entra tenant for that customer in the Directory field.

A Microsoft Entra tenant contains user identities, credentials, and other organizational information. Multiple Azure subscriptions can be associated with a single Microsoft Entra tenant.

To learn more, see Microsoft Entra ID.

Azure subscription

An Azure subscription enables you to create instances of Azure services. Azure IoT Central automatically finds all Azure Subscriptions of the customer to which you have access, and displays them in a dropdown on the Create Application page. Choose an Azure subscription to create a new Azure IoT Central Application.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, you can create one in the Microsoft Partner Center. After you create the Azure subscription, navigate back to the Create Application page. Your new subscription appears in the Azure Subscription drop-down.

To learn more, see Azure subscriptions.

Location

Location is where you'd like to create the application. Typically, you should choose the location that's physically closest to your devices to get optimal performance. Currently, you can create an IoT Central application in the Australia East, Canada Central, Central US, East US, East US 2, Japan East, North Europe, South Central US, Southeast Asia, UK South, West Europe, and West US regions. Once you choose a location, you can't later move your application to a different location.

Application template

Choose the application template you want to use for your application.

Next steps

Now that you have learned how to create an Azure IoT Central application as a CSP, here's the suggested next step: