This article describes several of the integration requirements for the Microsoft commercial marketplace to enable Azure customers to subscribe to SaaS offers.
Discovery experience
Once a SaaS offer is published, Azure users can discover it in Azure Marketplace. Your customers can filter offers based on product type (SaaS) and discover the SaaS services they're interested in.
Purchase experience
Once a user is interested in a specific SaaS service, the user can subscribe to it from Azure Marketplace.
What does it mean for an Azure user to subscribe to a SaaS offer in Azure Marketplace?
It means that a user can view the terms of use and privacy statement associated with the SaaS service, and agree to pay for it as per the billing terms set by you, the publisher of the SaaS offer, on Microsoft's invoice. Users can use their existing payment profile in Azure to pay for the SaaS service consumption.
This ability is beneficial in several ways. Customers can now discover and subscribe in one place using Microsoft Cloud Platform as a trusted source, without having to vet every ISV software it intends to use. Also, customers can use their existing payment profile without having to explicitly pay each ISV software independently.
Is the user charged automatically when the offer is subscribed?
While subscribing to the SaaS offer, the user has agreed to pay for consumption of the SaaS service through the Microsoft platform. However, charges will only start when the offer is consumed. The user must go to your SaaS offer and confirm account creation to start consuming the offer. You will then notify Microsoft to start billing for this customer SaaS subscription.
How are you notified when a user subscribes to your SaaS offer?
After subscribing to an offer, the Azure user can discover and manage all their offers in Azure. By default, the state of a newly subscribed SaaS offer is shown as Provisioning, fulfillment pending. In this state, the Azure user will be prompted with an action to Configure Account, in order to browse to their SaaS subscription management experience in the Azure portal.
When the user selects Configure Account, they are redirected to the SaaS service website. The publisher configured the URL at the time of publishing the offer. This page is referred to as the publisher's landing page. Azure users sign in to the SaaS landing page based on their existing Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) credentials in Azure.
Important
You must sign in the buying user using Azure Active Directory, Single Sign On (Azure AD SSO) as directed by the policy. The mail property on the user resource retrieved from the Microsoft Graph API gives you the contact information for the case of Azure AD and userPrincipalName for MSA. It is possible that the “mail” field is empty for Azure AD, and the user may not have an email recorded. If this is the case, we recommend you detect that and ask for a contact email. This is your only chance to get a contact email to reach a customer during or after the customer on-boarding process.
When the Azure user is redirected to the landing page, a token is added to the query URL. This token is short-lived, and valid for a time duration of 24 hours. You can then detect the presence of this token, and call the Microsoft API to get more context associated with the token.
For more information about the API contract for handling transact scenarios in the life cycle of a SaaS offer, see SaaS fulfillment API.
How do you know the SaaS offer to which the user subscribes in Azure?
The response to the Resolve API includes the offer and plan information associated with the SaaS subscription.
How can the Azure user change the plan associated with this Azure subscription?
The Azure user can change the plan associated with the SaaS subscription directly in the SaaS experience, or through the Microsoft platform.
Conversions can be done at any time in the billing cycle. You are prompted to acknowledge any conversion, which will become effective once acknowledged.
Pre-paid plan (monthly or annual) rates are pro-rated. Any overage emitted up to the time of conversion will be charged in the next invoice. New overages will be emitted based on the new plan.
Note
You can block downgrades if you do not want to support specific conversion paths.
The sequence below captures the flow when an Azure customer changes a plan in the SaaS experience:
The sequence below captures the flow when an Azure customer changes a plan in Microsoft's online store:
How can the Azure user unsubscribe from the plan associated with Azure subscription?
An Azure user can unsubscribe from a purchased SaaS offer either directly in the SaaS experience, or through the Microsoft platform. Once the user unsubscribes, they will no longer be charged from next billing cycle.
The sequence below captures the flow when an Azure customer unsubscribes to the SaaS offer in the SaaS experience:
The sequence below captures the flow when Azure user unsubscribes in Microsoft's online store:
