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Admin portal changes for expired agreements

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When the agreement used to purchase Visual Studio subscriptions expires, the agreement and the subscriptions assigned within it remain available for a limited time. That period might not be the same for all agreements, and more specific information about the length of that period is provided in communications you receive via emails and in the admin portal. Depending on your company's plans, you might need to take some action to assist subscribers or to prevent loss of important information.

Expiration timeline

The timeline for agreement expiration consists of three phases:

Before expiration

Beginning about 120 days before the expiration of your agreement, we send notifications to admins and super admins with information about the expiration. We include steps you might need to take depending on whether your company plans to renew their agreement.

Expired

When your agreement reaches its expiration date, admins and subscribers still have access for a limited time. Access provides an opportunity for your company to complete any ongoing purchasing processes. It also provides admins and subscribers the opportunity to take steps to preserve data if your company doesn't renew their agreement or purchases a new one. Admins will continue to receive notifications during that period with links to specific information to help preserve information such as subscriber lists for future use. Subscribers also receive notifications providing them with guidance around preserving information such as any assets they created in existing Azure subscriptions.

During this phase, both admins and subscribers continue to have access to their respective portals. Admins are able to carry out the full range of subscription management tasks. Subscribers continue to have unrestricted access to their subscription benefits.

Important

While admins and subscribers will continue to have access to their respective resources, it's important that action be taken quickly so that important data is preserved before this period expires and access to the information is lost.

Disabled

When your agreement reaches the end of the expired period:

  • Admins and super admins lose access to any expired agreements in the admin portal. They can't make any changes to subscriptions within the agreement. (Access to any other current agreements in the admin portal remains unaffected. The Get help page continues to be available.)
  • Subscribers lose access to the expired subscription in the subscription portal. If they have any other subscriptions assigned to them as part of another agreement, those subscriptions aren't affected. Thirty days after a Visual Studio subscription is disabled, any Azure subscriptions that rely on the Visual Studio subscription are removed. It's vital that subscribers move their Azure assets to another valid subscription to retain them. Azure has its own notification process that helps guide subscribers in this case.

Preserving your information

There's some information you might want to retain if your agreement expires or you purchase a new agreement.

  • Maximum usage. Understanding how many subscriptions you assigned during the life of your agreement can help your organization purchase the right number of subscriptions for your needs. You can view your usage and export a report from within the admin portal.
  • Your subscriber list. Exporting a list of the subscribers in your current agreement can help you move those subscriptions to a new agreement quickly.

Assisting subscribers

When they begin to receive notifications of the expiration of their subscriptions, subscribers might contact you with questions. Some of the answers to those questions depend on your company's plan. If your company plans to renew their agreement or purchase a new one, you can help your subscribers understand where your company is in the process. If your company doesn't intend to renew, you can help guide them in the process of saving their important information. You might find it helpful to learn how individual subscribers are affected when an agreement expires. Check out our When subscriptions expire article for more information.

Moving to a new agreement

If your company purchases a new agreement, you can move subscribers to a new agreement rather than recreating them in the new agreement.

Next steps