New commerce overage for telco pay-as-you-go
Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Sales agent
Partners can now enable overage capabilities for those services that allow it.
Note
In traditional license-based scenarios, there wasn't a way to enable service usage beyond monthly limits. Customers needing more than 120 minutes needed to purchase communication credits, or comm credits, themselves directly from Microsoft. These communication credits weren't offered in Partner Center.
The new commerce experiences for license-based services include many new capabilities and are available to all Cloud Solution Provider (CSPs). For more information, see new commerce experiences overview.
Using new commerce telco pay-as-you-go
To identify which product SKUs include overage capabilities
- View the Partner Center catalog product SKUs.
- Filter the new commerce price list by includesOverage in the tags column.
Partners can purchase the offers. The system configures an overage subscription that only collects costs when customers exceed the allocated monthly calling minutes that come with the offer purchased.
To enable overage
Partners can assign overage or disable it using the Manage Overage feature on the Subscriptions list. This option is only accessible if the partner has subscriptions that enable overage.
Only admin agents on the transacting partner account can enable overage. Indirect resellers need to have their indirect provider's admin agents enable overage. An Azure subscription is a prerequisite to enable the overage. If there isn't any subscription, it can be created while activating the overage.
From the Manage Subscriptions page, select Manage Overage. From this page, you can activate and assign which Azure subscription the overage charges will flow to, or create a new one. At any time, you can turn off overage by setting the consumption subscription to None.
Note
Manage Overage requires having the ability to create an Azure plan. By default, partners can't provision Azure plans using their sandbox accounts. Partners who need to do so with their sandbox account must apply for access. To learn more, see Azure plan sandbox documentation.
Manage Overage is only accessible if the partner has subscriptions that enable overage. When monthly overage charges accrue, they're shown in the partner's reconciliation file.
To track overage
See the Microsoft Cost Management capabilities in the Azure portal.
Pricing and margins
Telco pay-as-you-go is billed based on monthly usage when the customer uses the number of calling minutes for the plan they have. Partners can discover and download the pricing for these charges at the Microsoft Teams Phone and Calling site. Partners can select the option: See rates for where you want to call on the page to download and view the rates for various calling plans.
The pricing and calling plan overage charges aren't reduced for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) audiences. There are no CSP discounts or margins for overage charges. ERP and Unit Price can be the same or have a difference per specific product or segment.
Important details about overage
- Purchasing a license-based product SKU that includes overage capabilities will only purchase the license-based product. Partners must take another step to turn on overage by going to the subscription management page and clicking Manage overage.
- Only Admin Agents for the transacting partner can enable overage.
- Enabling overage create a no-cost Azure plan and an associated default Azure subscription, Subscription 1, specifically for overage consumption. If the Azure plan already exists, enabling overage creates the new subscription under the existing Azure plan. Partners can always view or reassign overage to other subscriptions in Manage overage. Customers that aren't yet on an Azure plan must transition to an Azure plan before they can enable overage.
- Telco pay-as-you-go charges will not receive partner earned credit (PEC). You should expect to be charged and billed the amounts in the Microsoft Teams Phone and Calling site.
Overage settings are per service per customer. Only one overage subscription can be assigned at a time. If a partner makes a first-time purchase of E5 with calling plans for a customer, that partner will have overage assigned to their consumption subscription. If a second partner purchases an E5 subscription with calling plans for the same customer, the system respects the first partner's purchase and assignment.
Only the Partner for the first purchase can manage overage from the Subscriptions page. The Partner can disable or turn it off by assigning overage to None. If overage settings need to be changed from one partner to another, the three parties involved must first agree. After they agree, the existing partner can set overage to None to enable the other partner to set overage to their subscription.
Disable "Auto-recharge" for Communication Credits (if currently or previously on legacy)
Previously, customers would need to subscribe to Communication Credits to be able to acquire toll-free numbers for Audio Conferencing, auto attendant and call queue capabilities available with Microsoft Teams Phone.
- When the Communications Credit has a positive balance, the commerce tool uses the remaining Communication Credits for billing until the remaining balance is drained.
- When the Communications Credit balance is zero, and the CSP has configured telco pay-as-you-go for the customer, the commerce system moves the customer to postpaid, and the new meter is validated.
Important
Most customers have the "Auto-recharge" flag enabled within their account which will automatically refill their Communications Credit balance to whatever threshold level they configured it. You will need to disable this option if they wish to utilize the consumption meter; otherwise, the Communications Credit balance will indefinitely refill itself and the commerce system won't switch to the post-pay mechanism.
Telco pay-as-you-go APIs
- SKU properties include a consumptionType property to help the PartnerIDentify whether a SKU enables overage.
- Get overage to understand if any overage is currently set up for your customer.
- Update overage to update customer's overage to an Azure subscription or to set it to None.