December 2023 announcements

  • Article

This page provides the announcements for Microsoft Partner Center for December 2023.

Important updates to public sector launch in new commerce

Update on new commerce timeline for CSP Government Community Cloud, education and nonprofit legacy offers.

  • Date: December 22, 2023
  • Workspace: Customers
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider partners (indirect providers and direct bill) in all markets/countries/regions.

There has been an update to the previously announced timeline for CSP legacy Public Sector offers (Government Community Cloud, education and nonprofit) in new commerce. Microsoft will launch Public Sector offers in new commerce across four waves beginning March 1, 2024. The revised launch wave dates are shown in the following table:

Education, nonprofit, US GCC offers Price list preview Available in new commerce
Wave 1 February 1, 2024 March 1, 2024
Wave 2 February 1, 2024 March 1, 2024
Wave 3 March 1, 2024 April 1, 2024
Wave 4 April 1, 2024 May 1, 2024

While these offers appear on the catalog and price lists, the ability to purchase won't be available until March 1, 2024. Partners will receive an error message if they attempt to purchase via Partner center or API, public sector subscriptions in new commerce before they're available to purchase. There are currently no changes to later public sector milestones previously communicated:

  • May 1, 2024: New subscription purchases for available public sector product SKUs must be on new commerce.
  • July 1, 2024: Microsoft led migrations from legacy to new commerce starts.

Donation Product SKUs

Donation product SKUs for nonprofits will be available to purchase on March 1, 2024, as follows:

  • Microsoft 365 Business Premium, free up to 10 seats
  • Power Apps Per App, free up to 10 seats

Next Steps

  • Share this information with all appropriate contacts in your organization.
  • Review the new commerce license-based price list in the Partner Center Pricing workspace to find the offers included each month

Nonprofit: Office 365 E2 Grant Discontinuation update

Microsoft will disable Office 365 E2 subscriptions that have been incorrectly renewed

  • Date: December 18, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: CSP direct-bill and indirect providers, Microsoft Sellers, Managed Partners

On April 3, 2023, Tech for Social Impact (TSI), part of Microsoft Philanthropies, announced the final discontinuation of the legacy Office 365 E2 grant offer that was provided through the Web Direct channel.

It has come to our attention that due to a technical issue in the offer catalog system, subscriptions of the discontinued Office 365 E2 offer are incorrectly auto-renewing.

To address this issue, Microsoft will disable Office 365 E2 subscriptions that have been incorrectly renewed.

Microsoft discontinued the legacy plan in 2013. This plan will no longer be supported.

The discontinuation of Office 365 E2 won't affect any plans currently available in our nonprofit offer catalog, including 10 granted licenses of Microsoft 365 Business Premium, 300 granted licenses of Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and up to 2000 granted licenses of Office 365 E1 via Enterprise Agreement. We'll continue to provide discounts to nonprofits of up to 75 percent on many Microsoft 365 products.

  • At the next renewal on or after October 1, 2023, customers subscribed to this legacy offer can renew into the Office 365 E1 plan, priced at USD $2.50 per user per month.

  • Alternatively, customers can transition up to 300 of their users from the legacy Office 365 E2 nonprofit grant to the Microsoft 365 Business Basic nonprofit grant or can access up to 2000 granted Office 365 E1 licenses through an Enterprise Agreement.

Notifications were sent directly to the Global Admins and Billing Admins on April 3, 2023, and posted through the Tenant Admin Center Alerts. If any nonprofit customers ask you about this outreach from TSI, please direct them to the Nonprofit Support team for further assistance.

Action: We encourage you to engage with the customer and support them in making the right decision on what to do and supply the grant or discounted licenses that they need to replace the Office 365 E2 grant licenses

Next steps

Review the Office 365 E2 Grant Discontinuation notice (PDF)

Review the Office 365 E2 Grant Discontinuation FAQs (PDF)

Reminder: New CSP-Hoster quarterly reporting replaces monthly reporting

We're making CSP-Hoster reporting simple and less frequent, including no longer requiring customer tenant ID information.

  • Date: December 18, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: Existing CSP-Hosters

In October 2023, we launched the new quarterly reporting template, which replaces the prior monthly quarterly reporting template. The reporting template is simplified to comprise only six products and their license totals. Additionally, CSP-Hosters no longer need to provide end-customer information for either license-included or BYOL.

The first quarterly report, for the quarter of October to December 2023, is due by January 10, 2024.

The new reporting template can be found in Partner Center.

Next steps

  • Leverage the new reporting template to submit your quarterly report by January 10, 2024.

Questions?

Partners can reach out to csp-hoster@microsoft.com with any questions.

Monthly Update: Important actions partners need to take to secure the partner ecosystem

Important capabilities and updates to improve your security posture and protect your customers' tenants are now available.

  • Date: December 18, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: Direct bill partners, indirect providers, and indirect resellers transacting through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program and with advisors

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is shown to significantly reduce the risk of account takeover, and Microsoft has a goal of 100 percent multifactor authentication. Security defaults make it easier to help organizations from identity-related attacks like password spray, replay, and phishing common in today's environments. Microsoft makes these preconfigured security settings available to everyone, and they enable a basic level of security at no extra cost, including requiring MFA for all users and administrators.

Starting in March 2024, Microsoft will enable security defaults on all CSP partner tenants that haven't already enabled security defaults, conditional access, or a third-party MFA solution. We recommend that partners turn on security defaults immediately if needed.

Available now

  • The Compliance admin role in Partner Center is intended to help partners authorize a point of contact they want Microsoft to engage with for compliance-related matters. Ensure this role has been assigned to someone in your company and that the point of contact is kept current as change happens within your company. To learn more, see Compliance admin role in Partner Center.

  • Partner MFA statistics - To help you better understand how well your tenant is secured and where action needs to be taken, we've created an MFA reporting page. The article: Security at your organization - Multifactor authentication (MFA) statistics provides valuable insights that will help you take timely action to enable MFA for all your users, ensuring that your environment is as secure as possible.

  • Device management will require GDAP relationships starting January 31, 2024. To ensure a seamless experience, Microsoft recommends the Directory Reader as the least privileged role for this action. Review how to upload devices to a new batch, update devices with a policy, and upload devices to an existing batch for more details.

Reminders:

Next steps

  1. Review the securing the channel journey map to navigate the transformational journey for partners to Zero Trust.

  2. Strengthen your security posture and navigate the evolving threat landscape with Microsoft cybersecurity tools and resources.

  3. Sign up for dedicated CSP Security Q&A sessions to have your queries answered by subject matter experts.

  4. Find guidance and resources in securing the partner and customer ecosystems partner readiness gallery.

Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit evolving subscription and packaging model

  • Date: December 13, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: CSP direct-bill and indirect providers, Microsoft Sellers, Managed Partners

Our current Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit intellectual property (IP) has been packaged in two incremental per-tenant subscription options; Cloud for Nonprofit Basic (limited IP inclusions, at no additional cost) and Cloud for Nonprofit Standard (incremental IP inclusions, and Microsoft Technical Support).

To remove the friction of the subscription and accelerate time to value for customers and partners, we're evolving the packaging model for Cloud for Nonprofit to be aligned to the overall Microsoft Industry Cloud packaging shifts that occurred earlier this year at Inspire (July 2023).

On January 1, 2024, the current Microsoft Cloud for Nonprofit plans will be simplified to a single plan and renamed Fundraising and Engagement. It will be made available at no additional cost to nonprofits, educational organizations, and commercial customers. These customers will be able to take advantage of the existing vertical solutions (for example: Fundraising and Engagement, Volunteer Management and Engagement, Constituent Marketing Journeys and Program Impact Dashboard) to add incremental value to their existing Microsoft Cloud investments.

Note

Standard P1 and P2 prices for Government will remain unchanged.

With the above alignment and subscription model changes, we believe the industry cloud solutions will continue to help increase adoption of our horizontal commercial solution areas (CSAs). These changes will provide customers with simplicity and predictability when engaging with Microsoft and expand industry clouds to represent the totality of the Microsoft Cloud (across CSAs, partners, and industry-specific IP). We'll continue to invest, build, and expand industry-specific solution templates that accelerate time-to-value for our customers and partners.

Next steps

Questions?

Contact Us (microsoft.com)

UPDATE: Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Grant Sunset for the nonprofit sector

  • Date: December 13, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: CSP direct-bill and indirect providers, Microsoft Sellers, Managed Partners

As we previously shared in our community posts from July 2023 and September 2023, we updated our grant portfolio to sunset the Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise grant. We notified customers through direct communication and requested that Partners prepare their nonprofit customers to transition to a different offer.

Unfortunately, due to a bug in the catalog system, customers have been able to renew the retired Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise grant offer instead of being transitioned to the current Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise discounted offer.

  • To successfully retire this legacy grant offer, Microsoft will be updating all active subscriptions of the Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise grant offer to turn off auto renewal.
  • Any customers that renewed the legacy grant after October 1, 2023, will be allowed to continue the legacy grant and will have until the end of their new subscription period to transition to a different offer.
  • Customers that don't migrate to a new subscription for Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise before their next renewal date will have their subscription move into an expired state.
  • For 90 days after expiration, customer administrators can access subscription data for export purposes, but users will no longer have access to Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise services or data.
  • After the 90-day period, the limited access will be revoked, and the data deleted.

Customers are encouraged to move to the current Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise discounted offer as soon as possible to avoid disruption and data loss.

CALL to ACTION: Please proactively reach out to your nonprofit customers to support their move to a different SKU and to assist them in any technology needs they might have.

Next steps

Questions?

Contact us (Microsoft.com)

Now Live! Partner Center Technical Corner blog series: December 2023 edition

The December edition of the Partner Center Technical Corner blog is live! This edition spotlights Microsoft Commerce Incentives as well as an end of year wrap up.

  • Date: December 12, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: All partners

The December edition covers the following key topics:

  • Securing the channel
  • New commerce experience in CSP
  • Rewarding partner performance
  • Membership
  • Accounts and action center
  • Co-sell
  • Partner Center roadmap

Previous editions

Next steps

The December NCE price list has Public Sector SKUs that will only become available in January

The following Public Sector SKUs from the December 1 price list will only become available for Partners to transact starting January 1. They were accidentally added to the December price list.

  • Date: December 12, 2023
  • Workspace: Pricing
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider partners (indirect providers and direct bill) in all markets/countries/regions.

Note

Check the latest announcement for recent changes to new commerce public sector availability dates.

Product Id Product Title Sku Id Segment
CFQ7TTC0J1S4 Windows 10 Education A3 0008 Edu
CFQ7TTC0LGV4 Dynamics 365 Finance 001B Charity
CFQ7TTC0LGV4 Dynamics 365 Finance 001D Edu
CFQ7TTC0RJ8N Power Pages authenticated users 000H, 000J, 000P, 000N, 000M, 000L Edu
CFQ7TTC0RJ8R Power Pages anonymous users 000K, 000L, 000R, 000P, 000N, 000M Edu

Download hub is now available for marketplace insights

Now Live: Downloads hub for Marketplace Insights in the Insights workspace

  • Date: December 07, 2023
  • Workspace: Insights
  • Impacted audience: ISV partners

Download hub will be replacing the existing Download reports. You can now create templates and schedule the reports.

Top features for this release:

  • Schedule reports to be downloaded based on a defined frequency
  • Create or use templates
  • Filter on data
  • Preview data before downloading it
  • Favorites for user defined templates

Important

On January 31, 2024, Downloads hub will replace Marketplace Insights | Download reports.

Next steps

  • For more information, see Downloads hub in the Partner Center documentation.

Important changes to Commercial pricing update for Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Taiwan

  • Date: December 6, 2023
  • Workspace: Pricing
  • Impacted audience: Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and Volume Licensing (VL) partners in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Sweden, and Taiwan.

To learn more about this change and other upcoming launches, sign in to view the CSP partner launch calendar or the Volume Licensing partner launch calendar.

Next steps

Review the Partner Launch Calendar and the monthly newsletter.

View the latest promotions and offers

The latest Global Promo Readiness Guide is now published.

  • Date: December 05, 2023
  • Workspace: Pricing
  • Impacted audience: Partners transacting through the Cloud Solution Provider program

The latest Global Promo Readiness Guide, a consolidated view of all current and upcoming promotions, is now available on the Operations Readiness resource gallery. See active and upcoming promotions and offers at the Global Promo Readiness Guide collection.

Next steps

Review the latest monthly Promo Guide in the Operations Readiness resource gallery. Share this information with the appropriate contacts in your organization, and let us know if the guide is helpful by responding to the "Was this page helpful?" question at the bottom of the page.

Questions?

If you have questions, go to CSP Support.

December Cloud solution provider (CSP) monthly updates and community reminder

Monthly views are now published including the updated partner launch calendars, the CSP Bimonthly Update newsletter, along with CSP community resources that provide you with essential program updates.

  • Date: December 5, 2023
  • Workspace: General
  • Impacted audience: CSP direct bill partners and indirect providers

Always available—Launch content on demand

For a consolidated view of all recent and active launches in a single place, visit the partner launch calendars collection. You can find a timeline for each launch and links to published materials to help you learn more about that launch.

The downloadable CSP Bimonthly Update newsletter, which aggregates recent CSP announcements, updates, events, and reminders in an easy-to-read document.

Partner Journey Maps provide detailed navigation along the journey of Microsoft's highest priority transformations.

Need licensing readiness? The monthly CSP spotlight webinars cover the latest CSP licensing information available for all partners.

CSP Community Q&A reminder

The monthly CSP community Q&A session provides you with an opportunity to learn more and ask questions about changes affecting the program.

Register here to join upcoming calls.

Next steps

Review the Partner Launch Calendar, monthly newsletter, and register for upcoming Community Q&A calls.

Questions?

The monthly CSP community Q&A call is the best place to bring questions about operational change in the CSP program. You can submit a question up to 48 hours before the call.

Questions on any other CSP topic? Visit the Partner Center support page.