Multichannel support — using other partners to support customer subscriptions purchased elsewhere

Applies to: Partner Center | Partner Center for Microsoft Cloud for US Government

Appropriate roles: User management admin | Sales agent

Partner Center's multichannel feature supports scenarios in which a customer wants to hire a partner to manage and support a subscription they purchased elsewhere.

Multichannel support applies when a customer:

• Already purchased subscriptions directly from Microsoft or through the Advisor, Open, or EA programs.

• Purchased subscriptions from a third party who is either not in the Cloud Solution Provider program or not a Microsoft Syndication Partner. Customers can't switch existing license-based subscriptions to a different partner in the Cloud Solution Provider program; they must wait until the end of their subscription or cancel before moving.

To support these services:	Do this:
License-based services	To provide support for multichannel accounts, you must request permissions from the customer to manage their subscriptions. For more information, see Request a reseller relationship with a customer.
Usage-based services	For a customer who already has a subscription to Microsoft Azure from another channel (such as Advisor, Open, or EA), create a new Azure subscription in Partner Center, manually enter the subscription details, and then cancel the individual services or the entire subscription. Azure CSP can coexist with different channels. For a customer who already has a subscription to Microsoft Azure from another partner, for example, you can switch Azure services to the other partner. For more information, see Switch Azure subscriptions to a different partner.