The New Microsoft Partner Center (Le Sigh)

Microsoft's latest regurgitation of their Partner Portal is the Microsoft Partner Center.  This is a fair bit different to previous regurgitations as it now requires an Azure AD account to authenticate against.  For newer Partners this won't really be an issue as they will have a single Azure AD tenant that is where their MPN Azure Credits and also their IUR Office 365 rights are assigned.  Most likely.

But for those of us who have been around since before Azure/BPOS/Office 365 existed, that's likely a very different story.  :(

Way back in prehistoric times, many Microsoft Partners had a Live ID (later known as a Personal Account) that they signed into the Partner Portal with.  Then Microsoft came up with Azure and created a tenant based on that Live ID and failed to mention this to their Partner Channel.  So, for instance, if your original Live ID was FSM@rocks.com then a new tenant named "fsmrocks" was created and it was here that the Azure Credits were assigned.

Since many of us longer-term Partners signed up for BPOS (what Office 365 was originally known as) before taking a serious look at Azure, many of us followed the procedure as we'd do for our clients - create a tenant (such as fsm.onmicrosoft.com), set up a custom domain, assign the License Key here (in this case the IUR key) and away you go.  This then created an Azure AD tenant and the world was good.

Or so we thought...

Now there was an Azure AD tenant for your MPN and Azure credits (fsmrocks) and another (fsm.onmicrosoft.com) that had all your real users and the custom domain you used regularly (fsm.com).  And unless you really needed to have Azure guests working with Azure AD COnnect back to your on-premises domain, that was also a non-issue.

Now Partner Center is introduced.  It needs to use an Azure AD account.  But which one?  Which tenant?

The more switched on members of the long-term MS Partner crowd here will see this will be an issue.  And another Partner issue is just what we don't need.  Yet another Partner issue...

So, here we go down the complicated, time consuming and unnecessarily frustrating rabid hole.  (Yes, I know - it really is rabid, though...)

You will need to "merge" the tenants.  If you don't have anything you're not willing to rebuild (or export and import) in Azure on the MPN account, then that's going to be a lot easier.  So you have a source tenant (MPN tenant - in this case fsmrocks) and a destination tenant (Partner Center tenant - in this case fsm.onmicrosoft.com).  We will need to migrate your older MPN account to the new Partner Center (relatively easy) and then create an Azure Support Ticket and have the MPN subscription moved to this new Partner Center tenant (unnecessarily frustrating and difficult).

So, either calling Microsoft Support (hhmmm...) or using their online support you will get the existing MPN account converted to a new Partner Center account.  The primary login for this Partner Account needs to be a user with Admin rights in the destination tenant, so we'll use FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com as an example.  This account needs an email box assigned for the duration of this exercise, which can then be removed.  Once this has finished, you'll be able to log into both https://Portal.Office.com and also https://My.VisualStudio.com with this account, however the My.VisualStudio site won't have your MPN details assigned yet.

Now the fun really starts.

Signing into the source Azure Portal, see if you can go into Subscriptions and initiate a move of the MPN subscription to the destination tenant (

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/billing/billing-subscription-transfer

).  I'm betting it fails.  So kick off a support ticket and ask to have your MPN subscription moved to the new Partner Centre account.  This is where things really can go South.

Quite probably, you won't have a Partner Center account that Azure can see.  I don't know if the Azure team yet know the Partner Center is using Azure AD credentials.  I'm sure in a few years or so they will work it out.  Thre Azure team should contact you within 24 hours and will likely have no idea what you are trying to do, why, and how to fix it effectively.

So after prompting by the Azure Support call center contractor, from the source tenant email address (the old Live ID) you'll eventually need to send them a lot of information - the MPN Subscription ID you wish to move, the physical address of the old tenant, the last 4 digits of the CC used on the old tenant tenant, the email address of the administrator of the new tenant, some screenshots of you logged into the new Partner Center so they can see you can log in, some screenshots of the My.VisualStudio.com login with the destination tenant admin account showing there is no MPN stuff assigned yet, and maybe something else, depending on which call center contractor you get hold of.

Then from the email account of the Partner Center admin (in this case, FSMisLord@fsm.onmicrosoft.com) you need to send the same details as you sent for the source tenant, but with destination tenant information (CC, email of the source tenant, MPN subscription ID, fully worked proof of Legendre's Conjecture, and possibly some other random information about your neighbors across the road).

Eventually, a few dozen emails and days later (hopefully a lot less for you since I have already detailed a lot of information above to help this procedure out) it should be sorted.

If you need to know where to send a bottle of bourbon, contact me for the details.  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

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Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie