Explore Azure and cloud products benefits
Appropriate roles: Global admin | MPN partner admin
This article describes Azure and cloud benefits that are available to partners on Partner Center. It also describes how to activate certain types of Azure and cloud subscriptions.
View your Azure and cloud benefits
As a partner in the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), you might have access to many technical and go-to-market benefits. If you're a Global admin or MPN Partner admin, you can explore many of these benefits directly from the Partner Center dashboard.
To see your Azure and cloud products benefits:
- From the Partner Center Benefits menu, select Azure & cloud.
On the Azure & cloud products page that appears you can see:
- Azure and cloud product subscription benefits that are available to you, whether license-based subscriptions or usage-based subscriptions.
- License quantity assigned for each product
- Offer type that provisioned a specific benefit product to you
- Benefit type (whether it comes from core or incremental)
- Date that a benefit expires
Usage-based versus license-based subscriptions
The Azure & cloud products page lists two types of subscription benefits that are provisioned for you:
- Usage-based subscriptions (Microsoft Azure Credit)
- License-based subscriptions (such as Office 365)
Usage-based subscriptions
There are two types of usage-based subscriptions you can receive, depending on the active offers available to your MPN membership (for example Microsoft Action Pack, a silver competency, or a gold competency): Azure monthly credit and Azure bulk (yearly) credit:
- Azure monthly credit: This subscription might appear as something like $100/month (or equivalent in local currency).
- Azure bulk (yearly) credit: This subscription might appear as something like $6,000/year, $12,000/year, or $13,000/year (or the equivalent in local currency).
Activate a Microsoft Azure subscription
To activate a Microsoft Azure subscription in Partner Center:
Assign access to a user within the company or to a guest user. The user must already have a user entry in your Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant.
When you're assured that the user has a user entry in your Azure AD tenant, sign in to the Partner Center dashboard.
From the menu on the left, select MPN > Benefits > Azure and cloud.
From the View details column, select the down arrow for that subscription.
Note
The status of your prepaid subscription is retrieved from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center portal and displayed when View Details is selected. If your subscription is active, you are prompted with a link to extend the subscription end date using the token. If the subscription is in a grace period or expired, you will see a link that can be used to redeem the token and activate the subscription.
In the User Assignment area, select Assign user to assign that user the desired usage-based subscription benefit.
Once the user assignment is successful, the assigned user should activate the benefit on Azure portal.
When you assign an Azure monthly credit of something like $100 per month (or the equivalent in local currency), you can add or remove users from this subscription at any time.
When you assign the Azure bulk (yearly) credit, the Remove option isn't available in Partner Center. Instead, you need to transfer the bulk credit to someone else during your enrollment year. This type of credit subscription also can’t be combined with other licensing, prepaid, or credit offers (for example, the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, Cloud Solution Provider, or Azure in Open).
License-based subscriptions
In the license-based subscriptions section of the Azure and cloud products page, you can find all cloud products that require a product key for activation, such as Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Intune, and Power BI. Products are offered based on the type of offer available to you as a partner in the MPN, for example Microsoft Action Pack, silver competency membership, or gold competency membership.
To activate a license-based subscription:
Locate the subscription on the Azure and cloud products page.
From the View details column, select the down arrow for that subscription.
Read the instructions on the subsequent page to learn how to redeem the keys.
When you're ready to redeem the key, select Activation Walkthrough.
If you want to activate a new subscription, or if your existing subscription is disabled or expired, open a private or incognito browser window. Then copy and paste the following link and follow the instructions: https://signup.microsoft.com/productkeystart.
Note
Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Microsoft Intune, and Windows 10 Enterprise benefits are no longer a part of competency benefit packages. You can activate Microsoft 365 E3 or Microsoft 365 E5 benefits that act as replacements to the standalone benefit packages that are discontinued..
If you want to extend the end date or add more seats or licenses to an existing subscription, open a private or incognito browser window. Then copy and paste the following link and follow the instructions: https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/subscriptions.
Note
After you redeem a key, that key can't be redeemed a second time. Also note the following important points:
Confirm whether or not you need to add more licenses (seats), how many, and whether or not to extend the end date. If you choose to add more licenses (seats) and you don't extend the end date, the system will provide you with less than 12 months of active subscription.
Make sure you're signed in with the correct credentials and that you're activating the keys on the correct Azure AD tenant. Always sign in with a private or incognito browser window to ensure that you're activating keys on the correct tenant.
The benefit expiration date shown in Microsoft Partner Center indicates the last date to exercise usage rights on that benefit. This date might differ from the subscription end date listed in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center portal. This can be due to several factors, such as the benefit activation date, the number of licenses associated with the key, and the licenses added or extended on the admin portal.
Extend the end date or add more licenses
To add more licenses or extend the end date for an existing subscription:
Copy and paste the following link into a private or incognito browser window:
https://admin.microsoft.com/AdminPortal/Home#/subscriptions.When you're signing in to your Microsoft 365 admin center portal, make sure you're using the correct Azure AD tenant. Then, select the cloud subscription from the list:
To renew the existing subscription, select Extend end date. Extending the end date increases the duration of the subscription, and keeps the number of licenses or seats the same.
Important
If your subscription is disabled or expired, you might not find the option to extend the end date. Open a private or an incognito browser, copy and paste the following link, and follow the instructions to proceed with activation:
https://signup.microsoft.com/productkeystart.To add more licenses (seats) to an existing subscription, select Add licenses. If you also want to renew the existing subscription, don't select Add licenses. Selecting Add licenses reduces the subscription duration and increases the number of licenses in the subscription.
In the side panel, select Redeem product key.
Enter the product key and then select Validate to verify the key details.
Select Redeem to complete the process.
Note
Each product key provides users with 12 months of service from the date you redeem the product key. However, if your existing users have an early renewal date, two dates will be averaged out to make it easier to manage your subscriptions based on a single end date for all of your users. No time is added or lost during the calculation. The calculation used to average out two dates is the following:
[A (initial users) x B (time remaining on subscription) + C (new users) x (12 months)] ÷ total number of users = new time remaining.
Activate a subscription for the first time
Follow these steps if you're activating a subscription for the first time. You can also use these steps if your subscription is in a disabled or expired state:
Copy and paste the following link into a private or incognito browser window:
https://signup.microsoft.com/productkeystart.Make sure you've signed in to the correct Azure AD tenant account. After you're signed in, verify the tenant details.
Enter the 25-digit key obtained from Partner Center, and then select Next.
Verify the displayed product details, number of licenses, and subscription duration. When you're ready, select Redeem to activate the subscription.
The newly activated subscription is available in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, from the Your products tab.
Licensing scenarios
This section describes a few sample licensing scenarios for subscriptions associated with Azure and cloud products. In these scenarios, you learn how subscription end dates are calculated.
Scenario 1
If you have 100 licenses active on a subscription and you're trying to extend the end date by using a key with 25 licenses, the end date will be extended by three months for the subscription with 100 licenses.
Scenario 2
If you have 100 licenses active on a subscription and you're trying to extend the end date by using a key with 100 licenses, the end date will be extended by 12 months.
Scenario 3
If you have five licenses active on a subscription and you're trying to extend the end date by using a key with 10 licenses, the end date will be extended by 24 months for the subscription with five licenses or seats.
Scenario 4
If you're trying to extend the end date by using a key with more than 3x the active licenses or seats, you get the following error message:
This message is by design, because you can only extend the subscription end date by a maximum of three years.
Next steps
Learn about migrating from Office 365 E3 to Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
Read more about the Microsoft 365 business voice.
Learn about country and region availability for business voice.
Learn about deploying Windows 10 with Microsoft 365.