Migrate subscriptions to new commerce
Appropriate roles: Admin agent | Sales agent
Note
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.
New commerce migration
New commerce license-based product Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) were made generally available on January 10, 2022. Since then, various migration capabilities were made available to help partners migrate from tradition license-based (legacy) to new commerce product skus.
Since March 2022, most Commercial license-based product SKUs are only available in new commerce. In March 2022 many of these traditional license-based offers were removed from the catalog, meaning they were no longer purchasable in the old system and only available via New commerce.
Legacy offers removed from the catalog when a new commerce equivelent is available are identified in the legacy price list as deprecated (DEPR). DEPR offers can't be purcahsed as new subscriptions. DEPR offer subscriptions continue to function and renew until either the partner migrates the subscription to new commerce, or if the Microsoft-led migration is scheduled for the subscription. Partners can verify the Microsoft-led migration data export before their legacy subscription's end date to verify whether it will be migrated. Partners can see oegacy offers remvoed from the catalog but not migratable as deleted (DEL) in the legacy price lists. Partners should review the Cloud Solution Provider Offer Retirement Guide to verify legacy DEL offers that are scheduled to no longer renew. Partners can see all price lists, both for legacy and new commerce license-based services, in the pricing and offers page in partner center. Partners need to be logged into the partner center to get these pricing files. Partners can find out more about pricing files and attributes in the pricing and offers topic.
Migration APIs and Partner Center migration capabilities are available since March 2022. Partners can find the mapping between traditional (legacy) and new commerce product SKUs in the legacy offer matrix NCE Mapping tab.
Note
Since March 2022, all new commercial product SKUs are only made available via new commerce. Special segment offers are available for both new commerce and traditional (legacy) until August 1, 2024. Special segements will only be available as new commerce after August 1, 2024.
Microsoft-led migration
Microsoft migrates legacy commercial license-based subscriptions to new commerce at the end of each subscription's term starting January 11, 2024. Microsoft-led migration for commercial subscriptions was announced in July 2023.
Note
Microsoft led migration will start on January 11, 2024 at 12:00 AM UTC time. Subscriptions with end dates after this time will be part of the migration. Partners using APIs, this is reflected as the legacy subscription term or committment end date as 2024-01-11T00:00:00Z.
Microsoft-led migration overview
Legacy to new commerce offer migration capabilities were available since March 2022. The migration path and concept isn't new. Microsoft added the ability for partners to schedule migrations in November 2022. Scheduling enables partners to determine the specific date the legacy subscription migrates on. The scheduling capability also enables the partner to align the migration to the legacy subscription's renewal date. Currently partners can migrate "now" or schedule the migration for a specific date or for the renewal date of the legacy subscription. The Microsoft-led migration feature functions the same as any scheduled migration, but in this case Microsoft creates and executes the scheduled migrations at legacy renewal instead of partners scheduling the migration. Partners can validate how the migrations work by setting their own scheduled migrations in sandbox and validating the execution.
Microsoft-led migration involves Microsoft creating a scheduled migration to happen at the end of the legacy term. Instead of renewing to a new legacy term the subscription migrates to new commerce for the next term. Microsoft led migrations aren't new functional paths and behave the same way as a partner scheduled migration. The difference between a partner scheduled migration and a Microsoft-led migration is that Microsoft executes the Microsoft-led migrations. Any question a partner might have about how the Microsoft-led migration works can usually find answers by evaluating the schedule migration feature available since 2022.
Canceled legacy subscriptions aren't migrated. Active subscriptions that don't migrate as part of Microsoft-led migration are either going to be retired or migrated later, depending on the circumstances.
Partners can view offers scheduled for retirement in the Cloud Solution Provider Offer Retirement Guide. This guide is updated monthly with lists of retired offers. The retirement guide includes offer IDs to be retired, the dates after which renewals stop and guidance for partners.
Identify Microsoft-led migration subscriptions
Microsoft is migrating legacy subscriptions that renew starting January 11, 2024. Migratable subscriptions include only the legacy subscriptions that are enabled for migration to new commerce product SKUs. CSP partners can find the list of commercial legacy offers available to migrate to new commerce in the Legacy Offer Matrix file, which can be found in the Partner Center pricing workspace. These offers are migration-enabled offers. Subscriptions are included for Microsoft led migration if they're active, renew after January 11, 20224 and are migratable. Offers not in the offer matrix NCE Mapping file aren't migrated. Partners can reference the Microsoft-led migration data export to get a list of which subscriptions Microsoft intends to migrate.
Subscriptions not migrated by Microsoft
Some subscriptions are excluded in Microsoft-led migration. Microsoft-led migrations target base subscriptions. If the base subscription has migratable addons, both the base subscription and addon subscriptions are migrated at the same time. These subscriptions are migrated together because legacy addons and the parent base subscription have the same renewal date.
- Scenario: Migratable base subscriptions with ineligible add-ons aren't migrated. For example, if the base is commercial but has an education addon that isn't supported in new commerce. Legacy subscriptions that aren't eligible for migration and not in the CSP offer retirement guide renew to new legacy terms. The only exceptions to this rule are legacy subscriptions for some small business SKUs that go beyond the typical 300 license limit. These subscriptions don't renew if ineligible because of the license limit.
- Scenario: A partner schedules a subscription's migration. Microsoft detects existing scheduled migrations created by the partner but not yet executed. In these cases, Microsoft-led migration doesn't occur as Microsoft prioritized the partner-led migration schedule.
- Microsoft-led migrations include only the subscriptions that are active.
Legacy subscriptions that are eligible to be migrated can be canceled up to their end date. Other subscription updates can't be updated 24 hours before they're scheduled to migrate. Eligible subscriptions that are canceled before the end of their term cannot be reactivated during this 24 hour period or after their term ends. Partners that cancel their legacy subscriptions that are eligible to migrate can purchase new commerce services if their customers need them going forward.
Cancellation windows
Legacy license-based subscriptions allow the partner to cancel at any time throughout their term. New commerce subscriptions have new rules that determine when a partner can reduce license counts or make changes. These new commerce cancelation rules are enforced seven days after the acquisition of the subscription. After migration to new commerce, partners have a limited amount of time (seven days) to reduce licenses or cancel their subscription. After the seven-day window, the new term is enforced for the remainder of the subscription's term.
Annual and monthly targets
Microsoft-led migrations carry over the legacy subscription's properties. These properties include license counts (seats), the term and the billing frequency. Partners that need to avoid the annual term default migration to new commerce should migrate their customers before the legacy subscriptions reach end of term. Almost all legacy subscriptions are annual terms, but some partners resell them to customers as monthly terms. The migration from legacy to new commerce sets the Microsoft partner term to an annual, so after migration the new commerce subscription is annual. Partners whose customers need monthly terms should migrate those customers before the end of their legacy subscription. Some legacy subscriptions have three-year terms. Migration to three-year new commerce subscription terms is supported if the legacy subscription was a three year term.
Microsoft-led migration example
The Microsoft-led migration is created on the last day of the legacy subscription term and is executed immediately after the legacy subscription term ends. For example, Partner Center user experience may show the subscription's renewal date (or end date) of January 17, 2024. The user interface is displayed in local time but the actual end date for the subscription is UTC based. For example, a subscription may have a commitmentEndDate of 01:18:2024 T00:00:00 but the user experience-based end date on partner location may show this date as 1/17/2024 or 1/18/2024 depending on when they log in to view it and from where. Migrations start at the UTC date time end of term and could take up to 72 hours to complete.
An example of legacy subscription end date values and how they work with Microsoft-led migration:
- Partner Center API subscription's commitmentEndDate: 01:18:2024 T00:00:00 UTC
- Partner Center subscription active through: 01:17:2024 T23:59:59 UTC
- Partner Center user interface shows the subscription for renewal or ending on 1/17/2024 or 1/18/2024 depending on partner location relative to UTC.
- Partner Center API subscription's ScheduledRenewal creation: between 01:17:2024 T:00:00:00 UTC and 01:17:2024 T23:59:59 UTC
- Partner Center API subscription's ScheduledRenewal execution: starting 01:18:2024 T00:00:00 UTC until 01:20:2024 T23:59:59 UTC
Partners can limit their concerns about Microsoft-led migrations by migrating their subscriptions themselves before their legacy subscription's end date.
Microsoft-led migration data export
Partner Center now makes available the list of subscriptions to be migrated starting January 11. The data export is available for Direct Bill partners and Indirect Providers as a comma delimited file. Partners access the data export in the Customers workspace as Microsoft NCE Migrations in the navigation column.
The purpose of the data export is to help partners get a list of all legacy subscriptions left on legacy eligible to be migrated across all their customers. The data is updated continuously to ensure that ongoing changes to subscriptions are reflected in the data set. Subscriptions flagged as elibile get migrated at the end of the legacy term to a new commerce subscription. Partners have seven days after migration to adjust or cancel the new commerce subscription. Cancelation windows align to the new commerce cancelation policy. Partners can also cancel their legacy subscriptions before the legacy subscription end date if they're no longer needed. The list of subscriptions includes a three-month future window. The data export during November 2023 includes all commercial subscriptions for January 2024 and February 2024 still on legacy and eligibility for migration. The December 2023 data includes January, February and March 2024 subscriptions list.
The data set includes important information about the subscription. The data export explains whether the subscription is eligible for Microsoft-led migration, the end date of the legacy subscriptions, the new commerce product SKU ID the migration moves to, the license counts and term and billing frequency. Microsoft-led migrations carry forward the legacy properties at the time of migration. Partners that want different new commerce properties, especially a monthly term, need to migrate their subscription before Microsoft-led migrate happens at the end of the legacy subscription's end date.
Public sector Microsoft-led migration starts on September 2024. Public sector subscriptions are going to be added to the data set starting in June 2024. The subscription migration data export isn't available via API.
The Microsoft led data export includes the following columns of information.
| MS-led migration data column | Description |
|---|---|
| PartnerTenantId | Partner tenant ID |
| PartnerId | Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) ID of the partner |
| CustomerTenantId | Customer tenant ID |
| CustomerName | Customer Org Name |
| SubscriptionId | Subscription ID |
| SubscriptionFriendlyName | Subscription name |
| OfferId | Offer ID the subscription is from |
| IsAddOn | If the subscription is an add-on |
| ParentSubscriptionId | If add-on, base subscription ID |
| Quantity | Number of licenses |
| TermDuration | Term of the subscription |
| BillingCycle | Billing cycle of the subscription |
| SubscriptionEndDate | End date of the subscription |
| CatalogItemId | NCE Product SKU subscription renews to |
| MigrationEligibilityStatus | Status of the migration |
| MigrationIneligibilityReasons | List of reasons migration isn't eligible |
| LastProcessedDate | Date subscription was evaluated |
Eligible subscriptions are migrated. Ineligible subscriptions renew to a new legacy term.
| MigrationEligibilityStatus | Description |
|---|---|
| Eligible | Eligible renewal being created, seldom in report < 48 hours before end of term |
| Ineligible | Subscription isn't migrated and renews to a new term. |
| PendingValidation | Seldom seen, this status only shows up if the subscription is in the process of being evaluated. |
| ScheduleCreated | Only shows within the 48 hours before the end of the legacy subscription end date, during this time, the system is creating the Microsoft-led migration. |
Subscriptions that aren't elibile for migration renew to a new term at their end date. Partners can take actions to migrate these subscriptions themselves in most cases after correcting the reason the subscription was ineligible.
| Migration ineligibility reasons | Ineligibility description |
|---|---|
| Legacy offer doesn't have a corresponding eligible new commerce equivalent. | Subscriptions are Microsoft-led migrated if there is a corresponding new commerce product sku with compatible pricing. Offers that don't have a new commerce mapping are eventually be retired. Partners should consult the CSP offer retirement guide for the offer retirement list and partner guidance. |
| Partner Profile isn't in a valid state to allow migrations. | This case should seldom occur. Partners should visit their account in Partner Center and ensure their profile is up to date and valid. |
| Partner of Record associated to the subscription is either invalid or no longer active. | Partners should ensure the partner of record on the subscription is a valid Partner ID. |
| License limits defined for the offer are reached or exceeded. | There are a few small business offers that have more than the 300 license count maximum. New commerce more accurately enforces the 300 limit. Legacy subscriptions not eligible for Microsoft-led migration because they exceed limits don't renew to new legacy terms. Customers and CSP Partners that need more than 300 licenses of an individual Microsoft 365 Business SKU should consider another Microsoft 365 Business SKU or Microsoft 365 Enterprise SKUs. |
| Term and/or Billing plan isn't supported in New Commerce. | There are a few small number of legacy subscriptions that have terms and billing plan combinations that aren't supported in new commerce. Partners should consider manually migrating to new commerce after consulting the new commerce price lists and their customers to meet their needs. |
| Number of new commerce subscriptions allowed for offer is reached or exceeded. | Partners should seldom see this case. Some new commerce subscriptions have limits on the number of subscriptions for certain product SKUs. Partners should consult the new commerce offer matrix for documented limits on the number of subscriptions allowed. Partners should also consult with their customers and manually acquire the new commerce subscription that best meets their customer's needs. |
| No active relationship between Customer and Partner organizations. | The customer removed their partner relationship. The partner can work with the customer to restore the relationship if necessary and then migrate the subscription to new commerce. |
| Partner organization is inactive or not found. | This case should seldom occur. Partners should visit their account in Partner Center and ensure their profile is up to date and valid. |
| Migration eligibility evaluation is pending. | This code means the system process is pending. This state is s short lived state partners would seldom experience. |
| Partner tenant excluded from Microsoft-led migration. | Some partner tenants are excluded from Microsoft led migrations and have no action until further Microsoft communications to these partners. |
| Partner scheduled migration already exists for this subscription. | Microsoft led migrations respect any existing migration schedule that already exists. |
| Subscription is not scheduled to renew at end of term. | Retired offers don't renew to new terms. Partners should consult the offer retirement guide for those details. Some retired offers can be migrated to new commerce even though they don't renew because of retirement. These offers won't be migrated but partners may be able to migrate using partner center migration capabilities. Partners should consult the legacy Offer List Matrix NCE Mapping sheet to see which offers are migratable. |
Map legacy offers to new commerce experience
Partners can get details about which legacy offers map to the new commerce product skus by reviewing the NCE Mapping tab in the new commerce offer matrix. This data in this tab looks similar to the core offer matrix data except there is an extra column Q, which includes the new commerce product sku ID that relates to the legacy offer. Partners can use this data to understand what the product skus that are available in new commerce. Partners can migrate their legacy subscriptions for Migration enabled offers using the migration capabilities in Partner Center's user interface or APIs. Other product skus can be acquired manually if they don't support migration. Partners should always consult the price lists to ensure the product SKUs being purchased are what they expect before transacting any offer or product SKU in Partner Center.
To view a mapping matrix of legacy to new commerce experience offers and determine the correct migration mapping for a specific legacy offer, complete the following steps.
- Sign in to Partner Center and select Pricing | Price lists.
- Download the legacy price sheet License-based pricing.
- Download the legacy OLM file Cloud Reseller offer matrix, which has the mapping between legacy and new commerce in the first section for License-based services cloud reseller offer matrix.
- Download the legacy price list through the Partner Center interface.
- In the offer matrix file, select the NCE Mapping tab.
- Map the Offer ID from the legacy price list to the Durable offer ID in the legacy offer matrix file in the NCE Mapping tab to determine the Modern ProductID/SkuID in column Q. Partners use the Migration enabled column to determine if the offer can be migrated using the Partner Center user experiences or APIs.
Not all offers can be migrated to NCE (such as legacy Azure Information Protection Premium P1 that doesn't have an equivalent corresponding offer in NCE).
Note
The NCE Mapping tab includes information for the public sector wave releases. Public sector Wave 1 will be available to purchase and migrate after March 1, 2024. The December 2023 NCE Mapping shows public sector offers as not migratable since they can't be migrated until January. More information can be found in the NCE pubsec topic.
Manual migrations
Partners should use the Partner Center portal or APIs for migrations. However, partners can also manually purchase the new commerce version of the offer, ensure licenses are appropriately assigned and then cancel the legacy offer. This manual approach is appropriate for some offers that don't have migration paths. Partners should consult the price lists to verify pricing before any purchases.
Below offers require manual migrations. A Partner Center announcement is posted when these offers can be migrated using the Partner Center migration APIs and user interfaces.
| Legacy Offer Name | Legacy Offer ID | New commerce sku name | New commerce productId/skuId |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium (Nonprofit Staff Pricing) Donation | 17791e70-0de3-4c3c-8589-15525f6f04a1 | Microsoft 365 Business Premium Donation (Non-Profit Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LCHC/000W |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for Students use benefit | 5c25bdb6-b261-4dc2-a60f-a062be73d031 | Microsoft 365 Apps Students use benefits (Education Student Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LGZT/002N |
| Microsoft Intune Plan 1 for Education for Students use benefit | 786817ae-58ed-4668-994c-c30fa07e18f5 | Microsoft Intune Students use benefit (Education Student Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LSNL/000C |
| Microsoft Entra ID P1 for Students use benefit | 4e61b7b8-9e0b-407c-a022-fb268080a11c | Microsoft Entra ID P1 Students use benefit (Education Student Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LFLS/001S |
| Power Apps per app plan (1 app or website) (Nonprofit Staff Pricing) 10 license donation | aded493a-6655-4377-ab50-08d264f26012 | Power Apps per app plan (1 app or website) Donation (Non-Profit Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0J4GS/0012 |
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan 1) Student use benefit | f1b34991-6b4b-4e77-9126-a42d75eb72c6 | Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan 1) Student use benefit (Education Student Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LH04/001C |
| Microsoft Entra ID P2 for Students use benefit | 5c923d96-3c69-46ed-84b2-caaa4be1e3f0 | Microsoft Entra ID P2 for Students use benefit (Education Student Pricing) | CFQ7TTC0LFK5/0022 |
| Microsoft Intune | 73b45f83-fb4f-4cdc-a0d6-3d8792708f80 | Microsoft Intune | CFQ7TTC0LCH4/0009 |
| Dynamics 365 Marketing Attach (Qualified Offer) (From CE Plan with 10 licenses minimum) | 9e5f9ff0-1a3c-4d4b-8269-1fdb1f300102 | Dynamics 365 Marketing Attach | CFQ7TTC0LHWP/0001 |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition Device | 9fb981e1-9531-402e-875c-c69957137939 | Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition | CFQ7TTC0LFF1/0001 |
| Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise Device | 56433e2b-3378-4b35-867d-31ebb879deac | Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise | CFQ7TTC0LFDZ/0001 |
| Dynamics 365 Field Service Device | a7fc021e-0eb1-4fdb-ada1-3fe7ddf4e887 | Dynamics 365 Field Service | CFQ7TTC0LFNL/0001 |
Some legacy offers are not yet available in new commerce. A Partner Center announcement is posted when these offers are available to purchase and can be migrated using the Partner Center migration APIs and user interfaces.
| Legacy Offer Name | Legacy Offer ID |
|---|---|
| Office 365 E1 (Nonprofit Staff Pricing) | 83dca3b9-3d6c-4547-8c5f-ba1f69b130f8 |
| Dynamics 365 Field Service for Faculty Device | 2fec701c-4de9-498a-b104-d9e22a923029 |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise for Government Device | 6246aab1-527a-4747-8605-b604f205e938 |
| Dynamics 365 Field Service for Students Device | 685760e2-b019-489f-a71d-f647a1626cac |
| Dynamics 365 Field Service for Government Device | 975acc3d-dd41-432d-ab89-f32c93f2efb4 |
| Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise for Students Device | 9c6e2220-643f-41ce-9fcc-b6db3d1a25ec |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition for Faculty (Device) | c0fadb1c-9940-4405-9c28-2ed7405cb01b |
| Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise for Faculty Device | c1267a47-0d56-4305-b975-7ba45e51eb5d |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition for Students (Device) | f776b4da-d4e3-4f0c-b1d2-d78ebd410a03 |
| Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan for students for US and Canada | 1f4b4375-3185-40cf-b044-117fe3b102c6 |
| Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan for faculty for US and Canada | 602e7548-375b-4e01-bf79-a9a8b8ff16d4 |
| Microsoft Teams Domestic Calling Plan for GCC for US | 594ed84e-ddf8-4e40-9726-76c04bd29e3b |
Note
Offer subscriptions that need manual migration won't be migrated by Microsoft-led migration. These subscriptions will be renewed to new terms at the end of their subscription end dates. Microsoft may add support for these offers to be partner or Microsoft-led migratable in the future and will post Partner Center announcements giving partners 30 days’ notice before migration support is enabled.
Ineligible subscriptions
Not all offer subscriptions can be migrated using the migration user interface and tools. Partners can use the NCE Mapping tab in the legacy license-based offer matrix in the Partner Center pricing workspace. Some subscriptions can't be migrated even though their offers are configured for migration. The following categories of subscriptions are currently ineligible:
- Subscriptions within the first month of service since purchase (this check is only in production and isn't applied in Sandbox to aid effective testing).
- Subscriptions within the last 24 hours are blocked if purchaseFullTerm is false.
- Migrations are allowed in the last 24 hours if purchaseFullTerm is true.
- Inactive subscriptions (no changes in service occur if a subscription is inactive)
- Trial subscriptions (no monetary benefit or implications; trials run their course in legacy)
- Subscriptions with active promotions (promotions in New commerce Experience (NCE) are independent of those promotions in legacy) and subscriptions that had promotions at initial purchase
- Subscriptions for Gov, Edu, or Nonprofit audiences (the mapping of qualified offers from legacy to NCE isn't supported)
- Subscriptions without a corresponding offer available in New commerce; check the New Commerce mapping sheet in the legacy offer list matrix file.
Subscriptions in these examples can't be migrated. Subscriptions in the processing state can't be migrated because a migration is already initiated. Migration requests can fail because of different reasons.
- The migration request includes an unsupported term and billing combo.
- The partner profile is incomplete.
- The subscription has an invalid PartnerID on record.
Suspend a legacy subscription during migration
Intended migration behavior is for the legacy subscription to only be suspended once a successful path to New commerce is provisioned for the subscription. This action prevents loss of service if there are any blockers following a Partner initiating migration of a subscription. Additionally, no double billing occurs for both the legacy and New commerce subscription. Once migration starts, billing for the legacy subscription stops to prevent any overlap with billing for the NCE subscription.
Update subscription properties during migration
Migrated traditional license-based subscriptions preserve the remaining term, overall term length, billing frequency, and license counts unless the partner specifies otherwise. The capability to update these values during migration is available both in the Partner Center UX and via the CreateMigration API.
Partners can choose to change subscription attributes when migrating. Partners can change term duration, billing cycle, quantities or whether to continue their existing term or start a new one. Partners can also define a customer term end date, aligning the end dates of their subscription to existing subscriptions. Quantities for migrated subscriptions can be more, less or stay the same as the source subscription.
Configure the term and billing frequency
Partners can change terms and billing frequencies when migrating.
Migrate with the same term length and end date from legacy (default)
- An annual legacy subscription migrated at month seven have five remaining months of the new commerce term left.
Begin a new term upon migration; can specify new term length (for example, three years, one year, one month)
- An annual legacy subscription migrated at month seven have the full new commerce term.
Switch term length (for example, annual to monthly) without beginning a new term upon migration
- Partner starts with an annual legacy subscription with an end term of February 10, 2022. The partner migrates to a monthly term on November 17, 2021. The migrated new commerce monthly subscription has an end term date of December 10, 2021.
Billing frequency for the subscription can be configured to other New commerce supported options, such as switching from annual to monthly billing.
Cancel subscriptions or decreasing licenses
Newly migrated subscriptions follow the same cancellation policy as new purchases in New commerce Experience.
Schedule a migration to new commerce
CSP partners can now schedule a migration for each legacy subscription in their sandbox and production environments. A scheduled migration created by the partner executes to include all properties at the time of scheduling. Partners that want to change the legacy subscription properties, for example license counts, need to cancel and recreate their scheduled migration if they want those changes migrated to new commerce.
Partners can use the new Partner Center API/BAM tool to schedule a migration upfront in their sandbox and in production environments.
Partners can also schedule a migration and align the end dates with their existing NCE subscriptions to simplify asset management and billing.
API documents for the NCE migration scheduling feature are:
- Cancel a new commerce migration
- Update a new commerce migration
- Get a new commerce migration
- Schedule a new commerce migration
Partners can also use the BAM tool to schedule migration. Details of the schedule migration can be found at New Commerce Experience Batch Migration Tool (BAM).
Migrate subscriptions with add-ons
Migration support for add-ons was enabled via the Partner Center APIs and UX since March 2022. There are two ways a partner can migrate an add-on. The first migration path involves migrating the base. Migrated base subscriptions automatically include add-ons that are eligible for migration. The second option to migrate add-ons includes migrating only the add-on without the base subscription. Microsoft enabled the ability to migrate individual add-on subscriptions in November 2022.
A base subscription and all of its active add-ons must migrate to New commerce together, as a bundle. Base subscriptions with add-ons migrations are only elibile if all active add-ons are also migratable to new commerce. If a subscription has multiple add-ons, and one add-on is ineligible to migrate, the subscription and all add-ons can't migrate. Post-migration, the migrated add-ons display as independent add-ons in NCE.
A partner can elect to make changes to the subscription terms, license counts and billing frequency of the base subscription and the add-ons. Edited values are independent of each subscription (base subscription or add-on subscription) in the bundle being migrated. Migrations to new commerce without specified changes to quantity, billing frequency, term duration, and term end dates carry forward the legacy subscriptions' properties.
Because both the base and add-on subscriptions are being migrated together as a bundle, the purchase of a new add-on subscription makes the migration ineligibility for the next 30 days. Each subscription in the migrated bundle is validated for eligibility individually, and this validation includes the 30 day purchase check on each subscription. If one subscription is ineligible for migration, the entire bundle can't migrate.
Partners can migrate add-ons independently without the base subscription to New commerce using the Partner Center UX or migration APIs.
Note
Base subscriptions not eligible for migration and not in the CSP offer retirement guide renew to new legacy terms. The only exception to this renewal rule are legacy subscriptions for some small business SKUs that go beyond the typical 300 license limit. These subscriptions won't renew if ineligible because of the license limit.
Promotions on migrated subscriptions
Migration doesn't affect an offer's eligibility to qualify for an available new commerce promotion. A new commerce promotion is applied to the created new commerce subscription after migration as long as the promotion eligibility requirements are met.
For more information on promotions and identifying promotional eligibility, see new commerce experience promotions.
Expected migration timelines
Migration execution time can be longer if it includes many attribute changes on the subscription. The system may also take longer if there are other partners sending a high volume of migration requests. Migration usually takes a couple of hours, but in some cases migrations can take up to 72 hours.
Partners can view the migration status in the Partner Center via the customer's Subscriptions page or by calling the Get a new commerce subscription migration API.
When a migration request is submitted, the legacy subscription is set to a suspended state when the migration begins. A suspended legacy subscription with no corresponding NCE offer is visible on the subscription list. Additionally, the Get a new commerce subscription migration API request returns a migration status of Failed for migrations affected by this error. A partner's next steps depend on the status of the legacy subscription:
- Legacy subscription still Active: Partners can cancel legacy subscriptions still active in a failed migration state.
- Legacy subscriptions that are Suspended. Migration status of Failed where the legacy subscription is suspended are still being processed by the system, partners should let the migration as Microsoft diagnoses and correct the issue if needed during the 72 hour window. Microsoft corrects this issue within 72 hours of the initial migration request.
Migrations with Failed status with the legacy subscription in a suspended legacy subscription with no NCE subscription creation can take up to 72 hours from the time of the initial migration request for Microsoft to address the issue. Microsoft either corrects the error and completes migration (successfully creating the migration's corresponding NCE subscription) or reverts the migration after the 72 hours. No further action is required if the migration is successfully completed within 72 hours. If the migration is reverted, the legacy subscription is set back to active again and partners can retry migration in this scenario.
During the period where the legacy subscription is suspended without a corresponding NCE offer created, no service loss occurs. The start of billing for the NCE subscription aligns with the date the New commerce subscription was created if Microsoft successfully completes migration. The created New commerce subscription retains the pricing and promotion specified at the time the migration request was created.
If the legacy subscription is reverted to a premigration state (effectively rolling back the migration request), billing of the legacy subscription resumes when the legacy subscription active again; no charges are made for the period where the legacy subscription was suspended without a corresponding NCE subscription created.
Migration of Small and Medium Business (SMB) SKUs
Customers who have SMB SKUs are subject to a 300-seat limit when migrating their subscription from legacy to seat-based offers for new commerce.
A partner can migrate a customer's SMB subscription with 200-seats successfully. But if the customer has another 200-seats on the same SMB SKU they want to migrate, the system blocks the migration because the transaction exceeds the 300-seat limit. In this case, the partner can adjust the license count of the second SKU they want to migrate from 200 to 100 (or lower to fall within the SMB license limits) successfully.
If a partner submits a migration request at the same time for two SMB SKUs with 200 licenses, one migration request goes through, and the other request fails. In this case, the partner would adjust the second SKU they want to migrate from 200 to 100 (or lower to fall within the SMB license limits) successfully.
Note
Partners may have legacy subscriptions that go beyond the 300 small business limits. Legacy subscriptions not eligible for Microsoft-led migration because they exceed limits won't renew to new legacy terms. Customers and CSP Partners that need more than 300 licenses of an individual Microsoft 365 Business SKU should consider another Microsoft 365 Business SKU or Microsoft 365 Enterprise SKUs.
Migration history
Some migration details, such as start and completion time of migration, can be accessed using the new Get a new commerce subscription migration API and MigrationID field in the APIs. At Partner Center, the Subscription ID from which the new NCE subscription migrated from is visible at the top of the details page, which can be accessed when selecting the subscription on the customer's Subscriptions page.
Additionally, when clicking upon the migrated New commerce subscription in Partner Center (from the customer's subscriptions list), Partners are able to view a detailed log of migration events under the Migration Activity header. This activity header includes the status of the following migration activities:
- MigrationStarted: time migration request was submitted
- NewCommerceSubscriptionCreated: subscription created subscription ID
- NewCommerceSubscriptionProvisioned: NCE subscription's service is provisioned
- MigrationCompleted: indicates migration was successful and NCE subscription can now be managed
- MigrationFailed: migration was unsuccessful; service access is retained with documented migration failure timelines are applicable
These migration events are also accessible via the GetMigrationEvents API.
Note
The ability to see migration activity and events is a new feature. Any subscriptions migrated prior to June 22, 2022 won't have migration events recorded. This feature doesn't retroactively record migration events for subscriptions migrated prior to this date.
Bulk migration
In the case where a Partner is trying to migrate a customer's eligible subscriptions to NCE, the outlined steps are taken:
- Select a customer with the subscriptions to migrate.
- Call the Get a list of subscriptions API to receive a collection of the customer's subscriptions by customer-tenant-id. Query parameter for Order ID is optional.
- Call the Validate a subscription for migration API to check the migration eligibility.
- Go through the collection of subscriptions and call the Create a New commerce migration API with each subscription-id. This action checks for migration eligibility and migrate the subscription if eligible.
- To check for the migration eligibility call the Get a New commerce subscription migration API after going through the Subscription collection. Successfully migrated subscriptions are populated with migratedFromSubscriptionID attribute. The migrationId provided by the CreateMigration response facilitates tracking the progress of the migrations when used in the Get a New commerce subscription migration API API request. The unit of migration is a single subscription, but can be scaled to meet requirements of bulk migration scenarios.
Migration Webhooks
Partner Center enables webhooks to help API enabled partners to easily automate and track status of migrations. These migration webhooks are documented in the webhooks documentation topic.
- New Commerce Migration Completed
- New Commerce Migration Created
- New Commerce Migration Failed
- New Commerce Migration Schedule Failed
Migration, transition, conversion, and upgrade
In Partner Center, migration into New commerce refers to the moving of subscriptions from the traditional licensed-based commerce into the New commerce Experience. Migration moves a traditional legacy license-based subscription to new commerce. Transition, conversion, and upgrade.
Upgrades and conversions are considered types of subscription transitions.
Transitions are used to upgrade a customer's new commerce subscription to a target subscription or convert an NCE trial to a paid subscription. The key difference between transitions and migrations is that migrating a subscription moves it from traditional commerce to the equivalent offer in New commerce Experience. Unlike transitions, migration can't be utilized to change between unequal subscriptions (such as an upgrade or conversion action).
Previous new commerce milestones
Effective March 10, 2022, legacy CSP commercial seat-based offers with equivalent new commerce offers are no longer be available for new orders on the legacy platform.
The price list contains a new value within the A, C, D, and U column, flagging the offers with DEPR for retired or no-longer-supported offers. As of March 1, 2022, the offer matrix (OLM) contains the list of offers that are retired in a new sheet entitled Legacy Deprecated. On April 1, 2022, the price list includes offers blocked for new purchases marked with DEPR. Offers that are no longer available for purchase in legacy CSP aren't discoverable via the Partner Center catalog.
Existing legacy subscriptions still have the options for the partner to add or remove licenses, purchase add-ons, upgrade the subscription through the subscription term, and convert from a trial to a paid subscription, regardless of the blocking of new commerce purchases from March 10, 2022.
Additionally, the error messaging of Create Order, Create Cart, and Update Cart APIs reflect available New commerce offers when a partner tries to purchase a blocked legacy offer. If an equivalent NCE offer is available for the blocked legacy offer that was attempted for purchase, the NCE offer's product ID, SKU ID, and availability ID is provided to the partner through the API message. Partners should realize that availabilities often expire and can be replaced if there's a wait time between the partner receiving the error message and attempting to purchase in New commerce.