Software Assurance Planning Services in Partner Center

06/03/2020

3 minutes to read

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In this article

Appropriate Roles

Global Admin

MPN Partner Admin

As an approved Planning Services partner, Microsoft compensates you for providing pre-deployment planning engagements for enterprise customers. Participating in this program may help you attract more customers, become their trusted planning partner, and lead to additional customer engagements.

Get started

If you're new to Software Assurance Planning Services, follow all the steps below. If you're already active in the Planning Services program(s), begin each new engagement at step four (4) below.

Verify eligibility (new partners) Enroll (new partners) Create or update your company's business profile (new partners) Customer creates and assigns voucher (existing partners) Validate and reserve voucher (existing partners) Complete engagement and provide deliverables to your customer (existing partners) Redeem voucher in Partner Center (existing partners) Request payment from Microsoft (existing partners)

This article explains how to complete each step.

Verify eligibility (new partners)

Before partner companies and consultants can enroll in one of the Planning Services offerings, they must satisfy both compliance training requirements and competency requirements:

Compliance training requirements. The program's compliance training requirements must be satisfied at the company level.

The program's compliance training requirements must be satisfied at the company level. Competency requirements. Competency requirements are specific to the engagement to be delivered. For example, your company might be enrolled in the Desktop Deployment Planning Services (DDPS) offering. However, you will only be eligible to deliver a specific engagement within the DDPS offering if your company also holds a qualifying competency for that specific engagement.

Note To learn more about eligibility requirements for specific engagements, view eligibility requirements for Planning Services engagements.

To help verify your company's eligibility to enroll in a specific Planning Services engagement:

Sign into the Partner Center dashboard. Select MPN from the menu, then select Programs. Select Software assurance enrollment. Select the Planning Services program enrollment tab at the top of the page. You will see a green check mark next to any requirements or competencies you have already completed.

Enroll (new partners)

After your company meets the eligibility requirements, you're ready to sign the Software Assurance Planning Services program agreement and enroll in one or more program offerings.

First, be sure to review all Planning Services program policies. Then, follow the instructions in step 2 of the workflow to complete the Planning Services enrollment process in Partner Center.

Note You will need to renew your requirements and re-enroll in the Planning Services programs each year.

Maximize your exposure to potential customers. Follow instructions and guidance to create or update your company's business profile within Partner Center.

Customer creates and assigns voucher (existing partners)

Before you can begin a Planning Services engagement, your customer must take the following actions:

Customers must first activate their Planning Services benefit. Customers must then create a Planning Services voucher and assign it to a project manager in their company.

For detailed instructions the customer must take to create the voucher and assign it to you, see step 4 of the workflow. For an overview of the customer experience, see the VLSC Software Assurance Guide.

After a customer assigns a voucher to your company in the Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC), the customer receives an email that includes the voucher ID. The customer needs to forward this email to you so that you have the information you need to reserve the voucher.

When you have the voucher details, you can reserve the voucher and schedule the planning engagement. See step 5 of the workflow for detailed guidance about how to do this within the Partner Center dashboard.

Complete engagement and provide deliverables to your customer (existing partners)

To be eligible to deliver a Planning Services engagement, the consultant must have completed one or more of the technical assessments or exams required for the engagement's qualifying competency. (To learn more about the assessments or exams required, view eligibility requirements for Planning Services engagements.)

After your company has completed the engagement and provided the final, completed deliverable(s) to the customer, you need to fill out and submit the online completion report.

See step 6 of the workflow for detailed guidance.

Redeem voucher

Before you can invoice Microsoft for the delivered engagement, you must first redeem your voucher. See step 7 of the workflow for detailed guidance.

Request payment from Microsoft (existing partners)

After redeeming Planning Services vouchers, you must invoice Microsoft for payment. Payments are handled through the Software Assurance Voucher Benefit (SAVB) Online Payment Tool.

To submit an invoice to Microsoft through SAVB, follow the instructions in step 8 of the workflow.

Next steps