Azure and Microsoft 365 support for service providers

As a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider (Distributor or Reseller) you will need provide technical support to your customers related to their Azure NCE and Microsoft 365 services. This article provides a discussion on Azure and Microsoft 365 support for service providers. Depending on your customer's subscription type, they will have the following technical support options:

  • If the end customer has a pay as you go (PAYG) Azure subscription or retail Microsoft 365 subscription, they are entitled to basic support via their Azure/M365 administration portal. The available Microsoft Azure technical support options can be reviewed at: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/plans/.
  • If the end customer has an Azure NCE subscription then you can only open billing and subscription related support cases via the Microsoft Partner portal, assuming that you have a reseller relationship with the customer via the Partner Center portal. For technical support, you will need to consult with your CSP distributor for them to provide you with technical support procedure. Usually CSP Tier-1 providers (distributors) have a premier support account with Microsoft in order to accommodate their CSP reseller requests.
  • If the end customer has a Microsoft 365 CSP subscription then you can open technical support tickets via the Microsoft Partner Center portal, by navigating to https://partner.microsoft.com and going to section Customers --> Service Management --> Microsoft 365. This will take you to the customer's Microsoft 365 admin portal.

In the M365 admin portal of the customer, you should navigate to Support and choose to either open a new service request or view existing requests.

If the provided self service support options are not adequate, you can create a technical support case on the spot.

You will need to generate the "Request reseller relationship" link and share it with your end customers so that they can accept it. The invitation text will look like the following template:


Dear valued customer,

As your software vendor, we invite you to authorize us to be your Microsoft indirect reseller. Our business relationship remains in place, and you will get access to a broader selection of products through our organization, and features such as remote user and service management and improved support. Click the following link to accept this invitation and to authorize the CSP reseller to be your Microsoft indirect reseller. Should you have any questions, please contact us through the email or phone number provided below.

https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?invType=IndirectResellerRelationship&partnerId=

Note: User with Global Admin permission is required to accept relationship

Additional partner information:

Your technical support contact information will go here


You can finally confirm the customer's acceptance of the MCA agreement, by following instructions in the below article:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/confirm-customer-agreement.

Remember that in order for your CSP customers to be eligible for CSP pricing in Azure NCE and view only Suggested Retail Pricing (SRP) in their Azure administration portal, they must accept the delegation request. If they remove both the CSP reseller and distributor from the delegation, then Azure subscription pricing will revert to retail pricing.