Frequently Asked Question on OSA Claim

It will apply globally from March 2019.

The claims capabilities for OSA Sell are available within the Partner Center Dashboard and the Modern PIE platform. Refer to the FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide for more information.

Claims capabilities for OSA Sell are available within the Partner Center Dashboard and the Modern PIE platform for partners who have provided their bank and tax profile information.

Claims should be made a minimum of five days before the monthly cut-off, which occurs every second Friday of the month.

OSA Sell program resources are available within the Dynamics Pre-Sales Advisory Incentives section of aka.ms/partnerincentives, including specific resources for OSA Sell claims. Direct links to these resources are provided below:

• FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide
• FY20 Online Software Advisor Sell Incentive (OSA Sell) FAQ

Support is available within the Partner Center Dashboard or Modern PIE using the support (?) icon in the top right task bar. Support via Partner.microsoft.com/support is also available.

Microsoft believes a claims model will provide more control to partners and lessen the dependency on customer actions. This claims model is a direct result of partner feedback provided on the DPOR model, which has been known to block partners from being paid OSA Sell incentives fees. We believe this claims model is a better alternative and enables partners to initiate making a claim.

Firstly, partners are in control of initiating the incentive fee payment process. Secondly, by moving to a claims model we will avoid situations where a transactional partner becomes the DPOR and thus blocks the incentive opportunity for Microsoft Dynamics solution sellers. Thirdly, the claims model should better equip partners to meet the 90-day association requirement as the dependency on customer actions is lessened.

Eligible OSA Sell partners who have engaged directly with the customer during the pre-sales phase should claim an incentive fee. They will also be recognized for the Microsoft Dynamics revenue. ISVs whose intellectual property (IP) was part of the customers Dynamics cloud solution should claim ISV revenue association. Such partners will not receive the fee, but be recognized for the underlying Microsoft Dynamics revenue.

No, not if the partner has been associated with the subscription (either via DPOR or Claims). The OSA Sell claims model will pay for incremental seats automatically, assuming the partner remains associated to the subscription. This is the same as the previous DPOR model.

No. It is not necessary to re-associate your organization to any active subscriptions you are already associated to via DPOR once the OSA Sell claims model is available. Only if a subscription is renewed by a customer after March 2019, must this happen.

Yes. On or after March 2019 use the OSA Sell claims model through the Partner Center Dashboard or the Modern PIE platform.

Yes. After March 2019, the only way to earn an incentive fee for the OSA Sell program is via the claims model. Being designated as the DPOR may still continue to provide other benefits such as the ability to assist the customer with the management of their subscription(s), or the opportunity for eligible partners to earn OSU incentives for driving active usage.

No, it is considered a CSP transaction. OSA Sell is only for EA and Web Direct.

There are several requirements for a successful OSA Sell claim.

1. An eligible OSA Sell status.
2. A customer’s domain name and directory/tenant ID.
3. Proof of execution (POE) showing your engagement during the pre-sales phase.
4. Knowledge of what workload/product(s) have been ordered. Note: if there are multiple subscriptions with the same product under the tenant, you will be required to provide the subsription ID.
5. The name of your customer’s key contact.

This is information the customer must provide to you before you create an OSA Sell claim. Customers should visit https://ms/portal.azure.com and click on “Azure Active Directory”. Here they will find:

• Domain name under “Overview”.
• Directory/tenant ID under “Manage” > “Properties”.

This is shown within the FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide.

No. They both are the same thing.

No. Only the customer can provide this information. The customer should identify their Office Admin Portal contact who can then follow the instructions above or detailed within the FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide.

The combination of Tenant ID and Domain Name allows us to retrieve the correct subscriptions for the partner.

When creating a claim, subscriptions already associated with your own organization will be greyed out. All other subscriptions, whether claimed for by another partner or not, will show as available to be claimed.

If you select a subscription that has already been claimed for by another partner, a flag will show notifying you of this. In such cases, it is critical you provide a solid POE that clearly shows your participation during the pre-sales phase. Microsoft will conduct a mandatory review of the POE submitted by both partners.

90 days from the date of transaction.

There are opportunities throughout the claim process to add optional comments. You may choose to add additional comments for your own future reference, or you may want to add additional commentary for the Microsoft reviewer. The intention with these fields is to minimize the need for Microsoft to go back to you seeking more information by enabling you to provide as much clarification as possible when initially submitting the claim. These comments will be visible to you and your organization, and internal Microsoft.

By naming a claim it allows you to self-identify based on your own criteria and easily distinguish between claims which are all visible on the claims home page.

For net new partners:

Partners will setup their new membership in Partner Center (PC), for MPN ID to be created. When this step is done, the Partner’s global/account admin receives an invitation email (once their membership is setup) to enroll their incentives in PC. Global Admin must complete the User Management step in PC to assign their incentive admin.

Once the incentive admin is assigned, the incentive admin receives an invite email to enroll in the OSA Sell program. To enroll, the admin must complete the bank and tax profiles. Once the bank and tax profiles are complete, the incentive admin can begin claiming for the OSA Sell program in PC.

Please refer to the Enrollment in incentives programs in Partner Center guide for information. 

For existing partners setup in PMC:

Partners are required to complete the PMC to PC migration of their membership. You may download the migration guide for instructions.

Once the migration is done, the Global Admin completes the user management in PC. All users (including the Incentive Admin) need to be recreated in PC from scratch, users residing in Modern PIE will not be migrated.

Once the Incentives Admin is assigned, they will be able to proceed claiming for the OSA Sell program in PC.

Please refer to the Enrollment in incentives programs in Partner Center guide for information.

For existing partners with their bank/tax not setup in PMC:

We recommend that partners proceed with their PMC migration to PC. You may download the migration guide for instructions.

Once the migration is done, the Global Admin completes the user management in PC. All users (including the Incentive Admin) need to be recreated in PC from scratch, users residing in Modern PIE will not be migrated.

Once the Incentives Admin is assigned, the Incentives Admin may complete the bank and tax profile setup in PC. Claiming for OSA Sell can then be executed in PC when it is launched in Mar 2019.

Please refer to the Enrollment in incentives programs in Partner Center guide for information.

For privacy reasons, Microsoft cannot provide a partner with access to customer data without customer consent.

The notification will be sent to the customer contact provided by the partner during the “create a claim” process. The customer’s Office Portal administrator will also be included within the notification.

If a customer denies the request, Microsoft cannot associate your organization to the customer’s subscription.

Microsoft will still validate your POE, and if the POE supports your engagement during the pre-sales phase will proceed with processing your claim. However, going forward Microsoft will not be able to compensate you for additional seats without further claims.

A non-response from the customer implies consent to associate the partner to their subscription data.

If a customer has not responded by opting out from the partner’s request to become associated within five days, Microsoft will proceed and include the claim during the next monthly incentive calculation. Customers can however elect to opt-out and dis-associate a partner from their subscription at any point in time. If that happens, Microsoft will dis-associate the partner from the subscription(s), which means that the partner will not be paid for any additional seats added from that point onwards.

Microsoft will dis-associate the partner with the customer’s subscription immediately. This will have no impact on payments made to-date but will stop any OSA Sell payments on any future seat adds.

An example is provided within the FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide.

Yes, the partner is allowed to re-submit. The partner will have to start afresh; complete the required submission steps and the it will be flagged for POE review.

These are the auto-notifications expected:

• Claim approved
• Claim rejected
• Customer out-out
• Action Required (when POE is missing some detail)

Yes. OSA Sell partners submitting an incentive fee claim must either submit:

1. A statement of work (SOW) or other artefact pertaining to the pre-sales phase that has been signed by the customer.
2. The POE template provided during the claims process. This must also include a customer signature.

ISVs submitting an ISV revenue association claim are required to use the ISV specific POE template provided during the claims process.

No. Microsoft will validate a sample of POEs provided during the monthly calculation and payment cycle. Some circumstances may receive additional scrutiny. For example, POEs will always be reviewed in cases where multiple partners have claimed to be involved during the pre-sales phase for the same customer subscription(s).

Yes, this information is visible to partners under the OSA Sell section on the Partner Center Dashboard or the Modern PIE platform.

If a partner is removed, the status of the claim for that subscription will change to “customer dis-associated” in the Partner Center Dashboard or the Modern PIE platform. An example is provided within the FY20 OSU and OSA Claims Guide.

The standard OSA Sell eligibility criteria (available under the OSA Sell section on aka.ms/partnerincentives) remain intact. However, with the OSA Sell claims model, POE is a compulsory requirement and customers are given the opportunity to decline a partner being associated to their subscription(s) and thus having access to their subscription data.

Yes. ISVs do not have to meet the revenue or certification requirements, which only apply to OSA Sell partners claiming incentive fees. ISVs must, however, submit the ISV POE template provided in the claims process, have an active MPN status, sign the CSA agreement, and provide bank and tax profile information in the Partner Center Dashboard.

A claim must be in “approved” status prior to the second Friday of each month, when Microsoft conducts their monthly snapshot.

Claiming ISV revenue association is an opportunity for ISVs to show Microsoft the extent to which their intellectual property (IP) was part of driving sales of Dynamics cloud solutions. The revenue recognized can help ISVs achieve certain benefits and status, such as competency attainment and the meeting of OSA/CSA revenue requirements.

No. There is no dependency on an OSA Sell partner first claiming an incentive fee on the order. ISVs can claim revenue association independently of whether an incentive fee has been claimed.

No. There is no dependency or conflict between the two.

Yes, assuming the ISV has engaged directly with the customer during the pre-sales phase, and providing they meet the OSA Sell requirements, then they can seek the incentive fee too.  From the other perspective, a Dynamics system integrator that claims the OSA Sell incentive fee, does not need to seek “ISV revenue association”, as they will be recognized for the underlying Dynamics cloud revenue automatically. 

All ISVs who submit a valid POE will be recognized for 100% of the Dynamics revenue.

Should you have any questions regarding this the claims process, you can access support within the Partner Center Dashboard or Modern PIE platform using the support (?) icon in the top right task bar. Support via Partner.microsoft.com is also available (when signed in) using these steps:

1. Go to Partner.microsoft.com
2. Select the ‘Support’ tab at the top of the page.
3. Under ‘Get Support’ select Area ‘Incentives and Payouts’ from the drop-down menu.
4. Select ‘Partner Incentives’ as your Category.
5. You are then able to choose your Topic.
6. Select how you would like to get in contact with Microsoft from the Support options.