A Partner Guide to Customer Engagement and Claims in Partner Center
The Microsoft Commerce Incentive (MCI) program is crucial for driving partner activities and rewarding cloud growth. Navigating the customer engagement and claims process within Partner Center is essential for maximizing your earning potential under the Microsoft Commercial Incentive. This guide explains how to use the Engagements, Customers, and Customer claims sections to manage your workflow, ensure eligibility, and successfully submit your claims.
Table of Contents
- Accessing MCI: Roles and Overview
- Checking Eligibility: Engagements and Locations
- Managing Your Customer List
- Initiating an Engagement: Add vs. Claim
- The Critical Step: Customer Consent and Deal Size
- Tracking Success: Claim Status Definitions
- MCI and the Co-selling Opportunity
Key Takeaways
- Roles are Mandatory: You need Incentives admin or Incentives user roles to manage customer engagements and submissions within the Microsoft MCI program.
- ID Requirements Vary: Use domain name, tenant ID, TPID, or Azure subscription ID for fixed pay engagements, but only the MSX opportunity ID for variable pay engagements.
- Deal Size is Final: The estimated deal size, required during the consent process, cannot be updated after the request is sent to the customer.
- Monitor Statuses Closely: Use the Customer claims page and understand statuses like Partner action required to avoid SLA expirations and ensure timely claim resolution.
- MCI Drives Co-sell: Successful customer consent on an MCI claim can automatically upgrade a partner-led referral to a co-sell referral, increasing visibility with Microsoft field sellers.
Accessing MCI: Roles and Overview
To begin utilizing the Microsoft MCI program, partners must first understand the necessary access controls. Managing customer associations and engagement claims requires specific authorization. Users must have either the Incentives admin or Incentives user roles within their Partner Center profile to access and manage the Customers page for MCI engagements.
The central hub is the Engagements section, which allows partners to manage customers for each earning opportunity and verify their eligibility status.
Checking Eligibility: Engagements and Locations
When you sign in to Partner Center and select Incentives, the MCI Engagements menu provides a structured view of all available earning opportunities, separated by solution area.
The Engagements Page and Summary
The Engagements page displays key details, including the name, partner, role, eligibility, and overall status. The Eligibility column is vital: a green icon indicates that one or more of your enrolled locations are eligible to earn on that specific engagement. Selecting an engagement will lead you to its Summary page, which provides a high-level description, outlining partner qualification criteria, customer qualification criteria, proof of execution requirements, resource links, and rates.
The Eligibility Page
The Eligibility page provides granular detail on which entities can earn. It lists all locations enrolled in the MCI program, showing their eligibility status and payee profile status. A green check mark next to these statuses confirms the location’s eligibility to earn on that engagement.
Managing Your Customer List
The Customers page for MCI engagements is where you manage customer associations applicable to partner activity engagements. This page also serves as a historical record, listing all customers who have previously provided consent for any of your engagement claims.
The customers are sorted into three essential tabs:
Eligible
Customers who meet the requirements for the engagement. This is the starting point for nominating a new customer or claiming a known one.
Ineligible
Customers who do not qualify for the engagement. Reasons for ineligibility include not meeting the criteria or having already reached the maximum allowed limit on active/allowed claims. Note that the Ineligible tab does not show details for partner activity engagements that rely exclusively on the Microsoft Sales Experience (MSX) opportunity ID for nomination.
Complete
This section lists claims that have reached a “terminal state” and require no further action, such as claims that have been completed, expired, canceled, or final rejected.
Initiating an Engagement: Add vs. Claim
For any single engagement, you must either add a customer or claim a customer, but not both. Both processes start from the Eligible tab. When initiating either process, you must select a Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program location ID that is enrolled in the MCI program.
Adding a New Customer
To add a customer, you select the option, provide a friendly name for the claim, and choose the appropriate location ID. Next, you must specify the customer ID type you will use. The appropriate ID depends entirely on the engagement type.
- Fixed Pay Engagements: Customer nomination can use the domain name, tenant ID, TPID (Top Parent ID), or Azure subscription ID, adhering to the engagement’s specific rules. If you provide a domain name, the system derives the tenant ID and performs eligibility checks; if you provide other ID types, eligibility checks are performed directly on the value provided.
- Variable Pay Engagements: Customer nomination must exclusively use the MSX opportunity ID. If adding a customer for a variable pay engagement, you must also provide the estimated number of hours required to complete the engagement, and this number cannot be updated later.
Claiming a Known Customer
If a customer is already known to you through other active or completed engagements (listed on the Eligible tab), you can initiate a new engagement by selecting Claim customer from the Action column.
The Critical Step: Customer Consent and Deal Size
After adding or claiming a customer, the most critical step is obtaining the customer’s consent to their agreement to participate in the engagement. You have a defined number of days to obtain this consent, depending on the specific engagement.
To request consent, select Send customer consent email from the Action column.
Mandatory Deal Size Input
During this process, you must provide the estimated deal size (in $USD equivalent) associated with the claim. This value should reflect the estimated license, seat, or consumption revenue expected over the first 12 months related to the incentive.
Crucial Caveat
You must provide the best possible estimate because this field cannot be updated after the claim is sent for customer consent.
The deal size information aids Microsoft in co-selling efforts but does not affect the claim eligibility or payout.
Once the customer provides consent, the status moves to Customer consent received, and you must submit your final claim documentation within the defined timeline. If consent is not received, you can resend the reminder email. If a customer declines or fails to respond within the required time, they may no longer appear on the Customers page for that engagement.
Tracking Success: Claim Status Definitions
The Customer claims page provides an overall view of all claims across earning opportunities, sortable by solution area. Understanding the claim status definitions is key to managing your workload.
Here are critical status definitions for the Microsoft Commercial Incentive workflow:
Status | Partner Action / Meaning |
Awaiting customer consent response | Partner has sent the consent request and is waiting for the customer’s agreement. |
Customer consent received | Customer has officially provided consent to proceed with the engagement. |
Submitted / Under review | The claim documents have been submitted and are actively being reviewed by Microsoft. |
Approved | The Microsoft reviewer determined that all required elements were present in the submitted documentation. |
Partner action required | The Microsoft reviewer found the claim lacking required elements and requested more information. The partner must edit or respond to the issues and return the claim to Submitted status. |
Rejected | Microsoft reviewer determined that the claim must be rejected based on review criteria. |
Rejected final | The reviewer determined that the partner’s dispute response was inadequate, and the rejection decision is final. |
Canceled | The partner canceled the claim prior to the submittal stage. |
MCI and the Co-selling Opportunity
Microsoft is actively enhancing the MCI program to better support relationships and co-selling efforts with partners.
For some partner activity engagements, when you create a claim (by adding or claiming a customer and seeking consent), the system automatically checks the details. When certain conditions are met, the system creates a partner-led referral corresponding to the claim.
If the claim successfully receives customer consent, the partner-led referral may be upgraded to a co-sell referral if the customer qualifies for the upgrade. This upgrade grants Microsoft field sellers visibility of the claim, enabling them to co-sell effectively with the partner.