Category: Partners

Interacting with Microsoft

People sometimes wonder about what is the best way to interact with Microsoft. In fact, this post isn’t strictly aimed at interacting with Microsoft, but can also be taken as a general guide to interacting with any organisation. The reason for deciding to write about this comes from a conversation that I had last week with a good friend, who was having issues in finding a resolution to an issue.

Let’s start at the beginning. We, or our customers, have relationships with suppliers such as Microsoft. We’ll order software (licenses), need to have them supplied to us (show up in our account), and sometimes there may be issues that we need to help/support with. There are obviously general support channels available that support tickets can be raised through, but there are also other avenues to consider as well.

Apart from the ‘professional’ relationship/s that may be in place, we may also have ‘personal’ relationships with members of different teams. These can happen in various different ways, such as speaking together at events, organising communities, etc. They are very valuable to have in place, & many people that I know, as well as myself, strive to improve & increase the network & connections that we have with Microsoft & other organisations.

However, there’s something very important to keep in mind. Just as we are doing our day job (what we’re paid to do), they are as well. At the end of the day, they (as with ourselves) need to ensure that the job gets done.

So if we reach out to ask something from them, we’re essentially asking for a favour, usually without anything recriprocal being able to be offered. A really good analogy for this, shared previously with me by Mark Smith & Chris Huntingford, is the ‘Sweet Jar Concept’.

Here’s how it goes. Imagine that the person has a jar with 100 sweets in. There are a limited number (the number itself isn’t important though) available, and the person has to choose who to give the sweets to. If we ask for a favour without knowing them, it’s highly unlikely to be granted. Even if we do know them somewhat, it may still be unlikely – they’re not going to be getting any return on the sweet that they’re giving out. Potentially if we know them well, and have proven in the past that we’re of value to them, we’ll get a sweet.

But even if we do know them well, if we keep asking for sweets (aka favours), the likelihood of them being granted will diminish (rapidly). Again – there’s a limited supply of them, and we’re not going to be looked on favourably if we keep coming back & asking for more, whilst not giving anything in return.

So HOW could we go about this, to set ourselves up for success (ie getting the outcome that we’re desiring). Well, this is actually quite simple – we need to identify who will be gaining something by helping us. Let’s explain this in more detail.

Within Microsoft (& any organisation really), people have metrics that they need to meet for their role. These are usually referred to as KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), and are used for things like salary & role progression. What we should be doing is finding the right person (or team) that has (one or more) KPI’s aligned to what we’re trying to accomplish.

Let’s use the example here of the situation with my friend last week. He had a client who had ordered licenses from Microsoft that were needed for a project to start, but hadn’t appeared in the customer account yet. If the licenses weren’t there on-time, the project would need to be delayed, which would be expensive (& very annoying) for the customer.

On hearing the situation, I suggested to him to find the person (or people) within Microsoft who’d be aligned towards ensuring the situation was remedied ASAP. Examples of these people could be:

  • Microsoft Account Manager. This person would be aligned from the Microsoft side to ensure that the customer would have everything that they needed to be successful
  • Microsoft Sales Team. If there was a sales team involved with the license purchase, they would be very aligned to ensuring that the licenses had actually been procured and showing up in the customer account!
  • Microsoft Account Technology Strategist. This is the person responsible for designing the strategy and architecture to drive digitalisation and innovation for the customer

Now the above list isn’t exhaustive, and is also applicable to the specific scenario above. Additionally, the people mentioned might not be able to actually deal with the situation themselves, but if they’re not, are more than likely to know the right person/team who can deal with it.

With this approach, we’d be lined up for success in three ways:

  1. We’d (hopefully) get the immediate situation looked at and resolved
  2. We’d be giving our connections the ability to align to their KPI’s, and show results for them
  3. We’d be showing our value to our connections, which can then help if we have a favour to ask in the future (that’s not necessarily aligned to KPI’s

So in a nutshell – when we look to try to get something dealt with/resolved, we should ask ourselves who’s best aligned professionally to help us, with it being in line with their professional goals. This way we can drive value, as well as giving goodwill all round.

Have you ever been in a situation where this may have helped? How did you handle it? I’d love to hear – please drop a comment below!

Recognition as Microsoft Partner for Business Application Solutions

It’s been a little while since I’ve previously blogged around developing customer solutions and the Microsoft Specialisations. Since I spoke about it last year (Apps & Microsoft Partner Specialisations) the landscape has moved on a little, and I thought that it would be good to take a look again at it.

Currently in the Business Applications space, there’s a single specialisation. This is the ‘Microsoft Low Code Application Development Advanced Specialisation’, which is covered in detail at the Microsoft page for it (Microsoft Low Code Application Development Advanced Specialization).

In essence, this specialisation is aimed at partners who are developing Power Apps (yes, this is specifically aimed at Power Apps), and has been around for a year or so.

In order for Microsoft to track the qualifying metrics against this specialisation, it’s very important to carry out the PAL (Partner Attach Link) process. The details of how to do this is in my earlier post, which includes some of my thoughts at the time around how a partner should best implement the procedure.

Since then, my blog post has gained a good amount of traction, and several Microsoft partners have engaged with me directly to understand this better, and to implement the process into their project playbook. I’m really delighted at having been able to help others understand the process, and the reasoning behind it.

Now that’s all good for a partner who is staying in place at a customer. However there are multiple scenarios that can differ from this. Examples of this are:

  1. Multiple partners developing a single application together
  2. One partner handing over the application to a second partner for further development
  3. One partner implementing a solution, with a second partner providing support

Now, there’s really a single answer to all of the above scenarios, but it’s a matter of how to go about implementing this properly. Let me explain.

Originally, all developers would register PAL, and this would then be tracked through the environment cadence, and associated appropriately to the partner. This would be from the developers having been the creators of the apps.

This has now changed a little bit. Microsoft now recognises the capabilities of PAL using both the Owner of the app, as well as any Co-Owners of the app. This is a little more subtle, so let’s explain this in some detail.

It is possible, of course, to change the owner of an app. More commonly, however, is the practice of adding co-owner/s to an app (I always recommend this as best practice actually, to remove key-person responsibility risks).

Note: Changing the actual owner of an app requires the usage of a PowerShell command

So what happens now is that Microsoft will track the owners/co-owners of any app that’s deployed, and PAL association will flow through this. But there are a couple of caveats which it’s important to be very aware of!

  1. All owners/co-owners must have registered PAL with their user accounts (if using a service principal/service account as an owner, there’s a way of doing this using PowerShell)
  2. Microsoft will recognise the LATEST owner/co-owner association with the app as the partner organisation that will receive PAL recognition

Now if a customer adds co-owners to an app, this shouldn’t be an issue (as none of the users would have registered PAL). But if there are multiple partners in place, ONLY THE LATEST ONE WILL BE RECOGNISED.

Therefore to take the three scenarios above, let’s see how this would apply.

  1. Multiple partners developing a single app. Recognition would not work for all partners involved, just the latest one to associate with the app
  2. Partner 1 handing over app to Partner 2. Recognition would stop for Partner 1, and would then start for Partner 2
  3. Partner 1 implementing solution, Partner 2 providing support. Care would need to be taken that the appropriate partner is associated as owner/co-owner to the app, for PAL recognition.

It’s also important for both partners & customers to understand this, in the wider context of being careful about app ownership, and the recognition that it brings from Microsoft for partners delivering solutions. If a partner would go into a customer, and suddenly start taking ownership of apps that it’s not involved in, I don’t think that Microsoft would be very approving of it.

Now, all of the above is in relation to Power Apps specifically, as I’ve noted. However, the PAL article was updated last week (located at Link a partner ID to your Power Platform and Dynamics Customer Insights accounts with your Azure credentials | Microsoft Docs) and also interestingly talks about:

Note the differences between each item

Reading between the lines here, I think that we’re going to be seeing more advanced specialisations coming out at some point. Either that, or else partner status will be including these as well, as I can’t think of any other reason why PAL would need to be tracked for these as well! I’m also wondering if other capabilities (eg Power Virtual Agents, Power Pages, etc) will be added at some point as well…

Have you had any challenges with the PAL process? Is there anything more you’d like to find out about it? Drop a comment below, and I’ll do my best to respond!