Have you recently purchased a new automation platform? Are you spending already too much time connecting your Microsoft Partner Center with the platform and importing your existing data?

The acquisition of a new cloud automation platform always comes with new tools, new opportunities and promises to make businesses more productive and more profitable. However, it is always a challenge to align your current business line with the new platform.

As mentioned on the blog “How to seamlessly migrate to a new cloud platform”, migrating to a new cloud platform can be an extremely painful process. Plus, risks associated with cloud migration such as loss of sensitive data and compromised data security can occur during the process.

To facilitate and support this process, we have implemented a powerful “importer tool” that is used for migrating your existing customers and their subscriptions in the interworks.cloud platform. An effortless and automated process that communicates with Microsoft’s Partner Center and transfers all your data into the platform, whether you are a CSP Direct (Tier 1) or Indirect (Tier 2) provider.

Access the Tool

To access the interworks.cloud importer tool, navigate to BSS Setup > Tools and select “Import Customers Tool”.

Step 1: Configure the Import Instance

Before you begin the import process, you first need to define the instance you will import your customers from. To do this, simply click the Microsoft Cloud Services Instance drop-down menu and select the correct instance (you may have one or multiple instances that you can choose to import your customers from).

Step 2: Load your Data

By clicking to the “Get Hierarchy” button, the interworks.cloud platform communicates with Microsoft’s Partner Center, through API calls, and retrieves everything that’s associated with your chosen instance. The results from this “communication” are stored inside our database and you can complete the import without repeating this step again. Basically, the Get Hierarchy button collects the instance’s MS tenants and their respective subscriptions and loads the data into the interworks.cloud platform.

Step 3: Get Hierarchy Results

Upon selecting the corresponding instance and subsequently clicking the “Get Hierarchy” button, the tool retrieves the instance’s CSP MS tenants by obtaining all the subscriptions belonging to Direct CSPs as well as Indirect CSPs.

Your data will be displayed as a matrix list showing the Type of company (Reseller or Customer), their name, Country, MPN ID, as well as the end-customers list for the Indirect CSPs. There is a detailed description for all displayed columns

Step 4: Configure Import Options

All data have been gathered and it’s time to import all or selected customers.

• Direct CSPs:
  By selecting one or more Customers from the checkbox, click the “Import Customers” button. Then you only need to configure Ordering as well as Subscription Options for the chosen tenants in order to continue with the import.
  

• Indirect CSPs:
  In this case, you will need to execute the import for each Reseller. Under the column “End-Customers” click the link to view each reseller’s end-customers (e.g. View(3)), and then you will be able to select the end-customers you want to import, similarly with the Direct CSPs process. Configure import options and repeat the process for all the resellers.

Step 5: Initiate the Import Process

Click on “Start Import” and the process is initiated. For each partner center customer, an account and contact will be created in the platform, as well as all subscriptions and addons will be transferred.

For the import results of Direct CSP tenants or the end-customers of an Indirect CSP tenant, you must continue on to the “Import Results Page” page.

From there you can check all errors that may occur during the import process. Click on the customer’s name (under the column “Type”), where you saw under “Status” that was an error, reveal the log of the import and examine the reason of the error in detail, as exemplified below.

Note: The import process is asynchronous and as a result you can leave it as is and continue with your other tasks. It doesn’t require any monitoring by you, since it is built with various mechanisms that enforce the overall completion of the import process even if there might be errors in the process.

Azure Plan Importer

For all Azure Plan subscriptions that have already been created inside the Microsoft Partner Center, the “Azure Plan Importer”  allow us to migrate them into the interworks.cloud platform.

The tool is located on each “Microsoft Cloud Services” instance. Navigate to BSS Setup > Administration > System Options > Applications Setup > Microsoft Cloud Services > Settings and select the instance tab you wish to run the tool. Then, click the “Go to Azure Plan Importer” button, as depicted below.

An intuitive and user-friendly process including all information necessary to import your customer’s subscriptions. Click on the “Get Customers” button to initiate the communication with the Partner Center and collect all the data. Then you just click on the desired tenants you want to import, click on “Import Selected” and view the results from the “Results” tab available on the left.

To learn more about how interworks.cloud can help you seamlessly migrate into the platform and in all other aspects of your CSP business, get in touch with us and request a free demo.