This is article number two in a series of two articles about the Microsoft Business Applications ISV Connect program and the Microsoft AppSource publishing process. The previous article described the terminology and gave an introduction to the new ISV program as well as an overview to what needs to be done if you have had your apps on AppSource before but did not enroll with the new program. This article will cover registering Dynamics 365 & Power Apps offers and highlight the importance of preparations.
In my previous article you could read that the inspiration for these two articles came from a comment to my blog post about AppSource from last year, Brian Levenson, Business Program Manager for Microsoft’s Commercial Marketplace, suggested a collaboration to write about what has been changed. Thanks again for the initiative Brian!
Getting started with the Commercial Marketplace
Let us take a look at the steps needed to get started! The offer registration part starts in Microsoft Partner Center. In order to get started you will need to 1. Setup your Microsoft Partner Center Account. If you are not already a member of the Microsoft Partner Center, you can become one by enrolling here. Once your account has been set up, you will handle the publishing part under Commercial Marketplace.
Next up is to 2. Accept the Business Applications ISV Addendum. Once you have enrolled with Commercial Marketplace, locate Microsoft Business Applications ISV Addendum under heading Commercial Marketplace, read and choose Accept Agreement. You will need to have the Owner or Manager Role.
Under Settings -> Developer Settings -> Accounts -> Billing Profile you 3. Set up your billing information and it also requires the Owner or Manager role. After you have completed 1,2 and 3, your existing offers (if you had any since before) should be available for editing in Partner Center. Now you are ready to either recertify your apps or start to create a new offer.
We will look at the process for registering Dynamics 365 & Power Apps offers. But before we get to the registration part, let us take a few steps back. Let us look at what needs to be done prior to the offer registration. After all, the offer registration part is the last step in the publishing process.
Publishing apps on AppSource – overall process
My articles from last year are still relevant here. This artice was the first in a series of three. The only difference is that the offers are registered in Partner Center now instead of on the Cloud Partner Portal. To summarize it, below are the steps needed in order to register apps.
- Create a Dynamics 365 package for your App
- Create an AppSource Package, which will include the Dynamics 365 package
- Store the package on Azure Storage and generate an URL with SAS Key
- Submit an offer for your app in the Commercial Marketplace
Steps 1-3 seams to be the same as before. I will not go through these in detail again, instead I refer to my blog posts from last year and to the Microsoft documentation. The Microsoft documentation is really good and you find information about the publishing process here. There are more great links in the end of this article.
Prepare for offer registration
Before you create your offer in Partner Center, you should have prepared the different parts that you will need to fill in or upload. Different offer types require different preparations. I have written about this before in this article, but now I have also put together a summary picture for what you should prepared when registering a Dynamics or Power Apps offer. What is new here is to prepare Co-Sell documents, which is a part that comes with the ISV Connect program.
(style from https://www.slidescarnival.com/)
Let’s get hands-on with the offer registration part!
I have already covered the creation of an AppSource package and the other necessary parts in detail in my articles from last year. Let us now take a look at the offer registration part in the Commercial Marketplace. Sign in to Partner Center and navigate to the Commercial Marketplace. If you do not see it in the left side menu, then you have probably not enrolled or your user is not added as a user who will be able to administer it.
Under Commercial Marketplace, select Overview and choose to create a new offer. You will get to choose between the following categories. Here we have the alternative “Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement & Power Apps”.
As I understand, “Customer Engagement” is associated with the on-premises version only nowadays, if it refers to on-premises or not in the Commercial Marketplace, who knows, but this is the offer type you should choose when building custom Power Apps or when building on top of the First-Party Apps, e.g. when Dynamics Sales parts are included. With other words – building something on top of Dynamics “former CRM”. A bit confusing nowadays what we call the “former CRM parts”.
Fill in all the details (well, at least the mandatory parts) under Offer setup, Properties, Offer listing, Availability and Technical configuration. All partners who participated in the old ISV program will be familiar with most of the information that needs to be filled in here, before we filled in the same information, but in Cloud Partner Portal.
Add what is needed under the Co-sell with Microsoft tab. You can read about it here. Review and Publish! Before you click on the Review and publish button you also attach a .pdf file which describes the Key Usage Scenario, just for Microsoft to read as part of validating the offer.
Go-Live and celebrate! Fingers crossed and soon time to celebrate!
I also encourage you to take a look at the Solution Workspace that Brian mentions in his blog post about the Commercial Marketplace. I have not tried it out myself, but I might do as a starting point for the products where I work and for getting those up on AppSource.
Not only our Apps – Consulting Services as well
You know what, nowadays we also have the option to register Consulting Services, which means it is not only our products we can register, but also our services. It can be for Power Apps training, technical reviews, different kinds of workshops – simply to have your different consulting services packaged together and available on AppSource!
This was the second article of two about publishing apps on AppSource as part of the new ISV Connect program. These articles have been put together mostly out of me digging into the documentation. Now it is time for me to take care of the publishing process for the products where I work. Wish me luck on my journey!
Read More
Onboarding Guide – Microsoft Business Applications ISV Connect Program
Marketplace Publisher Guide – Start page for the Commercial Marketplace
Suggestions for great topics of the Commercial Marketplace documentation
Offer publishing guide for Office 365, Dynamics 365, Power Apps, and Power BI
Create a Dynamics 365 or Power Apps offer
Offer listings Best Practices
Registering Consulting Services
Permissions in Partner Center
From the Power Apps section in Microsoft Docs
Publish your app on App Source
App Design Best Practice Checklist
From the Power Apps blog
Let customers test drive your apps on AppSource
Another guide from Microsoft
Carina M. Claesson 