What's new in ActivePlatform in the spring of 2022

JUNE 09, 2022: ActivePlatform, the market player in automated cloud service brokerage systems, released a new version of its cloud sales automation platform.

During the spring of 2022, we extended our integration with Microsoft cloud services, revisited the approach to switching subscriptions plans, and introduced a new integration with Softline Payments.

Integrations with the following Microsoft cloud services got their updates:

• Microsoft NCE
• Microsoft Azure Plan
• Microsoft Software Subscriptions

Managers of resellers now have a simple four-step wizard to migrate Microsoft NCE subscriptions from Microsoft Partner Center into the platform. The ability to migrate existing Microsoft NCE subscriptions is the key tool to enter a new market and establish relations with customers who already use Microsoft cloud services.

For every subscription, a manager can configure the payment model, individual prices, and generation of charges for a paid period. The new tool migrates up to ten subscriptions for a customer at once, automatically checks all the prerequisites, including the financial eligibility of the customer's account in the platform. In case of any impediments, it helps a manager with an explanation and suggests a solution by displaying a message on one of the steps.

Every subscription is migrated independently, and a manager can check on the migration results via the list of individual migration tasks. On a page of a migration task, the platform provides a manager with the most valuable information about the original subscription on the Microsoft side and a subscription created in the platform.

Our integration with the Microsoft NCE service now has one more feature — the ability to switch a subscription between Microsoft NCE products and their billing plans and billing terms (in terms of the platform, between the Microsoft NCE plans). Switching is only available with the next renewing, but customers can schedule it in advance by creating a delayed order.

Resellers do not need to worry about configuring hundreds of switchable plans in the platform for Microsoft NCE. All the plans corresponding to available billing plans and billing terms are created and linked automatically using the data from a fetched Microsoft price list. Creating switchable plans takes less than an hour and can be requested via our technical support team.

If a customer already has a Microsoft tenant, the platform now allows selecting one of the tenant's users as an admin while a new Microsoft Azure Plan subscription is ordered. Previously, the platform only tried to find an admin@ user within a Microsoft tenant, and if the user was not found, a customer had to go to Azure portal and assign an admin manually.

For customers without a Microsoft tenant, the platform as before creates a new admin@ user and makes it an admin of a new Microsoft Azure Plan subscription.

Since Microsoft altered the terms of the Microsoft Software Subscriptions service and enabled renewing for subscriptions ordered after 14 October 2021, we modified the billing rules on our side accordingly to support the changes.

Subscriptions to the Microsoft Software Subscriptions service can be renewed automatically and manually, as any other subscriptions in the platform. The only difference they have is limitation by their current period and quantity of resources. Customers cannot change them while renewing.

For subscriptions ordered before 14 October 2021, resellers can disable the auto-renewal option, prevent it from changing by a customer, and forbid manual renewing on the subscription level.

Changing a plan of a subscription got a fresh look for managers and more flexible logic to comply with Microsoft and Google rules for subscriptions with obligations.

In version 6.2, we introduce the full support of delayed switching a plan of a subscription. Vendors like Microsoft and Google allow transferring subscriptions with obligations only on the expiration date, together with their renewing. Now, customers can schedule the changes within a period before the expiration date. Resellers can set the length of this period manually in the service terms.

Once the defined number of days is left before the expiration date of a subscription, the Switch Plan button appears, so a customer can create a delayed order. After that, the platform will wait the expiration date of a subscription to send a request to the vendor side and start the order provisioning process.

Delayed orders are available for switching Microsoft NCE and annual Google Workspace subscriptions.

The switch point is a new setting for resellers that allows limiting a period when switching a plan is available. This period starts in the specified number of days before the subscription expiration date and is intended to be used with delayed orders. If a reseller did not configure this period for annual subscriptions, a customer could create a switch plan order delayed to the expiration date of such subscription long before its expiration and fix the current prices for the next period. However, with the switch point set to 14 days, for example, resellers can keep the balance between reducing their financial risks and comfortable period of creating a switch plan orders in advance for their customers.

The switch point is set on the service terms level for plans, but managers can redefine its value for individual subscriptions, if necessary. The special values like "-1" for "switching the plan is always available" and "0" for "switching the plan is never available" are also supported.

Managers can now place switch plan orders at individual prices, similar to ordering a new subscription. Individual prices can be applied to different fee types and cannot be used together with discounts — these are the standard billing rules of the platform.

To support all the changes in switching the plan process, we redesigned the switch plan order configuration steps in the Operator Control Panel. Managers will notice that the UI became unified with ordering a new subscription: same elements, same behavior.

The latest version of ActivePlatform got a new payment integration, more customer-oriented grace period logic, subscriptions scheduled on an arbitrary date, and more flexible renewal settings.

We added the support of Softline Payments — an API designed to accept payments through different methods like online banking, bank cards, or offline cash payment with vouchers. With this new multilingual and multicurrency payment gateway, customers all over the world can now pay for cloud services with their favorite payment methods in compliance with all payment security measures.

Just topping up the account balance is now enough to activate graced subscriptions — the platform automatically withdraws the funds from the account balance once a customer has any overdue prolong order and enough funds on the balance.

A subscription becomes graced if a customer does not pay for its prolongation manually and does not have enough funds on the account balance to pay automatically when a new month begins. We noticed that some customers top up their account balance with sufficient funds later, but do not complete the payments linked to overdue prolong orders to pay off the debt and activate their graced subscriptions. They might believe that the platform is aware about the debt and will use the funds from balance automatically. So now it does exactly what customers expect. During the whole grace period, the platform performs daily attempts to pay from balance for an existing prolong order and activate the linked subscription.

While ordering a new subscription, the platform allows scheduling its start date. When a customer (or a manager) selects a date up to 15 days from the current date, the platform creates a delayed sales order, similar to delayed renewal and switch orders.

The delayed sales orders allow planning future subscriptions and, for the prepay model, having more flexible payments in advance.

Speaking of different payment models, one of the requested features was the ability to have different renew points for the prepay and postpay models. These points define a period when renewal of a subscription becomes available.

With this update, managers can set two pairs of renewal points in service terms: the manual renew points for the prepay and postpay models, and auto-renew points for the prepay and postpay models. Moreover, the renewal points, as before, can be redefined for individual subscriptions for the maximum flexibility and customer comfort.

Among other improvements, we would like to highlight the following:

• Resellers can now manage the visibility of their offers to customers on a higher level and exclude entire product categories from the catalog of Customer Store and Reseller Store, not just only products of a category or plans of a product. The new tool is extremely effective when a reseller's product portfolio requires a quick cleanup in the rapidly growing and changing world of cloud services.
• We improved integration with the Adobe Creative Cloud services. Those responses from Adobe VIP Marketplace that sometimes may take too much time no longer affect the provisioning process in the platform.
• As we are expanding the presence of the platform in different countries, we added the support of new currencies. For this time, it is the Polish zloty (PLN) and Czech koruna (CZK).

ActivePlatform is a full-service automated cloud brokering solution for cloud service providers and internal IT hubs that makes it easier to manage and control the cloud delivery and profitability. ActivePlatform unites vendors, providers, developers, and resellers into a single ecosystem for buying, selling, and managing cloud services. With its open vendor integration framework, ActivePlatform creates a vibrant catalog of cloud services ultimately helping businesses gain access to the services they need to thrive.

ActivePlatform enables SaaS, PaaS, IaaS aggregation, delivery, and monetization, provides simplified administration through central management, and enables critical visibility into resellers and cloud services consumption and usage. The platform has implementations with distributors, cloud solution providers, and telecom operators. ActivePlatform is headquartered in Europe.