FPC Program ideas/suggestions

We have encountered several times that Microsoft's account teams have no idea of the vouchers and often think they don't really exist. As partner we have no way of telling them where to ask for information or request the voucher, making it impossible to continue with the program since people's ignorance on the matter is the main stopper.

My suggestion is to start having community trophies like they have in XBOX. Currently we have FRP badges, but nothing that recognizes our contribution to the FRP community. 

My idea would look like this; 

1. A person submits 10 Ideas they get an Idea Bronze Trophy on their profile

2. One of their ideas is accepted and put into practice they get a Silver Trophy.

 

So on and so forth. What this does is it encourages people to participate in the community and recognizes the superstars! Plus it's a bragging right and it is fun to collect loot if you're a gamer or an engineer in the Microsoft Universe. 

For the MW Deployment Offer is there a way to consolidate the paperwork?  Right now, partners must enter (copy & paste) some of the customer information 4 times (voucher #, entity name, tenant ID, email etc.)

For example:
1) I generate info into the initial SOW 
2) Then I have to submit the initial SOW into the portal.  The portal requires that I enter the voucher #, customer name and tenant ID # that is already in the SOW.  Additionally, I have to populate the Program Membership, why can’t it just auto populate?  I only have one program?
3) Then I copy and paste the same information from the SOW over to POE 
4) Then for the 4^th time I required to re-enter information (voucher #, entity name, tenant ID, email etc.) into portal coping and pasting the info again from the SOW and POE for final submissions.   

A lot of coping and pasting of the same information over and over. 

Is there any way this can flow into Partner Center (PC) where it can be more automated like other program such as AMM or the MCI offers.  Yes, we may have to submit the initial information, but the tool would allow us to add information such as voucher #, entity name, tenant ID, email & load SOW initially to a claim.  Then when engagements is completed, like other programs such as AMM and MCI it allows partners to send consent emails (directly from PC) as POE which would be great replacement for the final POE document.

There are two emails sent to a matched partner.

The first is the Referral Notification email alerts a partner to the fact that a customer has been referred.

 

The second email is the Partner Assignment Notification. This email is sent to customer, partner, referral requestor, FPM, and account team.

 

When a partner sends an email to the customer, that email may get quarantined or delivered in to the customer Junk Folder. Therefore, the customer never sees the email.

I had a few customers never seeing my emails even after repeated replies to the referral team, account team and/or customer.

 

 

 

When a client has Fasttrack vouchers earned via renewals or other means and they're associated to partner could we have a field in FTOP or Partner indicating so? 

After a partner accepts the customer referral, a "Notice of FastTrack Assignment" email is sent to customer that has the partner's name, email address and domain name.

 

Please add a statement in the Notice of FastTrack Assignment email to include the partner's domain name to the customer's Safe Sender list or Allow list.

This will prevent the email sent from the partner to the customer from being quarantined or delivered into the customer's Junk folder and thus the customer never sees the email.

 

I have several customer not receive my emails and had to get my FRM involved to contact either the Microsoft account member of customer to add my email to their Allow list.

 

With heightened email security, some customer email systems are filtering emails and mistakenly being flagged as spam or phishing.

Active user consumption control rules (MAU) that end up creating difficulties for us to work with customers. Unfortunately, due to various situations that are beyond our control, many customers reduce their consumption or even stop using the solutions. The problem is that we have had big problems with this, as our numbers end up being hugely negative.

This ends up creating difficulties for us to remain active in Microsoft programs.

We've found that obtaining an "acceptable" signature is getting increasingly more difficult, to the point where the approval team in Partner Center does not accept DocuSigned SOWs. Understand needing to verify customer signature, but it's become a lot harder to find an acceptable method, and we have to go back and add additional verification (email where customer sends back signed SOW), which is not realistic for the team to go back and find with a large network of sellers. Curious to see if other partners are running into this issue, and if there's a potential for some flexibility on what's accepted as a "valid signature" when claiming? 

Going to Partner Center > Insights > FastTrack > Referrals > customer name > Notes History, it shows the notes with no formatting:

NOTE: replaced customer information with xxxxx characters

 

"10/30/2023 - xxxx@microsoft.com RFA # 83643. 10/30/2023; Request approved for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management. Assigned to FTCQ FRP • EDU Licenses: No• Nonprofit Licenses: No• Non-FRP Engaged: No• FRP involved: No• GCC: No    Partner/MCS listed in RFA: false   Contacts:   • Customer contact information: xxxxx.xxxx, IT Administrator, xxxxx.xxxxx@contoso.com, 18001234567 • Requestor contact information: xxxxx, IT Administrator, xxxxx@contoso.com, 1801234567     Service Location and Language: • City: xxxxxx• State: Illinois• Country: united states• FT Supported Language: english (united states)   The following entitlement counts reflect the entitlements confirmed by the RFA eligibility engine. These entitlements may differ from FTOP due to latency or other issues but please move forward with the RFA based on the eligibility verified by the On-Demand Team.   RFA Approved Workloads:   • Purview DLM: xxxx Entitlements   RFA name: Request M365 assistance: Email retention policy setup   Additional information that may impact the project: We plan on implementing Email retention polices for the company and need help to ensure we are setting them up correctly.   RFA Form URL: "   

 

 

An improved formatting would make this information easier to read: