Registering New Customers with Existing Microsoft Accounts

The Office 365 application supports the multichannel and multipartner features of the CSP program. This allows you to grow your customer base by registering new customers who already have Microsoft accounts with users, domains, and licenses.

There are two scenarios of registering such customers:

  1. A customer already has a Microsoft account which was created when the customer bought licenses from another service provider. The customer wants to buy licenses from you and use the control panel of Odin Automation for managing licenses, users, and domains.
  2. A customer already has a Microsoft account which was created to evaluate Office 365 services using trial licenses. The customer wants to buy the same non-trial licenses from you and use the control panel of Odin Automation for managing licenses, users, and domains.

Both scenarios require the customer to accept an invitation allowing you to manage the customer's Microsoft account through Odin Automation. The invitation must be accepted interactively on an invitation page of the Microsoft Office 365 Portal by an eligible user. Note that this user must have the Global administrator role to the Microsoft account.

After the invitation is accepted, the customer must pay for the licenses which he or she wants to buy. As a result, an order is created in Odin Automation. When the order is processed, the existing users and domains are imported from the Microsoft account to the control panel of Odin Automation.

In the first scenario, the licenses bought from another service provider are not imported, so the customer needs to assign his or her users the licenses bought from you using the control panel of Odin Automation. In the second scenario, the trial licenses are converted into the paid ones and the license assignments are kept and visible in the control panel of Odin Automation.

The registration procedure consists of the steps described below, which are performed by a customer in the control panel/online store of Odin Automation:

  1. The customer chooses the licenses which he or she wants to buy from you.
  2. The customer selects the Use Existing Microsoft Account option.
  3. The customer specifies the login and the password of a user with the Global administrator role to the Microsoft account.

  4. The customer confirms that the Microsoft account will be managed by you. It is done on the invitation page, which is opened in a new browser window after clicking the Sign In to Office 365 Portal button. The login and password of the same user must be used at this step.

    Important: The browser of the customer must allow pop-up windows for the online store and control panel.

  5. The customer pays for the licenses.

If you want to register a customer with an existing Microsoft account on behalf of the customer, you need to do the following:

  1. Ask the customer to provide you with the list of the licenses he or she wants to buy.
  2. Ask the customer to provide you with the initial subdomain of the Microsoft account.
  3. Ask the customer to provide you with information which is necessary to register the customer in Odin Automation, such as the first name and last name, e-mail, phone, address of the customer.
  4. Provide the customer with the URL of the invitation page. You can obtain the URL from the Invitation URL global setting of the corresponding application instance.
  5. Ask the customer to open the page and accept the invitation by signing in under a user with the Global administrator role to the Microsoft account.
  6. Log in to your control panel and create the customer account and Office 365 subscription using the Use Existing Microsoft Account option.

As a result, an order is created. The default order flow configured in Odin Automation defers processing the order until the payment is received, so the customer is supposed to log in to the control panel of Odin Automation and pay the order. Note that this order flow can be altered by the Odin Automation provider in many ways. Refer to the OA Billing Provider’s Guide for details.