“Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent, homogeneity to a definite, coherent, heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations.” – Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher.
RackNap, the cloud services brokerage platform, has also been evolving, integrating and growing to be a feature – rich, all-encompassing and adaptable platform to cater to the vast ecosystem of its partners comprising Microsoft Cloud Partners, cloud services providers, telcos, data center providers and more.
From this month onwards, we will be sharing the latest updates and releases in RackNap to keep you in the know.
- Let your customers subscribe to Office 365 trial plans to get them familiar with the product before they convert to paid plans.
Microsoft Office 365 is the smartest and fastest way to share files, communicate and collaborate – anywhere, anytime. Now you can generate leads that convert to customers with free Microsoft Office 365 trial on your marketplace.
You can read how in detail, here: Generate leads that convert to customers with free Microsoft Office 365 trial on your marketplace.
- Enhanced invoice format specifically catering to Cloud Solution Providers industry, highlighting key information like subscription details, partner details, etc.
The invoices have all important information, including service details, partner details and more as shown in the screenshot below.
- Simplified Partner Onboarding form to collect all relevant information from partners in one-go
Onboarding reseller partners has now been made easier. They don’t have to go through a lot of hassles to become a partner.
– They need to fill their information in the form as shown below:
– The main company can approve or decline their partnership request, based on their partnership criteria.
– If the partnership request is accepted, a welcome mail is shot to the partner with all the relevant details. A mail notification in a test environment is shown below:
– The partner can access his services by logging into his control panel.
– The partner can then begin managing his products and services via the admin dashboard as shown in the screenshot below:
- Security enhancements to make RackNap more secure for your use
For authentication, Automation Platform – RackNap uses OAuth 2.0 protocol. It’s a token based authentication in which identity of the user is identified by the transaction of JSON Web Tokens (JWT) between the authentication server, user and resource server. Read here in detail.
- Support interface now includes top customer tickets and top replies for tickets.
Quick visibility of tickets’ status – customer replies and open tickets for support staff and administrators with shortcuts on dashboard itself to review support status. They can even create a ticket from here directly on customer’s behalf.
- Ability to upgrade/downgrade Office 365 subscriptions.
Directly from their member panel via the Upgrade/Downgrade Center, clients can add/remove accounts to/from their service if the service is available on the basis of quantity.
For this, they need to enter the number of accounts that they want to add or remove. On clicking on Add To Upgrade, Upgrade option will appear. On clicking it, a new order is generated; once order is paid then licenses (Number of quantity added) are updated and displayed in the service section of the client.
Similarly, on clicking on Add to Downgrade, Remove option will appear. As soon as downgrade button is clicked, licenses (Number of Quantity added) are removed and updated quantity is displayed in the service section of the client. A credit note is generated and amount based on the number of days left and quantity entered is credited in the client’s account.
- Optimization of migration process to move customers from one CSP to another CSP
The migration from one CSP to another is complicated as it requires action from both- partner and the customer. However, with RackNap, the migration process is now much streamlined. Here are the steps one can take:
– Partner sends a reseller request to the customer.
– On approval from the customer, his details are automatically ported into Microsoft Portal.
– RackNap also fetches his details directly from the CSP portal and then imports him to RackNap portal automatically.
– Now, the customer can go and place an order in the platform using same domain/quantity. He will then need to go to Partner Centre Portal to switch to the subscription to the new provider and start using the same.
- Set-up of Threshold/Budget limits per customer/partner for Azure pay per use offering
RackNap now has the ability to set-up budget/credit limits per partner. This will help to create custom alerts for different thresholds based on actual consumption of their services. This capability is available in the Partner Admin Panel (to be set for customers) and also Service Provider Admin panel (to be set for partners).
- Partners ability to view his own invoices from the service provider in an easy-to-view interface
A partner can now see his and clients’ invoices separately as shown in the screenshot below.
- Partner can offer add-ons of O365
The add-on SKUs that are available as a part of the entire CSP catalog can now be offered to customers via the RackNap platform. The partners can offer this via the administrator side purchasing process and this has helped them to increase the breadth of the offerings in their portfolio.
That’s all for this month. We will be back with more updates next month!
Good post! Thanks for sharing.