As I revised for the MB2-715 exam (Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement Online Deployment) I am creating blog posts detailing all aspects of my revision. I hope these posts will aid anyone who is also revising for this exam. In this posts I will review managing subscriptions.
Before I revise any topic I often find it useful to begin by reviewing the skills measured statement. When considering managing subscriptions the following skills measured statement applies.
From this we can see that we that we need to understand the process for signing up for a new subscription. And additionally what would happen if we need to cancel active subscriptions.
Subscriptions
All subscriptions are managed via the Microsoft Office 365 portal.
There are three ways you can buy a license,
- Directly in the Office 365 admin portal
- By converting a 30-day free trial into a paid subscription
- Via a Volume Licensing agreement
For a volume license subscriptions are still managed within Office 365. You’ll buy the license via the volume agreement and then enter an activation code in Office 365.
Note:
Subscriptions are managed within the Office 365 portal, although this does not mean an Office 365 subscription is mandatory. You can have a Dynamics 365 subscription without an Office 365 subscription. (Although commonly people will have Office 365 plans, so that they can integrate with Exchange, SharePoint etc!)
Below you can see that subscriptions can be managed in the admin center. Under subscriptions I can see existing active subscriptions and if required add additional ones. Or I could jump straight to the Purchase subscriptions option to purchase a new product or add-on.
There are two types of purchases you could make. One being subscriptions in their own right. These might be Dynamics 365 licenses or other products such as PowerBI. Or add-ons to existing subscriptions could be purchased. Add-ons might include things like additional storage or non-production instances.
Subscriptions fall into several categories. You’ll, for example find all of the Dynamics 365 Enterprise subscriptions under the heading “Dynamics 365 Suite”. Whilst the Business edition licenses will be found under “Small Business Suite”.
Additional products such as Premier Support can also be added through the purchase service section in the Office 365 admin center.
On many subscriptions you only have an option to “buy now”. You can’t for example have a free trial of the enhanced support options! But some subscriptions do include an additional option to start a free trial.
Cancelling Subscriptions
You can cancel a subscription but you must contact billing support to do this. You cannot cancel a subscription directly in the Office 365 portal.
Depending on the service term you may be charged a cancellation fee as subscriptions to Dynamics 365 are for a minimum term. Meaning if you cancel before that minimum term has expired it is likely you’ll pay fees to the end of the contracted period.
There are exceptions to cancellation fees. For example, if you are migrating from Dynamics 365 on premise to Dynamics 365 on line or even to a partner hosted solution then the cancellation fee will be waived. Cancellation would also be waived for a customer wanting to move form Dynamics 365 online to on premise installation. (Microsoft calls this process the “power of choice”.)
Note: If you are migrating from Dynamics 365 online to on premise you can contact technical support to arrange an export of the SQL database containing your data. This can then be imported into an on premised SQL Server. (It is however not possible to export an on premise database and import directly into online.)
Having cancelled a subscription, the data is kept for 30 days, after the 30 days has elapsed the data will be deleted. During this 30-day period you can change your mind about the cancellation.
Obviously if you wish to cancel but require a copy of your data, to avoid data lose it will need to be exported into another system during this 30-day period.
Cancelling a Dynamics 365 subscription will not affect any of your other subscriptions. Such as Office 365 etc.
I normally suggest that hands-on experience is an essential part of your exam preparation. Although in this case I’m not going to suggest you should actually buy or cancel a subscription! But you may want to view your production subscriptions or if just using a trial solution at least explore the options available.
NEIL PARKHURST 
Leave a comment