Connect Integration

Overview

By integrating CloudBlue Connect into Microsoft Commercial Marketplace, Vendors that provide their products to Connect Catalog can also publish products on AppSource Marketplace or Azure Marketplace. This can greatly streamline and simplify your sale operations and fulfillment management.

The following describes technical and business requirements for this integration:

Become a Microsoft Partner

Microsoft Partner Network provides the widest range of products in the industry as well as options to differentiate your business, transform your go-to-market strategy, and sell your software solutions. Become a MPN partner, then choose how to invest in your partnership with a Microsoft action pack, starter kit, or competency.

Join the Microsoft Partner Network by accessing the Membership Page on the MPN website and clicking Join now.

Once your organization joins the Microsoft Partner Program, it is necessary to enroll in the Commercial Marketplace Program. Therefore, your company will be able to publish offers into the marketplaces. Enroll in the Commercial Marketplace Program by accessing the Home → Add Program section and selecting Commercial Marketplace Program. 

Once your request is validated, the MPN user interface should display Commercial Marketplace. 

Enlist Connect Product

Create your product on the CloudBlue Connect platform. Start creating your listing request and select AppSource Marketplace or Azure Marketplace:

Create Offer on Microsoft Marketplace

Publication Workflow

Publish your offer on the Microsoft Commercial Marketplace by following the steps below:

1. Submit: Create the offer and submit it for a review.
2. Review: The AppSource team will check that your app meets the criteria and will send you the metadata requirements and instructions for onboarding your application.
3. Staging: Onboard your application for testing operations.
4. Publishing: In case all requirements are met, you can post your application.
5. Go To Market: Once your app is published, the Microsoft GTM services team will reach out to you about go to market programs to grow your presence on AppSource.

Technical Requirements

The following provides technical requirements for Microsoft Commercial Marketplace. Note that these requirements apply to the Sell through Microsoft listing options:

• It is possible to enable both Microsoft Accounts (MSA) and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) for authenticating users.
• Azure AD with single sign-on (SSO) identity management and authentication is required for the buying user to access the landing page.
• You must use the SaaS Fulfillment APIs to integrate with Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource. You need to expose a service that can interact with the SaaS subscription to create, update, and delete a user account and service plan. 
• It is required to create at least one plan for your offer. Your plan is priced based on the pricing model you select before your offer publishing (i.e., flat rate or per-user).
• The customer should be able to cancel your offer at any time.

Customer Leads

You must connect your offer to your customer relationship management (CRM) system to collect customer information. The customer will be asked for permission to share their information.

These customer details, along with your offer name, ID, and online store will be sent to your configured CRM system. 

Selecting Your Store

Once you publish a SaaS offer, it can be listed on Microsoft AppSource, Azure Marketplace, or both. Each online store serves unique customer requirements. AppSource is for business solutions and Azure Marketplace is for IT solutions.

Your offer type, transact capabilities, and categories will determine where your offer will be published. Categories and subcategories are mapped to each online store based on the solution type. For detailed information about selecting an online store, see Selecting an online store.

Create Your Offer

In the step technical configuration, you must set up the followings values:

Landing page: https://cloudblue.connect.com/portal/[tenant_id]/[connect_product_id]/start

Webhook page: https://cloudblue.connect.com/portal/[tenant_id]/[connect_product_id]/notification

Modeling Your Offer Plan

Configure Your Integration

To configure and enable the integration, please contact us to get further instructions.