As you know, in October the Microsoft Partner Network membership changes will go into effect, and current Microsoft Partners that are Gold Certified Partners or Certified Partners today will be transitioning into the Gold and/or Silver level competencies (see this post for more on this) within the Microsoft Partner Network during their re-enrollment periods instead of the Gold Certified Partner or Certified Partner designations that exist today.  To help partners prepare for these new competencies and the Gold and Silver levels, we have provided tools such as the “Value of Earning a Microsoft Competency Guide,” which describes not only the various competencies available in the Microsoft Partner Network, but also the requirements to achieve these at the Silver and/or Gold levels.

Today, I am happy to tell you about a new tool called the “Microsoft Partner Network Transition Tool” designed to help make the transition for the existing Gold Certified Partners and Certified Partners today even easier, by helping them understand where they stand today in meeting the requirements for these Silver and Gold competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network and what, if any, other requirements they would have remaining in order to achieve the level and quantity of competencies they want in the Microsoft Partner Network, coming from their existing competencies today. 

To help, I put together a virtual walk-through (click any image below for full-size) of how this tool works so that partners can quickly and easily use this for their organizations today.

First, navigate to the Microsoft Partner Network Transition Tool

From the main screen, sign in with your Windows Live ID (see #1 in picture)

Once logged in, you will see your main screen that contains: Your Partner ID Your renewal anniversary date Your Country Whether you are Certified or Gold Certified currently Company you are logged in as The legend (#6) shows you easy to read icons that will be used to represent your status.  Below this, it shows the MPN competencies most closely aligned with your current competencies and whether or not you have already met the requirements for the Silver (#7) or Gold (#8) levels of these.

In the example above, we are looking at a sample company that aligns to the Mid-Market Solution Provider, Unified Communications, and Volume Licensing competencies and they have not yet achieved all of the requirements for any of them.

Now that you are looking at your company’s overview, let’s dive in a little deeper into the details around the competencies showing up on the screen.  For this example, let’s say you are looking at the screen above and notice that you do not currently meet the requirements for the Silver or Gold levels of the Mid Market Solution Provider competency (See #7 and #8 in the picture above).  To find out more about what you are missing in terms of requirements for this competency, you can simply move your mouse next to the “View Details” next to Mid Market Solution Provider and click on the button that appears (#9 in picture above).  By doing this, you will be presented with the following screen:

Here you can see: The legend, denoting green as “met” and grey as “not met” indicators You can click on the “Silver” or “Gold” tab to have the screen show your progress against either level so far.  We’re on “Silver” for this example Shows when this data is from and when it will be updated again.  So if you’ve achieved one of the requirements between these two dates (when data was refreshed and will be refreshed) it will not show here yet The “Overall status” window shows you what you still need to achieve this level of the competency and by when (which would be your anniversary/re-enrollment date) Shows how many MCPs are required, how many you have associated to your account already that meet these exam requirements (green), their names, and Exam details they have achieved to meet the requirements "The link in the “Additional requirements” section will take you to the latest MPN Competencies guide that outlines complete details for all competencies Whether you have passed the “Licensing Assessment” yet or not Whether you have passed the “Sales & Marketing Assessment” yet or not Whether you have the required number of customer references already associated to your account The ability to print this summary for use offline

Let’s look a little closer at the “Overall Status” & “You still need by” boxes (Item #4 listed in picture above).  As mentioned above, this window shows you a quick overview of where you stand and what you have to do by when in order to achieve this level in the competency you are looking at.  Inside the “You Still Need By” box, you can just hover your mouse over the various icons and see what these items are.  For example, in the screen above, here is what you see as you move the mouse over the icons in that window:

	- When you hover over the (L) icon, it expands a notification showing that you still have 1 Licensing Assessment requirement left to meet for this competency
	- When you hover over the (SM) icon, it expands a notification showing that you still have 1 Sales & Marketing Assessment requirement left to meet for this competency
	- When you hover over the speech balloon icons, it expands a notification showing that you still have 3 references required to meet this competency

Another box I want to take a little closer look at is the “MCP” box, which is #5 in the screenshot above. 

	If you notice, it shows two MCPs (green) have met the MCP requirements for this competency and you have a “View Exam Details” link next to each of them.  If you click on the “View Exam Details” link, you will see a window similar to below appear:
	In this window you can see: The name of the MCP you are looking at exam info for Which competency you are looking at that this exam qualifies for Which exam it is that they have credit for Which competency level (Gold &/or Silver) this exam qualifies for and could be applied to

Now in the example above, it showed both MCPs associated to your partner organization with the qualifying exams that could be applied.  If you did not have any MCPs associated to your account with qualifying exams yet, the “MCP” window would look different.  Here is a sample of what it would look like:

As you can see, the MCP icons are grey, not green and no exam details are available.  You do; however, have a “View MCP Candidates” link that lets you select an MCP.

Speaking of MCPs, be sure to check out our instructional videos on the FAQs page on how individuals can associate themselves to your organization, if you aren’t sure.

I hope you will take a few moments and try out the new Microsoft Partner Network Transition Tool for your organization if you are a Certified or Gold Certified partner today and see how it helps you out in identifying where you are and what steps you have left to do in order to make the transition into the Silver or Gold level competencies you are looking to achieve in the Microsoft Partner Network.  I’d also love to hear your feedback on this tool as well.

For those of you now familiar with the Silver and Gold competency levels I am referring to above, you may want to check out this post I put up here when the announcement was made during Worldwide Partner Conference.

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman – Follow me on TWITTER, LinkedIn, and RSS and see “What I’m thinking”
Global Partner Experience Lead
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights