Administration of Business Central Online

Administrators that can manage Business Central online tenants are either an internal administrator, who is an employee of the company that bought the Business Central subscription, or an administrator from the reselling partner company. Some of the tools are the same, and some tools are available to partners only. Here you can learn which tools are available to you as an administrator.

Administration as an internal administrator

Internal administrators are the system administrators, IT professionals, or superusers of the customer's company, who are assigned the Global administrator, Dynamics 365 Administrator, or Dynamics 365 Business Central Administrator role in the Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, see About admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin content.

Administration in Business Central

As the internal administrator, you can add users and grant permissions. For more information, see Create Users According to Licenses and Assign Permissions to Users and Groups in the business functionality content for Business Central.

As an internal administrator you have read-only access to all areas of Business Central. You have this access even if your organization decides not to continue with Business Central and cancels the subscription. That way, the internal administrator can export relevant data, while no one else in the organization has a license to sign in and use Business Central.

For other tasks, you can access the Business Central administration center, where you can manage environment updates and other tasks. For more information, see The Business Central Administration Center.

You can also use telemetry to track usage and monitor user sessions, for example. For more information, see Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry and Managing Sessions.

Administration of a trial

If your organization signed up for a Business Central trial, you can extend the free trial, and you can start the process of finding a reselling partner to help you get a subscription. For more information, see Dynamics 365 Business Central Trials and Subscriptions.

Administration in the Microsoft 365 admin center

The Global administrator and License administrator roles let you manage the subscription and assign or remove licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Global administrator and User administrator roles let you add or remove users from your organization's tenant. For more information, see Microsoft 365 Admin help center.

Collaboration with reselling partners

When your organization subscribes to Business Central, you have a relationship with an authorized partner of Microsoft. The partner company assists with licensing, configuration, and other tasks. They can also help you get telemetry about your Business Central environment. Authorized partners can gain access to your tenant and its Business Central environments by setting up a granular delegated administrative privileges (GDAP) relationship. It's recommended the Dynamics 365 Business Central Administrator role in GDAP relationships as this role limits access for partner users to Business Central only. The Global administrator and Dynamics 365 administrator roles are also supported for partners to administer and access Business Central environments in the customer tenant, but also provide access to services other than Business Central.

If your organization decides to switch to another partner, you must take the following steps:

1. Ask your current partner to remove the reseller relationship with you in the Partner Center.

2. Remove their delegated administration privileges by completing the follwoing steps:

   1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, under Settings, select Partner relationships, and then select the partner of interest.
   2. In the details pane, select Remove delegated admin.
   3. In the confirmation pane, select Remove.
   4. Disable their user accounts in Business Central.
   5. Remove any multitenant applications owned by the partner that are authorized to use service to service (S2S) authentication with Business Central APIs.

3. Remove any settings in the Business Central administration center if the partner didn't already clear their settings. Settings that partners typically set up in the Business Central administration center that should be removed include notification recipients, authorized Microsoft Entra apps, and the Application Insights connection string.

   For more information, see Internal administrators.

4. Add your new partner to your subscription, and work with them to get them set up.

Unsubscribing from Business Central

If the organization decides not to continue with Business Central, you can then cancel the subscription.

In the Microsoft 365 admin portal, you can remove licenses from users. As the administrator, you can remove a trial subscription from your company's account. But to cancel a paid subscription, you must contact your reselling partner, and they can cancel the relevant subscription in the Partner Center. For more information, see the Data and access when a trial or subscription ends section.

Administration as a partner

As a Business Central reselling partner, you're the administrator of the Business Central tenants of your customers. You have access to the administration tools of their Microsoft 365 account and their Business Central administration center where you can specify update windows. You can also log into their Business Central as a delegated administrator if you want to reproduce errors.

Join the Microsoft Partner Network

Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) membership unlocks our best resources to differentiate your business, take your product to market, and sell your solutions. To become a partner, you must join the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), at which time you will be assigned an MPN ID. MPN membership is free to all partners; you can enroll in the MPN here.

Once signed up, you will get an MPN ID – your gateway to access all the membership resources and benefits for your partnership with Microsoft. There is no cost to obtain a MPN ID as a Network member, and with options to upgrade to an Action Pack subscription or work toward a competency, you can access even more benefits.

Set up your Partner Center account

Once you have joined the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), you can set up your Partner Center (PC) account. The Microsoft Partner Center is a generic portal where partners can sell and manage customer subscriptions for Microsoft services, such as Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, and others, as well as for some third-party products. For more information, see the Partner Center documentation.

Your Partner Center account provides you with access to pricing information, tools and services, and enables you to manage admin credentials for your company's work account. Partner Center is also where you can purchase or renew subscriptions to Microsoft Action Packs, create a business profile to receive and manage sales leads from Microsoft, and see if you qualify for co-selling opportunities.

Enroll in the CSP program

The Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program helps your company to be more involved in your customers' businesses, beyond reselling licenses. In CSP, you can choose to enroll as an indirect reseller or a direct bill partner.

In most cases, you enroll as an indirect reseller and then work with an indirect provider, also referred to as a distributor, who then manages all interaction with Microsoft in terms of licensing and technology, so that you can focus on sales and support. If you decide to enroll as a direct bill partner in order to fully own the end-to-end relationship with both customers and Microsoft, make sure that you meet the eligibility requirements. For more information, see Enroll in the Cloud Solution Provider program in the Microsoft Partner Center content.

The Microsoft Partner Center is a generic portal where partners can sell and manage customer subscriptions for Microsoft services, such as Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365, and others, as well as for some third-party products. For more information, see the Partner Center documentation.

Some indirect providers (distributors) provide their resellers with a custom portal that optimizes and enhances the experience beyond the Partner Center. They can also provide indirect resellers with an API to automate some of the customer onboarding steps. Contact your indirect provider to find out more.

Both indirect resellers and direct bill partners can access and support their customers' Business Central by setting up a reseller relationship with them.

To service customers in a specific country, your partner company's Microsoft Entra tenant and CSP account must be registered in the regional CSP market that covers that country. For more information, see Cloud Solution Provider program regional markets and currencies.

In the Microsoft Partner Center documentation, you can learn how to request a reseller relationship with customers, assign licenses to users, and create new subscriptions. Business Central is one of the subscriptions that you can create, and there are Business Central-specific license types that you can assign to users.

You must also assign certain roles to users in your own organization so that they can support your customers.

Add users from your own organization

In most cases, your partner company includes employees with different responsibilities, and you can assign different roles depending on people's responsibility. This way, you can be very explicit about who from your staff can access your customers' data, for example.

For each user, you can assign permissions for 2 categories of tasks:

• Managing your organization's account

  This controls access to the functionality of the Partner Center portal

• Assisting your customers

  This controls access to your customers' environments

When you establish a reseller relationship with a customer in Partner Center, you must specify which people from your organization will assist that customer's tenant as either Admin agent or Helpdesk agent. These users can manage implementation, support, and troubleshooting tasks for your customers. Once the reseller relationship with a customer is established, they will be able to login into the Business Central environments of the customer without a license. The number of partner users that can access customer environments is not restricted.

This way of accessing customer resources is called delegated administration, and the partner users are therefore called delegated administrators or delegated admins in daily shorthand. For more information, see Delegated Administrator Access to Business Central Online.

Since February 2022, you can set up security groups with granular delegated admin privileges to better control who has access to which customers with which level of access to the customer's Business Central environment. This way, the delegated admins no longer have to be global admins for the customer's Active Directory. For more information, see the Delegated Administrator Access to Business Central Online section, and also the Admin roles article in the Microsoft 365 admin content.

Connect with customers

As a CSP partner, you can manage a customer's subscriptions and services on their behalf in the Partner Center by establishing a reseller relationship with your customers. If they already have an account, such as if they currently use Microsoft 365, other Dynamics 365 apps, or PowerApps, for example, you can send them an invitation straight from the Partner Center. For more information, see Connect with customers in Partner Center (indirect providers/distributors) and Connect with customers (indirect resellers).

When the customer's internal administrator receives the invitation link and navigates to it, they must acknowledge that they have read the Microsoft Customer Agreement and that they can authorize you as their reseller on behalf of their organization. For more information, see Confirm customer acceptance of the Microsoft Customer Agreement.

When a customer accept this reseller relationship, delegated administration privileges must be set up . For more information, see Delegated Administrator Access to Business Central Online.

If you are working as an indirect reseller, your indirect provider (distributor) must associate your customers with you in their Partner Center.

Acting as a delegated administrator

As a reselling partner, you have delegated administration access to their Business Central and other services. For more information, see Delegated Administrator Access to Business Central Online.

Manage technical support

As a reselling partner, you must be the frontline of support for your Business Central customers. Set up your support contact information, and help the internal administrators troubleshoot any issues that users find. For more information, see Managing Technical Support.

Trials

Organizations can sign up for different types of trials, and some trials can be extended. For more information, see Trials and Subscriptions.

Data and access when a trial or subscription ends

Trials can expire, and so can a paid subscription, such as if the organization doesn't renew the subscription, stops payments, or if they cancel the subscription.

User access policies and data retention periods after a subscription ends depend on the subscription type that existed on the tenant and the manner in which the subscription ended. These policies are shared across Microsoft's online offerings; learn more about suscription lifecycle states in Partner Center documentation and Microsoft 365 documentation.

Understanding Business Central online infrastructure

If you're migrating from an on-premises solution, understanding the infrastructure of Business Central online can help you make good choices for how to set up environments and companies. For more information and an example, see Understanding the infrastructure of Business Central online.

See Also

The Business Central Administration Center
The Business Central Administration Center API
Submitting support requests on behalf of your customer
Resources for Help and Support for Dynamics 365 Business Central
How does Microsoft handle database sizes?
Version numbers in Business Central
Get Started as a Reseller of Business Central Online
Deliver consulting services as a VAR: aka.ms/BusinessCentralConsultingServices
Monitoring and Analyzing Telemetry
Trials and Subscriptions
Understanding the infrastructure of Business Central online