Microsoft 365 Community Microsoft Teams App Camp, 2 Mar 2023

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From YouTube: Microsoft Teams App Camp - 5 Steps to Monetize your Teams Application

Description

This module introduces you to the 5 steps to monetize your Teams application

This video is part of a series in a playlist about Building apps for Microsoft Teams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFwLfG95rVU&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OW5yCjKO0K8b-Xi4Ci1iBlU

➡️ Next video on this series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuOjlTnoj7s&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OW5yCjKO0K8b-Xi4Ci1iBlU&index=4
⬅️ Previous video on this series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwcOFu8QBU&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OW5yCjKO0K8b-Xi4Ci1iBlU&index=2

#Microsoft365 #AzureAD #MicrosoftTeams

In this video, you will learn about

- What is a monetized Teams app?
- 1- Create a free Teams app
- 2- Technical requirements
- 3- Create a transactable SaaS offer
- 4- Link your offer to a Teams app
- 5- Submit your app
- Next steps

📖 All workshop content including hands-on labs can be found here: https://aka.ms/app-camp

✨ Demo Presenter
• James Skay (Microsoft)

📃 Agenda
0:00 Introduction
0:58 What is a monetized Teams app?
1:41 "Buying a Teams Application"
2:00 Ideal candidates for Teams monetization
3:53 Step 1. Create a free Teams app
4:44 Step 2. Technical Requirements
7:57 Landing page and license management best practices
9:36 Step 3: Create a transactable SaaS offer in partner center
15:45 Free trial
17:00 Step 4: Link the offer to a Teams app
20:05 Step 5: App submission
21:13 Validation Guidance
24:56 Next steps
25:35 Quick reference

📝 Learn more
• YouTube playlist for this video series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFwLfG95rVU&list=PLR9nK3mnD-OW5yCjKO0K8b-Xi4Ci1iBlU
• Overview on Microsoft Teams extensibility - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/overview
• Design guidance for Microsoft Teams apps - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/concepts/design/design-teams-app-overview
• Sample Microsoft Teams apps with code - https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/sample-solution-gallery/?product=Teams&sortby=creationDateTime-true&page=1

💡 Learn more about the Microsoft 365 & Power Platform community
• Microsoft 365 Unified Sample gallery - https://aka.ms/community/samples
• Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community in YouTube - https://aka.ms/community/videos
• Microsoft 365 & Power Platform - http://aka.ms/community/home

Sharing is caring! You are awesome! 🧡

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Hello, everybody and welcome to teams app Camp. My name is James skate and I'm a senior product manager in the teams, Engineering, Group and I'm excited to share with you the session. The five steps stated in order to monetize your team's application as we begin we're going to go ahead and jump through here and talk about a few caveats. The first one is anything. That's presented in this session is accurate as of the date that this published or was published.

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However, we're consistently updating our documentation, so anything that you might see that is published on a Microsoft docs page will supersede what this session and the e-companying guides will provide for you So today we're going to break this session down into four distinct areas, I'm going to first start with a brief overview of what a monetized teams app is followed by, like the actual five steps of the technical requirements, we'll talk about validation, guidance and then I'll also share some great resources with you to take with you after the session is complete.

A

So with that, let's go and jump in to talk about what a monetized teams application is now, as a team's app developer, you're familiar with publishing a teams, app happens in partner center, it's the foundation for what we're starting with, but for many of you, you might not be familiar with the transactable SAS offered. These are available today that are created in partner Center that show up on Microsoft appsource.

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Now, essentially, what a monetize teams up is the marriage, if you will of the teams app and that transactable SAS offer and I'm going to walk you through those steps during the session, let's actually see how this comes across and transpires so you'll notice here this is contoso tasks for teams, but it's inside the team's App Store now what's different here, is instead of they're just being an ad for me, button there's also a buy a subscription button, so the user actually clicks on the buyer's subscription they're going to see an invoked uh opportunity for them to pick the subscription that they wish to purchase check out within the team's experience and then actually jump into beginning to use that monetized teams application, and so with that let's actually take a step back and talk about what is an ideal isv candidate for building and monetize teams at now.

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If you have a teams app today, you are already a leg up and that actually sometimes can be the greatest and most difficult work to do. But since we're there, let's move on to the next one, there are two separate uh pricing models that teams app support.

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The first one is a per user model, and that is a per user that is either charged on a monthly or annual basis, and that's something that we just recently uh support is actually flat rate models, whether you want to charge a per tenant on a per month or a per year basis. That's really up to you as the isv now I want to call out two extra things here. The first one is consumption. Based rates are not supported.

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That's currently endemic only to the Azure Marketplace and then also talking about a person of our Enterprise customers, they're looking for a Mac or Microsoft Azure consumption, commitment credits and those aren't available through the teams, app store or through appsource, and so with that some other things to keep in mind. As you're. Looking to monetize your team of application, are you able to differentiate between a paid and a free experience? If so continue?

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You want to make sure that your end users can understand the value of your application and also have an inclination to want to pay for it, and if you are looking to do it per user model, you'll need to make sure that you actually are able to build the subscription management portal on your site, for example, how do I go through and actually license or assign a license or remove a license from those that have a purchase subscription and then last but not least, if you have a transactable SAS offer already published great.

A

That's super simple: to bring those two together, but if not no problem, that's actually what we're here to do so with that. Let's go ahead and jump in so I'm, going to start with the technical requirements and you're going to notice that there's. The framing of this presentation is also based off of our technical guide that is available and I'll provide the URL to you at the very end, starting with a free teams.

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App we're going to take you through these five steps, but the way that this guide is laid out or the presentation is based off of the guide. Each of these sections will be broken down into requirements, as well as public sources of information where you can either learn more or gather support, we'll also provide for you. Some frequently asked questions some best practices along the slides and I'll call those out as we go through them together.

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Now, if you don't have a published teams, application here are some great resources to get you started once you have that Azure Foundation we're going to walk you through how to integrate with your SAS, fulfillment apis, and so there's actually two steps that are required in this case. The first one is creating publishing a landing page or your initial app subscription configuration and assignment and I'll walk through that in just a moment, then the second one is creating and Publishing a web hook.

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That's going to manage the subsequent Market requests for vision, update and cancel subscriptions and I'll talk more about that in just a moment. Let's go and begin: let's see what that. Actually, that means now. In this example, we can see a user is completing a purchase and in this case, from the team's App Store now they're provided a configure button at which point they're able to hit, and they land on the isv's landing page and here they're actually passed to the landing page with a token defined in the URL.

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In the back end, the publisher actually requests the package details from the token provided and then they work to provision the subscription. This means that they're validating that the person who made the subscription has the permissions required in order to connect the tenant to the multi-tenant application graph apis Etc or it might require an admin approval.

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But if everything is good to go, then the publisher will send an acknowledgment to the marketplace via the Commerce apis that the subscription is ready to go and billing should begin immediately.

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The user then actually resumes the flow after the iscs confirmed it and they're now taken to the actual place on the isvs page, where they're able to assign and manage licenses and then, last but not least, on number five. This is the subsequent web hooks that will come through and update the subscription, that's credit card, information changes or, as people add or remove licenses.

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Now, as I mentioned, these clients are full of information. On the right hand, side you'll, see some of the frequently asked questions that I mentioned. Two of the big ones is single sign-on required. The answer here is yes: Azure active directory is required and so make sure that you're following the documentation, that's provided and then second like what is a token. A token is generated from our system as a user completes their transaction and we send them to your site where that token is then used, as in the diagram.

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I just showed to request the subscription package through our apis made pretty seamless, but sometimes people just get hung up on the terminology.

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Next I show this not as a guide to follow, but as more of a principle, you know most isps find that the integration with our Commerce apis is straightforward and it is, but the apis can be deceptively simple to implement and you're going to want to make sure that you've gone through kind of each of these specific areas from the landing page from the URL from the marketplace to retrieving the subscription package.

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That I mentioned with the tokens, as well as notifying the marketplace that the subscription is activated each and everything that you go through is going to be included in this presentation and in this guide, but also validated with the documentation, the links that are provided.

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It's also calls that a best practice on making sure that you've validated your application from end to end. That's best that you're able, before you submit your application for review and I'll talk about validation at the very end. But next, let's kind of jump into a best practice. Now someone's purchased a license or a subscription. They're then set it to your landing page, and in this case the user clicks on configure, at which point you're going to see a landing page here, and this is just a mock-up.

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This is a suggestion of what the landing pages might or could look like the first one is an opportunity for your your customer to be able to assign licenses. This is a requirement if your offer is a per user model, optional, a place for them to learn more, whether it's a product, tour, documentation, Etc and then last but not least, the opportunity for them to reach out to support if they have any questions or concerns about the subscription that they purchased from your offering now.

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The next step here- and this is again, is just the best practice that I've gleaned from multiple conversations with partners is. How do you alert end users that they've had a subscription license given to them? Okay, some point: you might be a departmental head. You bought 100 licenses for your group by going into the isv's landing page.

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You've just told the system I want to assign these licenses to these users, but unless the developer actually takes action, the user is not going to have any notification or idea that there's been something assigned to them and in this example, you can choose to either provide a text message through a chat bot or even through an email or you can do both, but essentially think about from a developer perspective.

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How do you alert your end, users that have a new license that there's something for them to take and actually do again, not a requirement but considered a best practice?

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Next, if we go to step three, this is about creating the transactable SAS offer in partner Center, and this is actually pretty straightforward. If you're familiar with partner Center great enough, not we could show you the steps each of the way breaking down the requirements into three. The first one is to create that new transactable SAS offer, which I'll show you in just a moment. Next, we want to specify the offer details.

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These are things like the description, the pricing, the web hook and landing page that you've created from the prior steps, as well as the ability for you to preview and test your offer with the dedicated preview audience. And let's talk about each one of these next Where Do, We Begin. So in partner Center, you go ahead and create a new software as a server service.

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You'll enter an offer ID that will come into handy later, as well as an offer, alias we'll click configure. Now, in this step, we're going to go through multiple steps, and so the first one is. We want to tell partner Center that you would like to sell like have Microsoft, sell and host transactions on your behalf. If this is not marked.

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Yes, the rest of the information that's provided is not going to make sense, because the offers presented will be different, so in this case make sure that you would like Microsoft to host and manage transactions on your behalf.

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Next, here's where you're able to improve Discovery in the marketplace by specifying the category and industry or vertical most appropriate for your application.

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You can do two now you want to be careful here, because some of the primary and secondary categories can actually be applicable to the appsourced marketplace, but also the Azure Marketplace, so you'll want to make sure that you're looking at the appropriate documentation to make sure that they're showing up where you want them to accordingly.

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Next here's, where you're going to put the branding for your application, your logos, user-facing materials uh descriptions of your application, screenshots of the experience, as well as to provide some keywords that will help discoverability within the marketplace itself and then next, as I mentioned, we're going to define the preview audience now.

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In order for you to validate your application, you don't want to have your transactable SAS offer available for the public to see or even to be able to purchase as in best practice, we suggest that developers will either create an offer with a free trial or with the xero or a dollar offering, and then you can actually test it before going live and I'll go into the details about specifying pricing in just a moment.

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But it's important on this note on this slide to keep in mind that the email addresses that you provide here are the ones that are able to not only see the transactable offer in preview status on site inside of appsource, but also for future validation. If you decide to load the application within teams.

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So with that, let's go ahead and jump into the technical configuration side of this section now. Remember those landing pages on web hooks that we talked about. We need to have those URLs provided here within number one and number two on this on the slide. In addition, here you want to make sure that you have your Azure active directory, tenant, ID and then your directory application, ID handy and provided and include them here as well.

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Now, next we're going to jump into the plan overview now we're creating one offer for that application, because you can have one application per one offer. However, each offer can have multiple plans now, in this case, think about it as a basic premium or Enterprise.

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Now, you're able to create as many plans as you want to per your offer, but keep in mind that you want to make sure that you're providing some level up strategy around doing so, in this case, we're going to enter our plan name, plan, description and click next under pricing and availability. This is where we're going to actually Define the Crux of our application transactable offer now.

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The first step here is to define the markets now you'll notice that clicking here I'm presented with an opportunity of defining markets in which I want my offer to be available for transaction.

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Here's where you'll select those markets now before you do. Please note that you'll see here on the screen. There is a select, only Microsoft tax remitted option and for those countries where Microsoft collects and remits tax on your behalf, they're denoted with an uh some iconography on the right. If you choose countries that are not checked or defined by Microsoft for collecting and remitting tax on your behalf, it will be up to you as the partner to collect those taxes and remit on your own behalf. Are those countries where Microsoft does it for you?

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It's just like it sounds, there's nothing for you to do at all, just other than transacting through the marketplace, as we have done and we'll do in the in the future. Now here is where you also will Define your pricing model flat rate or per user. You also have the opportunity of defining a minimum and a maximum number of users. Now an example where that might come into place is, if you were to have a price point based licensing approach for the first 50 licenses.

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You might have it priced at ten dollars and for uh 50 to 100. You might have it priced at eight dollars. You would want to create in each each plan for those own separate thresholds where you would Define the Min and Max number here.

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In addition, you can Define if you want to sell your SAS offer on a monthly basis or on an annual basis. That was the best practice again. We encourage isvs to consider providing a slight discount for those that actually will pay for an entire year up front, and one thing to note: the prices that are entered in this site here is for a USD or US dollar denomination.

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If no action is taken, Microsoft will automatically use the given currency rate and adjust those rates for the individual markets selected on the right to land respectively inside the country.

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If you would like to provide granular level pricing per region and per currency you're able to do so by exporting the pricing data modifying it in Excel, then importing the pricing data back into the system. Now. Last but not least, on this slide, you're also able to define a free trial.

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The free trials essentially allow you to have customers be able to complete a transaction for your offer, but their first 30 days are free if they take no action during those first 30 days, then, on day 31, their transaction will be billed if you choose to do this. Just note that subscriptions are going to happen on day one, but your first month will be free for the user and then they'll be charged shortly thereafter.

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Now the final step here is: you want to publish your app offer in the marketplace now you'll notice here that there's some information here, showing you the steps that you've gone through up till now and from validation in terms of the purchase flow, the test driving up the data validation, uh provisioning Etc at this point, you're going to want to click, go live and it's going to go from the top to the bottom, where you can see that some certification and validations are happening uh automatically and super important to note that the validation at this point is only for your transactionable SAS offer.

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It does not include any validation on your team's application. We'll talk about that shortly.

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Now, your offer might be done, but the app of modernization is not so it's important that we still need to do some linkage in order to have these show up together. Now the first step here of step. Four: is we want to link your application via two areas? The first one is the team's developer portal and the second one is partner. Center and I'll walk through each one of these next Now.

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By linking your app through the teams developer portal you're, going to upload your app into the into the TDP or the dev portal and you're going to Define your publisher and offer ID you'll enter them into the tool and it will validate.

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It'll, actually show you um your offers as you've defined them inside of a partner Center, and at that point you can click preview and you'll verify that the offer that you have that's published is actually accurate and it comes through on the tool and, if so, you're good to go and the next step for you will be to then save a copy of your app package with the updated, app manifest and then head back to the partner Center in order to submit the second option, for the first requirement is: if you choose to directly modify the app manifest itself.

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This means you can bypass the team's developer portal, which will give you some validation, but if you'd rather skip it and modify your app manifest directly yourself, you can do so here, there's a concatenation of the publisher and offer ID added to the app manifest. If you go this route, please pay special attention to the published documentation, as well as the Manifest version that you have for your application.

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Foreign ly before submitting the whole thing for validation, let's jump back into partner Center and link your transactable SAS offer with your team's application.

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So in this case we're going to go back into the offer setup and we're going to tell it that we have published a teams, application or an office add-in or SharePoint framework. All the same option in this case is where you're going to insert the link of the teams app, as that you would see on appsource and what this essentially is doing is bringing the just like. You can see the example here with the toolbox, it's showing the teams app and the web app or the SAS app combined together.

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Now, if you don't link this step here, you're going to have kind of a hanging chat, you're, going to have a teams app and partner Center, that's showing up in appsource as it teams up and you're going to have a transactable SAS offer they're not going to be linked together. But by providing this linkage, they will show up together just like if you were to not update your app manifest on the prior step.

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You publish your teams up and the team's app store. It's going to show you your app, but it's only going to allow you to add it. There's not going to be a buy a subscription button by updating your app manifest to include your offer and publisher ID. It links those two together.

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So it's important that you do both steps such that your transactable SAS offer and teams that show up together in appsource, but also that that buy button shows up next to your team's app in the team's App Store.

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So, let's move on to step number five here, and this is actually submitting your app for validation and publication. Now I want to share some best practices here now.

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The package that you downloaded from the team's developer portal has your updated app manifest as well as your application itself and inside of partner centers we're going to want to go through and and submit it for revalidation of your of your republication, depending upon the state that you're in now there's a super important uh best practice that I've gleaned from working both with isvs, but also with our internal validation team, and that actually is related to providing additional notes for certification.

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Now, if there's something that is outside of normal when it comes to testing your application, please make sure to note it in this section. If you want to include a link to a PDF or a guide or even a pre-recorded walkthrough. Please do so but make sure it's available by a publicly accessible service, but provide it into this text box here.

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But before you do. Let's actually talk about validation, guidance. Now, I want to call it a few things here, we're all familiar with how app stores are governing monetization of in-app purchases as well as subscription purchase in general, and we need to make sure that we're honoring those. So any purchase that happens from a mobile device needs to make sure it's going through the respective App Store specifically said a teams.

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Application cannot link a user from A team's application on a mobile device to a store that is not produced or provided by the device manufacturer, whether it's Google Play store or the iTunes Apple App Store.

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You must make sure that you, if you are providing linkage from your application to a storefront that you are doing so in a web experience or that like a native desktop application.

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In addition, here's some common steps for validation and by the way the first one also goes back to the purchase. Experience on mobile. It is defined in our Marketplace listings here so make sure that you've gone through and you're looking at, not only the commercial Marketplace policies for SAS offers, but also the same thing for our published teams.

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Apps, like the governance, is there just make sure that you've seen the latest uh next thing to include here is that if you have an unsupported license model, it's not a flat rate or per user you're likely going to get a rejected, include information here about why it's relevant or it's important and how it will be supported.

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Given the constraints of our system that we're seeing more and more of due to Acquisitions or Partnerships is a mismatch between the offer, the app or the publisher, and it's important that the publisher and offer described in partner Center, clearly matched to the application that you're looking to link.

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In addition, I talked about that text box before balloting. It's important to provide any additional details for either a setup environment or test, or whatever is going to be needed for the validation team to understand how to use and operate your application and then last, but not least, make sure that anything that might be confusing to users just kind of called out. In this case.

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It's pointing to the right where you can see that the isv went from a five dollar producer per month to a four dollar per user per year for their plan and what I think that they meant to do was charge five dollars per user per month or 48 dollars per user per year. And in this case they meant to give a dollar per month discount. But it showed up incorrectly.

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I won't drain the slide, but depending upon where you are, if you have an existing application and or an existing transactable SAS offer. This information on this slide, as well as in the guide with the link coming up, will be very valuable for you to understand the steps and requirements that you'll need in order to submit your app for validation.

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Next, from a support perspective, please make sure that any support that is needed is first launched through partner Center, and you can find partner Center support at AKA dot, Ms, slash, partnercenter support, you're, already working with a team's app validation team, while your app is in validation feel free to reach out to them. Given the email address provided here, if you, if they have not yet reached out to you, there's a chance that you might not get a response from that Alias.

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So please make sure that you are communicating with them after the fact such that they have an opportunity of looking at your application.

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And then, last but not least, we're going to move on to kind of like calls to action for you, as well as some next steps. First and foremost, please download this guide.

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Aka dot, Ms, slash, tmtg stands for teams, modernization, technical guide, this PDF will be updated, at least on a monthly, if not quarterly basis, with the latest and greatest of all the features that we're launching as part of teams monetization I shared with you on their prior Slide, the partner Center support and the team's app support that is needed if you have any issues or help please reach out to them.

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I also want to share with you this. This is kind of an eye chart, but this is meant to be your quick reference guide. Not only does this give you the steps and requirements that are needed, the average complexity and time to complete and note that this could vary based on the ISC you're partnered, but it shows you where you can learn more and where you can get support specifically related to that step.

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So if you're stuck feel free to click and learn more on the documentation or where to get support directly and last but not least, I want to say thank you for joining us and thank you for building teams apps and for building transactable SAS offers.

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You know, as we are in the middle and the end of a pandemic, we have a lot of users using teams, applications uh and more and more teams are using teams on a daily basis, whether they're in the office remote or a hybrid solution uh perspective, and so with that look forward to seeing your application in the teams App Store, hopefully with the buy button. Next to it soon.

A

Thank you so much for joining us at teams app camp and again my name is James gay glad to spend the time with you I look forward to seeing you in the future. Thank you.