Microsoft Partner Center
Cotillion’s Microsoft integration ships registered deals into Microsoft Partner Center as referrals (the Partner Center Referrals program). Once connected, every opportunity you mark for Microsoft in Cotillion is mapped to the referral schema and created / updated through the Partner Center Referrals API on your behalf — no manual re-keying in the Partner Center UI.
Before you begin — you’ll sign in once with a Partner Center work account that holds the Referrals Admin role. Cotillion never sees that account’s password: the connection uses Microsoft’s standard OAuth consent, and only a scoped, revocable token is stored — encrypted at rest.
At a glance
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Authentication | Microsoft Entra OAuth consent (delegated). No passwords or long-lived keys are ever stored |
| API surface | Partner Center Referrals API (api.partner.microsoft.com) |
| Direction | Write + read — Cotillion creates / updates referrals and keeps their status in sync |
| Credentials | A delegated refresh token, encrypted at rest; Microsoft may rotate it and Cotillion stores each replacement automatically |
| Consent account | A work account in your Partner Center directory holding the Referrals Admin role |
| Partner ID | Your location Partner ID (Account settings → Identifiers) — every referral is registered under it |
Prerequisites
- Your organization is enrolled in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program and its Partner Center account verification is complete.
- The account you’ll sign in with holds the Referrals Admin role (Partner Center → Account settings → User management).
- You have your location Partner ID at hand (Partner Center → Account settings → Identifiers → Partner ID).
Creating referrals through the API additionally requires at least one co-sell-ready solution in your Partner Center account. Without one, Microsoft rejects referral creation for the whole organization. The fastest self-service path is publishing a commercial marketplace offer and configuring it for co-sell. Until then, the connection itself works (and status sync runs), but registrations are declined by Microsoft with a clear message.
Connect
Start the connection
In Cotillion, open Vendors → Connect → Microsoft.
Sign in with Microsoft
Choose Authorize Microsoft and sign in with the Referrals-Admin work account. Approve the requested access — it is scoped to Partner Center referrals on that account’s behalf. Microsoft then returns you to Cotillion.
Enter your Partner ID
Paste your location Partner ID — Cotillion registers every referral under it — and choose Connect.
Done
Cotillion verifies the connection with a live Partner Center call. Your referral book appears after the first sync pass.
What Cotillion registers
- Private deals — referrals visible only to your organization (deal registration).
- Co-sell deals — referrals you later hand to Microsoft sellers for engagement (co-sell invite), or share for visibility only.
When registering a deal, what it sells is proposed for you from your own co-sell solutions and shown in its own section of the draft, alongside every other field you review. The list is the solutions you have registered deals against before, read back from your Microsoft referral history — so it fills itself in as you use Cotillion, and every entry is one Microsoft has already accepted.
For a solution you have not registered against yet, copy its Solution ID from Partner Center (Referrals → Co-sell → Solutions) into the field, or continue without one — private deals need none. Microsoft validates the ID when the deal is submitted, so a mistyped ID is rejected with a clear error rather than accepted silently.
Deal facts (customer, value, close date, Microsoft’s solution-area taxonomy) are mapped by Cotillion’s AI from your CRM record and reviewed by you field-by-field before anything is sent. Nothing is submitted without your explicit confirmation.
Identifying the customer to Microsoft
Microsoft matches every referral to a company in its own account records. Left to itself it matches on the company name and the address — and whether it lands on the right account decides whether the deal can be registered for incentives, because registration is only possible against an account Microsoft manages.
You can settle that instead of leaving it to a name match, and Partner Center’s customer search is where both identifiers come from. The search itself runs on the Moody’s company register, so each result carries a Moody’s Id — and it sorts what it finds into Microsoft Managed, Microsoft Unmanaged and Other. A result under “Other” is a company in the register that is not a Microsoft account at all, which is why a search can return many companies and no managed account.
A Microsoft Account ID sits a level in: expand a result’s recommended Microsoft accounts, or search by Microsoft Account ID directly. It names the account rather than the company, which is what Microsoft resolves the deal against, and Partner Center tells partners in its own words that selecting a Microsoft managed account raises the acceptance rate.
Read those recommendations rather than trusting them. They are the register’s own guesses, and on a company with no Microsoft account they come back as other companies entirely — different names, different cities. Take one only when it is recognisably your customer; a wrong account is worse than none, because the deal is then resolved against somebody else.
There is no API for the search, so either ID is looked up in Partner Center once. Record it on the customer in your CRM — anywhere on the record or in a note on it, as long as it is written as what it is (“Microsoft Account ID: …”, “Moody’s Id: …”). Cotillion reads it from there on every later deal for that customer and fills it in for you.
The review screen repeats this on the deal’s Customer section before you submit — nothing is blocked, and a deal with no identifier still goes through on a name match.
What stays in Partner Center
Some parts of a Microsoft deal have no API behind them, so they happen in the portal:
- Searching for a customer — covered above; there is no lookup in the Referrals API.
- Inviting another partner to the deal. Done in Partner Center, and it can be done after the deal exists — nothing about the deal depends on it.
One thing has a deadline attached: the customer name and address freeze when the deal is created. Correcting them afterwards needs Microsoft support, so check them on the review screen before you submit.
Deal registration (Azure IP co-sell incentive)
On a co-sell deal you can additionally register the deal with Microsoft — the registration that backs the Azure IP co-sell incentive. Cotillion writes it onto the referral (contract value and dates, solution deployment details, marketplace transaction facts) and Microsoft reviews it on its side; the reported registration status appears on the deal. Registering again amends the existing registration — nothing is ever erased by omission.
Status sync
Cotillion pulls referral status from Partner Center on the regular sync cadence — wins, losses, expirations, and Microsoft-side edits show up on the deal without any manual refresh. Cotillion never changes your CRM records from vendor data.
Keeping a registered deal in step
While a referral is still open in Partner Center, Cotillion keeps it in step with your CRM. Only these facts travel, and only when your CRM’s value differs from what Cotillion registered:
| What we send | On the referral |
|---|---|
| Deal stage — won, lost, or still open | status / substatus |
| Reason the deal was lost, in your seller’s own words | statusReason |
| Expected close date | details.closingDateTime |
| Deal value and currency | details.dealValue, details.currency |
| Customer contacts — name, email, phone | customerProfile.team |
Nothing else is written. A value you changed on the registration in Cotillion is not overwritten by your CRM’s version — Cotillion remembers the CRM state each registration was made against, so only a genuine later edit in your CRM is sent. A closed referral is never edited: Microsoft does not accept changes once a deal reaches a terminal state.
If Microsoft refuses a close Cotillion pushed for you — a referral it has already closed, or one still waiting to be accepted — the deal shows a banner on the Synced tab with Microsoft’s reason. Nothing needs to be re-sent by hand: the close is offered again on its own as soon as the deal or the Microsoft record moves.
Revoking access
Delete the integration in Cotillion (Vendors → Microsoft → Disconnect) — the stored token is destroyed immediately. You can additionally revoke the app’s access in your Microsoft Entra admin center at any time; the connection then fails visibly until re-consented.