At Microsoft, as part of our response to the impact of COVID-19, we have shifted tens of thousands of employees to working remotely. Many of our partners and customers have asked us to share the details of how we enable remote work for such a large workforce. We wanted to share with you some of our resources and best practices, as well as provide visibility into services available to you.
Stay connected
In view of the changing situation every day, Microsoft Netherlands has set up a local landingpage so that we can stay connected with all our partners and customers. On this page, you will find the latest updates and answers to frequently asked questions.
Best practices and discussion for remote work
Best practices on enabling effective remote work, based on our internal learnings.
The Microsoft Tech Community has launched a new interactive forum for sharing of best practices and other discussions across fellow customers, partners, and Microsoft subject matter experts (SME’s)
Enabling Teams
Teams is a pivotal part of the remote work experience, and Microsoft is committed to making Teams available to everyone.
We recommend that partners lead with the CSP Trial, as this is the only experience that partners can initiate and manage. Please see details in our news article.
For customers who don’t align to the CSP Trial, partners can now get access to the Office 365 E1 Trial for them. Partners can log in to Partner Center and click on CSP > Cannot find an offer in the catalog.
Guidance for supporting remote workers
Partner resource page for Microsoft Teams Calling and Meetings
Transform from live event to digital
Virtual delivery options are now available across all Microsoft 365 Partner Accelerator workshops. Join our webinar on March 19th for details and best practices for delivering workshops using Microsoft Teams.
For questions on reliability and scalability of Teams please refer to this post.
Resources for Education partners
In the wake of the impact on schools, for education customers, Microsoft has extended the following three new offers:
Office 365 A1 – Free versions to all educational institutions: This version provides unlimited chat, built-in group and one-on-one audio or video calling, 10 GB of team file storage, and 2 GB of personal file storage per user. You also get real-time collaboration with the Office apps for web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. No restrictions for # of users.
Microsoft Teams for Free (Individuals and IT roll-out – in Office 365 A1 above): This version provides unlimited chat, built-in group and one-on-one audio or video calling, 10 GB of team file storage, and 2 GB of personal file storage per user.
Minecraft: Education Edition: We’ve extended access to Minecraft: Education Edition to all free and paid O365 Education accounts through the end of June 2020 and published a M:EE remote learning toolkit with links to >100 Minecraft lessons and STEM curriculum.
For more information on the Education offers and resources, please see the EDU Partner Flash on Yammer.
Training Resources
We have a range of training resources available for you and your customers at no additional cost:
Microsoft Learn is a free, online training platform that provides interactive learning for Microsoft products. Our goal is to help you become proficient on our technologies with fun, guided, hands-on, interactive content that’s specific to your role and goals.
Role-specific learning paths for partners to build their skills on Microsoft products and solutions.
Here you will find all training courses for the upcoming period.
Technical assistance
Microsoft FastTrack is available to assist organizations setting up remote work and learning in response to COVID-19. We recommend partners work alongside FastTrack to gain access to deployment resources, remote engineering assistance and to leverage data migration services. To help your customers request assistance in response to COVID-19, please sign in and fill out a Request for Assistance form on behalf of your customer. If you have challenges signing in or need additional assistance, please send an email to ftcrfa@microsoft.com
If you require pre-sales technical or deployment assistance, you can utilize your advisory hours and get guidance from Partner Technical Services.
Our hope is that many of the above resources can be useful in assisting your organization during these challenging times. Thank you for your partnership with Microsoft Netherlands.
