An overview of CSP, Business Central Admin Center, Multiple production environments and its use

An overview of CSP, Business Central Admin Center, ability to create multiple production environments for each Azure Active Directory tenant in Business Central Wave 2.

Cloud Service Provider(is a company that offers some component of cloud computing, typically infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) to other businesses or individuals.

CSP enables partners to access a portfolio of Microsoft cloud services to be sold.
Within this program, there are tools for managing and supporting these cloud
services.

One of these online services is Dynamics 365 Business Central.

In the SaaS proposition, it is only through the CSP partners or their resellers that a
potential customer could purchase licenses for Dynamics 365 Business Central and
convert the trial license into a pay-per-use license or start by directly paying the
monthly fee for the users.

In every CSP, a partner or reseller is technically represented by a unique tenant
record in the Azure Active Directory (AAD). AAD is a multi-tenant authentication
service that offers identity and access capabilities for applications running in
Microsoft Azure and Microsoft on-premises environments.

Within this specific AAD tenant record, a partner can define a different type or class
of users (often called supporting agents) that are mainly categorized into two
different groups (so-called agent groups): Admin and Helpdesk groups.

Like partners, customers also have their own AAD tenant unique record. When
subscribing to an Essential or Premium plan within a Dynamics 365 Business Central
tenant, every customer gives consent for a special trusted relationship between the
CSP partner and the customer AAD tenants.

In the customer, AAD tenants, user, role, and subscription entities are defined
and managed. Roles are assigned to users by the customers and these roles reflect
their capabilities in the products that they subscribe to. Subscribing to an online
product such as Dynamics 365 Business Central in the customer AAD tenant requires
the further important step of the CSP partner assigning the specific online product
license to the users.

These tasks are performed through the Business Central Admin portal.
This portal can be accessed directly by the customer or the CSP partner. The CSP partner may
also have access via the Partner Center portal:

1. With the Partner Center portal, there are several ways to browse to the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center portal. One of these is from the Service Management tab. The Service Management tab contains links to various admin portals related to a specific customer AAD tenant, such as Exchange or Office 365. It also displays the service health status for products that the portals or administrator consoles refer to, such as Exchange Online, Identity Service, and Dynamics 365 Business Central.

2. By clicking on the Dynamics 365 Business Central link, the partner will be redirected straight to the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center portal. Back in the Partner Center portal, the CSP partner is also able to check the customer's order history and see which subscriptions they belong
to. It is also possible to select the Dynamics 365 Business Central billing frequency – such as monthly or once per year – and subscribes to different online services on behalf of that customer.

3. The subscriptions are divided per offering type (level). As an example, within Dynamics 365 Business Central, it is possible to choose the Essential or the Premium plan.

4. In the Users and licenses section, the CSP partner can add users manually or upload many of them from a file. For every user, a different service license can be assigned.

5. Once a license has been assigned, the user can start working with Dynamics 365 Business Central and will have the app listed on their home page at home.dynamics.com. Clicking on the Dynamics 365 Business Central icon redirects the user to their first login, and they can start working immediately in the production tenant. You may notice that the URL definition benefits from an easy to identify fixed client endpoint and customer tenant, and its Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin portal should look like this:

Customer tenant: https://businesscentral.dynamics. com/<GUID>

Customer tenant admin portal: https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/<GUID>/admin

GUID identifies the same customer environment that you came from in the Partner Center portal.

As most of them know until the release of Business Central Wave 2 we had no option of selecting multiple production environments in Azure. Only we'd option of selection multiple sandbox(stage environments).
Since the Fall 2019 update(Business Central Wave2 a new feature allowed us to select even multiple production environments, so if you have multiple production environments, when you click on the Dynamics 365 Business Central icon on the home page (home.dynamics.com), you will be
prompted to select which environment name to choose. The environment endpoint should look like https:/ /businesscentral.dynamics.com/<EnvironmentName>.

So, who can access the Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center portal? The answer is as follows:
CSP Partner Admin and Helpdesk agents who have an active entitled
relationship with the customer tenant The customer's AAD Global Administrator

Dynamics 365 Business Central licensed users won't be able to access the administration portal. There is no relationship between the product license and Dynamics 365 Business Central Admin Center portal access.

The customer's AAD tenant Global Administrator can sign in, and partner AAD tenant Administrators and Helpdesk users can access as a Delegated Admin. Delegated Admins can perform elevated tasks as Partner, but they do not have the same rights that the customer's Global Administrator has. In short, Delegated Admins are not Global Administrators of the tenant.