I have published at least eleven apps on Microsoft’s partner marketplace in my career. I’ve been at this long enough to remember when it was called Pinpoint. Then AppSource. Now it is the Microsoft Marketplace. A lot has changed across those three names, and a lot has stayed the same. What has not changed is that getting a solution certified and listed is a serious undertaking, not for the faint of heart.

A few years ago, ForgeXRM published our “CRM For Health Insurance Brokers” app on Microsoft Marketplace. And I am happy to say that we are on the verge of publishing a brand new app on Marketplace. It is something our team has been working hard on and am genuinely excited about.

To celebrate that, we wanted to help others. We documented every step, so if you are an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), which is technically now called a Software Development Company (SDC), that is thinking about going through this process, I hope this saves you some time.

What is Microsoft Marketplace?

For those newer to the Microsoft partner ecosystem, the Microsoft Marketplace is Microsoft’s official storefront for third-party business applications built on Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform. It is where companies go to discover, evaluate, and deploy certified software solutions that extend Microsoft’s products. Getting listed there puts your solution in front of millions of Microsoft customers worldwide.

Why does Microsoft Marketplace certification matter?

Microsoft Marketplace certification matters because it means Microsoft has independently reviewed your solution for security, governance, packaging, and deployment standards. The bar is not trivial, and passing it signals something real to the companies evaluating your software.

If a solution is listed on the Marketplace, that means something. When you choose a partner whose solutions are marketplace-certified, you are choosing a team that has thought through the product development process seriously. That is not a small thing. For companies evaluating software partners, this is one of the clearest signals of maturity and accountability you can look for.

What are the steps to publish a Dynamics 365 app on the Microsoft Marketplace?

Publishing a Dynamics 365 app on the Microsoft Marketplace requires six core steps:

• Setting up a Partner Center account
• Creating a managed solution
• Adding licensing metadata
• Building the marketplace package
• Uploading it to Azure Storage
• Configuring your offer in Partner Center.

Here is how we worked through each one.

• Setting up a Partner Center account

The first step is getting your Partner Center account set up for marketplace publication. If you are newer to this, the overview documentation is a good place to start: Microsoft Marketplace overview for Power Platform.

• Creating a managed solution

From there, you need to build your managed solution using Microsoft Dataverse. This is the foundational work. Everything else depends on getting this right: Create a managed solution.

• Adding licensing metadata

If you are going the transactable route, you will need to add licensing metadata to your solution. This includes license plans and entitlement definitions. It is more nuanced than it looks: Dynamics 365 licensing for Marketplace.

• Building the marketplace package

Once the solution is built and licensed, you create the marketplace package itself: Create the Marketplace package.

• Uploading it to Azure Storage

That package then needs to be uploaded to Azure Storage, and you will generate a SAS URL that Partner Center will require during offer configuration: Store your package in Azure Storage.

• Configuring your offer in Partner Center.

The last major step is configuring your offer availability and pricing inside Partner Center: Configure offer availability and pricing.

Note: Category selection happens during offer configuration in Partner Center and it is worth thinking through carefully. You can choose up to three categories, and those choices determine where your solution surfaces in Marketplace search. Do not treat it as an afterthought.

Last time I checked these were the categories you could choose from: AI Apps and Agents, Analytics, Blockchain, Collaboration, Commerce, Compliance & Legal, Customer Service, Databases, Developer Tools, DevOps, Finance, Geolocation, Human Resources, Identity, Infrastructure Services, Integration, Internet of Things, IT & Management Tools, Machine Learning, Marketing, Media, Microsoft Entra ID, Migration, Mixed Reality, Monitoring & Diagnostics, Operations & Supply Chain, Productivity, Sales, Security, Task & Project Management, Web.

Is there a checklist to review before submitting for Microsoft Marketplace certification?

Before submitting for Microsoft Marketplace certification, you should work through two resources: the app certification checklist and the app design best practices guide. Both will help you catch the issues that most commonly send a submission back.

• The app certification checklist will help you catch packaging and deployment issues before a reviewer does.
• The app design best practices covers the things that are easy to overlook when you are deep in development mode.

What are common mistakes when publishing to Microsoft Marketplace?

Some of the gotchas that catch people: logo sizing requirements are stricter than you might expect, and screenshots need to be properly annotated. These are not hard problems, but they will send your submission back if you have not paid attention to them.

Another gotcha is when making content refinements to the storefront listing to check ‘Marketing only change’ before you publish to avoid initiating a full review / solution checker process.

How can the ISV Success team help during the Microsoft Marketplace certification process?

The ISV Success team helps ISVs (or SDCs) navigate both the business and technical sides of the Marketplace certification process. Engaging them early is one of the most valuable things you can do, and it is advice I wish someone had given me more directly the first time through.

The process has two sides to it. You start with business onboarding, and then you get introduced to the technical team from there. They are not a rubber stamp. They actually provide insight into what the process looks like from the inside.

I have found that the ISV Success team is great for validating the process and the solution development approach, but they also have a wealth of resources available to share that may not be readily available in Partner Center.

The new app coming soon to Microsoft Marketplace from ForgeXRM

We’re not ready to share product details just yet, but we’ve been building toward a new and reimagined model-driven app that is a powerful and simple to configure grid solution that ForgeXRM is very excited about and the possibilities and value it can provide for organizations. When it is live on the Marketplace, I will share everything.

Stay tuned.

by Ryan Plourde, Founder, ForgeXRM

The post How to Get a Dynamics 365 App Certified on the Microsoft Marketplace: A Step-by-Step Guide From Someone Who Has Been Successful appeared first on CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365.