Name: Sophos Partner Portal Masterclass
Uploaded: 2025-09-16T14:33:16.944Z
Duration: 24 min 12 s
Description: Sophos Partner Portal Masterclass

Transcript for "Sophos Partner Portal Masterclass": Good afternoon, everyone. Like to welcome you to today's session. My name is Barry Weller, part of the global channel programs team based out of Dallas, Texas. And here to cover some recent updates we made just this past summer on the partner portal and specifically, the quoting experience for our power users on the reseller and distributor side as well for new resellers. So what I'll do is quickly get into today's session. While I'm going through the slides, there's a question and answer panel. If you do have any questions, please type them in. We'll get to those questions when we're through with the slides. So probably about twenty to twenty five minutes worth of content, then we'll cover the topics that come in through question and answer. So this is something we released in the July. A lot of folks across the globe were on holiday, so we wanted to take this chance once people are back into the swing of things to go over some of these enhancement because we feel they're really important to reintroduce to you. And also if you've seen what we did when we relaunched our systems back in October 2023, you may have tried them out and been like, these aren't my thing. I don't think they're working very well. Well, we've made a significant effort in redesigning them, making them look familiar, and really provide a streamline experience for both you and you as a reseller and distributor. The opportunity manager and the device and license manager are combined into one page, which really saves a lot of time if you're working with an existing customer and working on a renewal and if they happen to have more than one contract or more than one license that expires at a different time, you can put in their name and you can see all the open opportunities you have for them. And then with that same search criteria, just click on the tab, and you'll see all the existing licenses they have, which is the devices and licenses page. So the search criteria is the same. All the filters are the same, really improving speed. I know from all the testing that I've done throughout the years, it would take a long time to switch from your opportunity manager to the devices and licenses. You'd have to wait, let it load. So that's something we're really excited about. Specifically on the opportunity manager, there are more details that you can see about your quotes and your opportunities right in the opportunity manager, giving you one click access to editing the quote line of the quote. We're also displaying the contract number. So you used to be able to search for it, but now we're displaying it so you can see which renewal opportunity is renewing which contract. On the devices and licenses for distribution partners, If you have a reseller come to you and they give you not only the license number, but the expiration date with those two pieces of information, you as a distributor can pull up and find that license, create a renewal opportunity for your reseller, and you'll be listed as the distributor on that opportunity. The reseller is obviously the incumbent, and then you can get that over to your reseller partners. We've also increased the number of records by 10 times as many records are being displayed. So if you're a big reseller or distributor, you'll be able to see more information on the devices and licenses page. For quoting, said we streamline the quote experience and doc generation, simplified the menus, and made the promo codes much easier to search for. Lastly, the partner compliance dashboard, we've really provided information that allows you, while you're looking at your dashboard, to see the information that you need or interested in when you're looking at it. So you can click some down arrows, and if you say that you have three sales certifications completed, you can now see right within the dashboard who are the individuals at your company who hold those three certifications. In addition to those who hold the certifications that are listed in the table, are those individuals at your company who have expired certifications for that same, bucket? So you can see all the expired sales certifications to know, hey. I can reach out to these three folks, have them complete the delta training or do the update training, and allow them to get the certifications we need to stay compliant. So it really helps out for resellers to get that information. So I'll go in and I've got a few screenshots to show what the new functionality looks like, and we'll do this for the next maybe twenty minutes here. So here you can see we have our standard search criteria. So I can put in the company name, select company as the criteria I'm searching for, click the blue button, and I'll see all the opportunities I have for the company that I've searched for. And I'm you can see on the tabs right below the filters, I'm looking at my opportunities. Right next to it, you can see there is the devices and licenses. And simply by clicking those two tabs, I can find everything related to my customer I put in here, your hilarious health, allowing me to see not only their existing licenses, but also the open opportunities. So, again, really streamlining the experience and making it a lot quicker than it used to be. So the non incumbent search we talked about for distribution partners, if you put in the license number and search for a license number, you'll get a result of those licenses that are what you're looking for. In addition, on the bottom, you can see we have up to 10, well, 10 records per page, and then we have a thousand pages that will show up in the search results. So you can get up to 10,000 records, which are individual licenses. If you're the incumbent or a distributor who is not the incumbent and you search by just the license number, you will get a search result. If you expand and type in their license end date, so this is something that a reseller, if they're working with the customer, they can get that information from the customer, pass that along to a distributor. If the distributor is not the incumbent, they'll be able to put in those two pieces of information and get a search result. From that search result, the only option the distributor can do is generate a renewal, which is, obviously, once the current license expires, you'll be able to generate a new license contract that will start the day after the current one expires. You cannot do an amend just by definition. You're changing a distributor if you're doing an amend on a current contract. Or if you're the if you're not the incumbent, you would be. We just don't have the ability to do that on non incumbent contracts. So if you're not the incumbent distributor, you can generate renewal opportunities. Some of the opportunity manager features available for both resellers and distributors. If you look at the tabs across the top on the right hand side of the opportunity card, there's the traditional contacts, sales stage, pricing inquiries, and you can see all of the quotes that have been generated. If you click the link, which is the quote number, it will take you to the quote record page where you can see, like, who's the reseller, who's the distributor, are there any promo codes, the start and end date of the quote itself. On the right hand side, you can see there's a pencil which will allow you to go right into edit the quote if it's not already approved. So if it's in draft status, you can edit that quote. If it's a quote that a Sophos rep has created, you can't edit that. That's not new functionality, but just there are some limitations on when you can edit the quote and that's if it's your quote or one that's been generated in the portal, it has this p p prefix. And then you could edit that right from the opportunity manager. Additionally, we have these drop down arrows for the quotes themselves, which gives you additional information. So you can see the status. You can see the start and end date for the licenses that are quoted in that quote. And then you can see the name, and this is something that's really useful and an enhancement I'm glad we were able to get in, which allows you if you're building these quotes, you can see I've got a renewal for twelve months. I've got a renewal for twenty four months. And I've been able to add some additional details that lets me see right here on these quotes, which are the ones I'm looking for versus having to go into and look at the quote lines and understand, okay. Oh, this is the one where I did the upgrade versus this is the one that's just the straight renewal for what the customer already has. So streamlining the quote creation process. So if you've got an existing opportunity, you're trying to create a new quote, we really did a good job streamlining that. So there's the green button on an existing this is a new opportunity. I'm creating a quote. It gives me the chance to identify the start date and the term. That's traditional information we've had in the system. But now we have the ability to give you as a user the opportunity to pick which products you wanna filter by. If you don't pick anything and you just move on to the next stage by picking save, you'll be presented with, like, the 1,200 products that we have in our system to choose from. But if you know you're just doing endpoints, you can easily just put in email or encryption like I've done here. And once you move on to the end the next side, it will filter your product selection, and it takes you directly to this page. So you don't have to go to the quote record page and then go to edit lines and then add products. So it automatically takes you to the product selection because we know your quote's empty. Obviously, you'd need to create your products, and this is where you get to pick and you filtered by encryption and email. Now once you've got them into your quote line editor, you can see I have edited the quantity, and they are listed as red. This might be a common experience you've had in the past, but if you came in and picked a promo code while these were still showing as red and hadn't saved them, once you came in to pick your promo code, and this is a really nice streamlined search capability for promo codes, we have a series that we have identified as the most popular promo codes, which are already gonna be displayed. But then if you start typing, it will show you promo codes that match your search criteria. And then you can just move them over to the right hand side as a selected promo code and then save at the top of the screen. But when you do come back, it has automatically saved the quote for you before you made those changes to add the promo codes. So in the past, if you did this, your quote editor would be blank because you didn't save the products you added to your quote. Very frustrating experience. Hopefully, this will make it easier for new users and for those who are just trying to work quickly and sometimes forget. This is a really big enhancement that I'm excited about. Next, the other blue button is the approve and generate. So if you have what you want and you're ready to get your quote documents, we've really streamlined that experience. So with one button click, it allows you to come to this page and you can go back to edit the quote, clone it, review it, or you can generate your quote documents. And then in a single button, you can pick to approve it and generate those quote documents. So that's what I'll do. I'll approve it. Gets me to the quote document generation screen, which is something you're familiar with, and it'll give you your two quote documents that you choose or chose to create. Now amend and extend, this is something that we had back before our systems were updated. We're pleased to announce that this is available to our partners now as of our summer release in the devices and licenses section so you can find an existing customer. And this is where, by definition, when we say amend and extend, it allows you to amend means changing an existing contract, and extend is extending the end date. So what would happen is if your customer comes to you and says, hey. I know I'm halfway through a three year license, but I'd like to upgrade my licenses, Or I would just like to add, you know, 20 more users, but can we renew right now and do, like, another three years? Because we got some budget this quarter that's left over. You can go in as a reseller or distributor if you're the incumbent and do this amend and extend. So it starts and then you initiate it from the devices and licenses on an existing license, and you pick the amend button, which is the same capability you've had just to do traditional amends. But then it asked the question, do you intend to change the distributor or extend the contract? If you pick yes, that allows you to come in and then extend and add new end dates for all the line items. So now looking at the partner compliance and what we've done here, this is the old partner compliance dashboard. So if you are a reseller, you came under the partner programs, looked at partner compliance. If you're a partner portal administrator, you have the ability to view kinda your revenue that Sophos recorded for the fiscal year and all the certifications that you have acquired and how they stacked up to the different partner levels, silver, gold, and platinum. We've updated the page, so we've got a different landing page where you can see and access your compliance dashboard. And here, it looks very familiar, but we have these down arrows by each of the certification categories. So here on the architect, you can pick this. It will tell you which architect certifications you hold, whether it's an end a firewall or endpoint. And then you can see the individuals who hold those certifications when they completed it and when they expire. So in this example, they have one and one is expired, but I can see that the top individual as the nineteen five, I can tell them, hey. Go take that two hour delta training instead of the four day full course, and that will extend your expiration date to the next release that's been released by Sophos for the training. So this really helps resellers see well, you can see your compliance and then actually take action based on the information we're provided in this updated compliance dashboard. One enhancement we're working on for this fall is to make this view available to distribution partners. If you are listed as the reseller's preferred distributor, as a distribution partner, you can come to the same page and you'll just have be given the search criteria, and you can type in your partner's name, and then you would see their partner compliance dashboard. So you can help your partners that you're working with ensuring that they're staying up to date to either stay at their current partner level or move from authorized to silver and whatever criteria they are missing. But you as a distribution partner will have these details if you're listed as the partner's preferred distributor. So we've added some additional functionality in the past about what the preferred distributor does. We're excited to say that this is another feature for distribution partners that allows you to help support your partners when they've identified you as a preferred distributor. So those are the enhancements that we've released in the summer. What I'll do is just get back to my kinda summary slide at the beginning and take a look at some of the questions that came in today. Let's see. So one of the questions, it says, is it possible in the future to make a setting where you get information like start and end date in the European way? It's a great question. And there is a way to get the start and end date, and that is based on the locale for your contact record. What happens is your partner portal administrator or if you are an administrator, we have not only the language that you prefer, but the locale which identifies, as one example, what the date format looks like. So to me, it's kinda challenging when you see a date that says 08/2025. Yeah. I don't know if that's July 7 or August 8 or whatever. You have August 7 or July 8. But that is your locale, and you can specify that it's, like, English UK versus English United States. And that will change how the date is displayed in all of the partner portal. So great question. Work with your partner portal administrator and have them look at your contact in the partner portal. So it's underneath the gear in the partner portal, and there's user management. From there, they'll be able to see all the different users of the partner portal, and then they can change the locale for your specific contact record and make sure it's set for your local country locale. Alright. Looks looking at some of the other questions here. K. It says, why can't we select the term with each license rather than selecting it at the start of the quote? Something like a term might be mixed and cannot be amended with at that stage. Let's see. So I'll try and answer that if there is a license that you're creating. So if you have a brand new license, you saw me identify where you pick the start date of the license and the term. That's just a template at the beginning. If you have different line items in your quote and you want them to start at different times, that is something you can do. You can change the start date on a new license to be sometime in the future. And what will happen is if you don't adjust the end dates, you'll have, let's say, a twelve month license that would start as soon as Sophos processes the order, or if you specify a future date for the second line item that's two months out. It's important to note that the customers can't use or activate that license until the license date occurs, But then you'll end up with another twelve months that starts two months later. So you'll end up with two different contracts if the license end dates aren't matched. So you can stagger the start dates, and then you would need to just adjust the end date so they're the same. So you could have one that's twelve months and one that's ten months. They both end at the same time, which means when the order is placed by Sophos, they'll be residing underneath the same contract. Now when you're doing an amend on an existing contract, that is obviously amending the current contract, which means all the licenses in that contract have the same end date. And by definition, you can't change the end dates if you're just amending a current contract. When you change the end dates, it turns it into an amend and extend. That means you are canceling the current contract and you're gonna be issued a new contract number. So you get an allowance for the unused licenses that you are changing, and they are applied to the new contract. So there's a lot of differences that happen when you change the end dates, which we call an amend and extend. So I'm not sure if I answered the question as it was intended, but that's just some additional information about, the question itself. See if we've got some additional ones here. I see. So would it be possible to clone a quote directly from the opportunity manager? Could be. We've made it a little easier now to get direct access to the quote record page and clone it. But, yes, that could be an option. So it's a good question. And let's see if there are any additional Okay. So regarding local time, this is not working from the partner portal. It needs to be changed from the support account. That's your exit. So local time, I'm assuming you mean local date format. So good information to share. Let's see if there are any additional looks like there is one more. Is there a date when the distributors part of compliance will be visible? So we're looking for some time in October. It's that project is riding on some other, projects, so we just have to coordinate with those other projects and when they get released. But it is something we're looking to deliver next quarter, so it's gonna be our q three. But we're hoping for sometime in October. If not, it will be November. So we will make announcements to all the distribution account managers. They'll be able to get that out to you as a distribution partner when that compliance dashboard is available for you to view for all of your resellers who listed you as their preferred distributor. Alright. Looks like those are all the questions for today. So I'd like to thank all of you for attending. I know this was a short session. It will be recorded. It will be posted. You can catch up or tell your friends to take a look at it if they weren't able to attend. But I'd like to thank all of you for your time today, and good luck and good selling. Thank you very much.