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This news is not the freshest one, but since there are quite few materials on the blog related to creating demo environments in Microsoft CDX, I feel compelled to write about the changes that have occurred anyway.
In April 2024, Microsoft announced changes to the Microsoft CDX service for Partners and MVPs. The notification could be seen immediately upon logging into the CDX portal and at the following address: https://cdx.transform.microsoft.com/notifications ↗, where it is still available (in its updated version).
What is Microsoft CDX?
Microsoft CDX (Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences) is a service that allows for easy creation and management of cloud-based demo environments used to showcase Microsoft business software capabilities to end customers. Because of this intended purpose, the ability to create an environment in this option is only available to Partners. More information about the service can be found in the guide How to create a demonstration environment on CDX ¶ What is Microsoft CDX?
What’s changed?
First and foremost, the limit on the number of tenants that a user associated with a Partner or MVP account can create in the CDX service has changed. And no, this limit has not increased; quite the opposite. The previous limit of 5 concurrent demonstration environments with a lifespan of 90 days and 1 demonstration environment with a lifespan of 1 year has been reduced to just 1 concurrent demonstration environment with a lifespan of 90 days.
In addition, Partner and MVP users can create or delete up to 2 tenants every 30 days, with only 1 tenant being active at a time.
All tenants that reach their expiration date (90 days from creation) will be marked for deauthorization and removal. However, requesting an extension of the license/life of the demo tenant will no longer be possible.
The only positive change (for some, not necessarily for others) is that all demonstration tenants in the CDX service are equipped with Entra ID licenses, allowing users to use MFA to secure the tenant. In fact, it’s even required, as mentioned in the last paragraph of the announcement and in the updated terms of use (see below ↓).
What about the existing tenants?
All existing tenants created on CDX before April 12, 2024, will be (likely already have been) deauthorized (unable to log in), and subsequently marked for deletion.
If your tenant has been deauthorized but you urgently need to unblock it for any reason, you could submit such a request by contacting Microsoft Support (link ↗).
Changes in the terms of use
The CDX service terms of use available at: https://cdx.transform.microsoft.com/profile/terms-of-use ↗ have also been updated. The latest update is dated October 7, 2024. A clause requiring the activation of authorization after MFA has definitely been added.
However, the most important terms of using CDX have not changed. To remind of a few: the service should be used only for personal learning and demonstration purposes; demo tenants and access to them should not be shared with end customers under any circumstances; tenants should also not be shared among teams or companies.
Summary
After launching the Microsoft Demos service (later renamed to Microsoft CDX), Microsoft made a significant step towards supporting Partners by providing them with tools for creating demonstration experiences. At that time, it was the best option for testing and showcasing the BC environment in the online version to potential clients. Since then, much has changed. The possibility of creating local sandbox and on-premises environments on Docker emerged, Partners gained the ability to acquire BC online licenses for their own needs, which at last enabled teamwork.
Still, CDX remains the only solution that enables individual learning in a fully functional online BC environment and the only option for a completely isolated demonstration environment. For this reason, I believe it is still one of the key elements in the Partners’ arsenal. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to limit the resources allocated to the CDX service and has implemented much more restrictive usage limits.
I suspect that the main reason for implementing these restrictions is the growing demand for new services (I’m looking at you, AI), which has forced the reallocation of some available resources. Servers aren’t infinitely elastic, and unfortunately for us, it was decided to shift some resources from CDX. Is there a chance that these changes are temporary and the original limits will be restored or even increased? That remains unknown, but we can only hope for a more optimistic scenario in the future.
In the meantime, let us know in the comments ↓ whether as a Partner or MVP you used the previous, more flexible CDX limits and if after their drastic reduction, you feel a lack of ability to create additional (or longer, 1-year) demonstration environments. Or maybe one 90-day environment is fully sufficient for you? Share your opinion!
Hang in there! 🤙
2 Comments
Jeff Landeen
It’s even worse now, I haven’t been able to log into the CDX site in the last 3 weeks and keep getting permission errors. Have been told several times that this is due to the site being overloaded, but it absolutely sucks as this was one of the best ways to experiment and build out POC’s for BC extensions or integrations :(
Foxer
That’s right! CDX (recently renamed MDX) is the absolute best way to experiment in a fully functional M365 environment. It’s a key tool in the hands of Partners, so MS shouldn’t limit our access.
Apart from that, Jeff, if you’re getting the Login Failed error message with the URL like this: https://cdx.transform.microsoft.com/error/407, switching web browser to Microsoft Edge should help. Have you tried it?