Microsoft relents on planned Power Platform self-service purchasing changes

Citing customer feedback, Microsoft is making some changes to a sudden planned change in the way it will allow business users to buy Power Platform products. The changes riled a number of IT pros who feared they might result in more "shadow IT" operations and create compliance issues.

Microsoft noted the changes in an update on October 31 to its Self-service purchase FAQ.

The quick back story: Last week, Microsoft began informing customers that it was going to make a significant change in the way users could purchase and license Power BI, PowerApps and Flow products. Starting on November 19, self-service purchase capabilities for those products was set to be turned on automatically. This meant that administrator approval would notbe required -- or even offered the option -- when it comes to purchases by individual end-users of the Power Platform products. Individuals will have to pay for licenses themselves, not using corporate funds, but they won't be barred from doing so.

Microsoft rival Salesforce already offers a number of similar self-service capabilities, which is why many believed Microsoft decided to make a similar move. Microsoft's official reason for the change was it was seeing demand from users and organizations that users be able to buy subscriptions on their own.

But today, October 31, Microsoft updated its FAQ with the following note:

"Over the past week, we've been listening to customer feedback regarding the rollout of our self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products. Based on the feedback, we're making the following changes to our plan:

"On November 19th, we will provide IT admins a way to turn off self-service purchasing on a per product basis via PowerShell. More details will be forthcoming.

"To provide more time to prepare for this change, we are updating the launch for self-service purchase capabilities for Power Platform products to start with Power BI on January 14th for all commercial cloud customers.

"Beginning January 14, 2020, self-service purchase, subscription, and license management capabilities for Power Platform products (Power BI, PowerApps, and Flow) will be available for commercial cloud customers in the United States. Self-service purchase gives users a chance to try out new technologies and enables them to develop solutions that will ultimately benefit their larger organizations. This capability will not be available to tenants in the US that are government, nonprofit, or education, at this time. Central procurement and IT teams will have visibility to all users buying and deploying self-service purchase solutions through the Microsoft 365 admin center and will be able to turn off self-service purchasing on a per product basis via PowerShell."

Following last week's disclosure of its planned Power Platform self-service changes, users took to UserVoice to express their concerns and registered more than 6,800 votes to block the planned changes.