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Each call changes the seat count of one marketplace subscription, the one the agent picked with List License Subscriptions, in one direction: it adds seats or it removes them.
This tool changes the seat count of a subscription the client already holds. To buy the first seat of a product the client does not hold yet, an agent places an order through the Vendor API tool on Pax8, TD SYNNEX ION or TD SYNNEX Stellr. Assigning a license to a user, or unassigning it, is done by the Microsoft 365 tools (Microsoft Graph API), gated by your M365 licensing permissions. An agent without those permissions is told to assign the new seat with the tool it uses for licensing, such as CIPP, or to hand that step to a technician. Unassign users before the agent removes seats.
Removing seats never terminates a subscription. If the agent removes the last seat, the subscription record stays on your marketplace and can keep billing until its term ends. The agent says so and hands the job to a technician. Cancelling the subscription itself is done by hand in the marketplace portal, or on Pax8 and TD SYNNEX Stellr by an agent with writable subscription permissions through the Vendor API tool. This tool never ends a subscription.

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What It Does

When enabled, the agent can:
  • Add or remove seats for any license SKU
  • Target a specific subscription when your provider has multiple subscriptions for the same license (e.g., separate Monthly and Annual subscriptions)
  • Auto-detect which marketplace provider to use based on the company’s configuration

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Settings

At least one of the two directions must be on. When the agent asks for a change its settings do not allow, the tool changes nothing and the agent tells the technician.

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Subscription Targeting

Many MSPs keep multiple subscriptions for the same license (e.g., an 80/20 yearly/monthly split, or separate month-to-month and annual-commitment subscriptions). The agent identifies the exact subscription by calling List License Subscriptions first, which returns the subscription ID, status, billing term, commitment term and seat count for each subscription.

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Marketplace Provider Auto-Detection

The marketplace provider is determined from the company’s configuration. Neo checks in this order:
  1. A Marketplace Company ID typed on the company, in this order: Pax8, D&H, Ingram Micro, Sherweb, TD SYNNEX ION, TD SYNNEX Stellr, OpenText Secure Cloud, Microsoft Partner Center
  2. An Ingram Micro customer matched to the company under Organization Mapping
  3. A TD SYNNEX ION customer, then a TD SYNNEX Stellr customer, then an OpenText Secure Cloud customer, matched to the company under Organization Mapping. When that customer holds no Microsoft 365 service in Secure Cloud and Partner Center credentials are saved, Neo uses Microsoft Partner Center instead
  4. Microsoft Partner Center, as a fallback when Partner Center credentials are saved
Only a confirmed or exact match in Organization Mapping selects a marketplace. A suggested match does not.

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Timing the Change

The agent applies a change either immediately or at the next renewal date. Use custom instructions to direct it:
  • Immediately (default) — an addition applies now and bills for the prorated remainder of the current period. Microsoft NCE allows an immediate removal only within the first 7 days of a term, so an immediate removal can fail on an older subscription. If the marketplace rejects it on NCE policy grounds, the agent is told to retry at the next renewal.
  • Next renewal — the change is queued for the subscription’s renewal date. It suits additions you want aligned with billing anniversaries, and removals after the 7-day window.
Scheduled-at-renewal is supported via API on Ingram Micro and Microsoft Partner Center. For Pax8, D&H and Sherweb, the API doesn’t expose it. For TD SYNNEX ION, TD SYNNEX Stellr and OpenText Secure Cloud, Neo does not schedule a change at renewal yet. In both cases the agent suggests scheduling the workflow itself to run on the renewal day. The agent can also align the renewal date to the end of the calendar month or to the subscription’s existing anniversary when the change applies (Ingram Micro only).

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Adding Seats: Waiting for the New Seat

Marketplaces accept the order asynchronously. Microsoft Graph usually shows the new seat within ~60–90 seconds, but rare cases take longer. For an immediate order the tool waits for the new seat to become visible in Microsoft before it returns, so the agent can usually assign the license straight away. The wait is up to 5 minutes in an automation and 20 seconds in a chat conversation, where someone is waiting for the agent’s reply. If the seat is still not visible when that wait ends, the tool returns successfully and tells the agent to wait a few more minutes and check again before assigning, or to hand off to a technician if the seat still doesn’t appear. A next-renewal order returns immediately, and the seat appears on the renewal date.

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Confirming the Marketplace Applied the Change

Whether Microsoft can assign a seat is a separate question from whether the marketplace record changed. One customer had the Microsoft side fulfil correctly while the Pax8 subscription disappeared from their portal. On Pax8, the agent reads the subscription back after the change and reports the seat count Pax8 holds. The read-back window is 90 seconds, and 30 seconds in a chat conversation. The read-back ends in one of two states:
  • Confirmed — Pax8 reports the seat count the agent asked for.
  • Unconfirmed — the read-back did not show that seat count in the time available. The agent is told not to claim the change applied, and to ask a technician to check the portal rather than send the change again, because a repeat that does apply would change the seats twice.
For a removal, the state decides whether the tool reports success. A reduction to zero seats that stays unconfirmed reports failure, because Pax8 ends a subscription through cancellation and not through a seat change of zero; an offboarding agent then does not write a completed licence removal for seats that are still on the subscription. Every other unconfirmed reduction reports success with the unconfirmed wording, since Pax8 settles a quantity change over several minutes. On TD SYNNEX ION, the agent waits for the order to finish and reads the subscription back the same way. On TD SYNNEX Stellr, it waits for the provisioning operation to finish and reads the subscription back; a Stellr subscription keeps at least one seat, so removing the last one means cancelling it. On OpenText Secure Cloud, Secure Cloud accepts the change for processing, and the agent reads the subscription back until it shows the new seat count. Neo changes seats only on an active Microsoft 365 subscription, keeps at least one seat, and refuses a removal after the subscription’s last day for a decrease (CanCancelUntilDate), when Microsoft bills the seat to the end of the term. When the read-back cannot confirm a change, Neo keeps other changes off that subscription for up to about 20 minutes, so a second change cannot start from the old count. D&H, Ingram Micro, Sherweb and Microsoft Partner Center are not read back yet. There the agent reports the change as unconfirmed, never as failed, because nothing was checked either way.

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When the Marketplace Refuses a Removal

  • Pax8 committed minimum — Pax8 will not lower a subscription below the seat count committed for the current term. The agent is told how many seats, if any, can come off before the term ends, and not to retry. Often the answer is none until the renewal date.
  • Sherweb at zero seats — when Sherweb refuses to take a subscription to zero seats, the agent relays Sherweb’s error and tells the technician to cancel the subscription in the Sherweb portal.

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Busy Subscriptions

When Pax8 is still provisioning a prior change, it returns HTTP 500 — Subscription being modified has executing provisioning actions. In an automation, Neo retries this error with backoff (60 / 90 / 120 seconds, up to ~4.5 minutes) before it gives up. Concurrent calls against the same Pax8 subscription are serialized at the Neo layer, so parallel onboarding workflows do not race. A chat conversation does not wait any of that out. The two ways of giving up early read differently to the agent, because they leave the marketplace in different states:
  • Another Neo run holds the subscription. Nothing was sent, so the agent is told the subscription is unchanged and that it can run the change again later. An automation waits up to 6 minutes for the other run; a chat conversation waits 10 seconds.
  • Pax8 reports the subscription as still provisioning. The change did reach Pax8, and a provisioning rejection is not proof that Pax8 ignored it. The agent is told to read the seat count with List License Subscriptions before sending the change again.
In the rare case where the whole marketplace call passes 50 seconds in a chat, the agent is told that Neo does not know whether the change was submitted, and to read the seat count before sending it again.

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Tool Dependencies

When you enable this tool, the following are automatically enabled:
  • List License Subscriptions — so the agent can find the subscription ID before it changes seats
  • Request Technician Approval — when approval is enabled in settings

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How to Use

Guide subscription selection with custom instructions: