Claiming SLA Credit for Microsoft Service Outages

Microsoft provides a Service Level Agreement ("SLA") to all customers using their Online Services, including Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 and Windows 365. These are published by Microsoft and provide for remedies for breaches of that SLA where the availability of an Online Service is below a defined level.

Customers who experience an outage of Microsoft's Online Services can claim an SLA credit via Crayon , if Crayon is providing the relevant subscriptions to the customer tenant. In most cases with a major service outage in excess of 8 hours, Crayon will generally claim that SLA credit from Microsoft globally and distribute that credit to accounts once received.

Service Level Agreements

AZURE SLA

Microsoft provides an SLA for most services in Azure. These are listed at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/support/legal/sla/summary/ and you will need to go into each resource section to review these. Click on 'Full Details' link under each product listing, then 'SLA Details' on the next page. 

Credits provided for SLA breaches are computed on a 'Minutes of Service Lost' as a percentage basis against the entire billing period (1st to last day of the calendar month). The majority of Azure services have the following SLA:

1. <99.9% availability, 10% credit on monthly billed charges for that resource.
2. <99% availability, 25% credit on monthly billed charges for that resource.

There are also other SLA levels and credit amounts on certain services. Please refer to the SLA documentation linked above for further details.

 

MICROSOFT 365 SLA

Microsoft provides an SLA for services in Microsoft 365. These are listed at https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/docs/view/Service-Level-Agreements-SLA-for-Online-Services?lang=1 and are updated frequently. Please ensure that you refer to that dated version that was in force at the time of the incident to find the applicable SLA level and credit.

For users that are licensed via a standalone license such as Exchange Online Plan 1, the full SLA applies when that product or service experiences an incident. When users are licensed with a bundle license of multiple services such as M365 Business Basic/Premium, M365 E1/E3/E5 or similar, a percentage of the SLA credit is applied based on the services affected.

 

Credit Timelines

Before any SLA credit claim can be raised, the billing month needs to complete and be invoiced by Microsoft. This achieves two things:

1. Confirmation of the downtime experienced for the entire billing month to compute the total service availability; and
2. The charges for the billing period, to which a credit would be applied as a percentage of billed cost.

Under the CSP program, the billing period is per calendar month, i.e 1st day of the month until the last day of the month and final billing data is available around the 8th-10th of the following month dependent business days. Claims can then be raised after Crayon receives the billing data from Microsoft.

For a general timeline of an SLA qualified outage in the month of June:

1. Service outage occurs in June.
2. Billing data available from approximately 10th July in order to review and make an SLA claim against it.
3. Crayon lodges claim shortly after. Smaller claims may be approved and processed by the final day of July.
4. Credit appears on billing data issued by 10th August.
5. Credit processed by Crayon Billing team. This credit is then available to offset further invoices. 

In major outages, Microsoft's claim processing time will be extended due to the volume of claims they are handling. In the above example, it would be expected that an additional month may be required to review, approve and process the credit back which would mean customers would see that credit processed in September.

Claiming an SLA Credit

Individual customer issues or Small Outages

There are deadlines to claiming an SLA credit, which is to raise that request to Crayon within 30 days of the invoice covering the period where the incident occurred. This also usually requires that a technical escalation case was raised by Crayon to confirm the incident was in fact an outage or issue with a particular tenant or product activation. In the case of Microsoft acknowledging a service issue with an incident code, this is not required.

Please contact your Crayon Account Manger to start the SLA Credit request process. 

Major Outages

Where a major outage occurs affecting most customers and the outage is long enough to trigger a <99% SLA breach, Crayon will raise a claim for all our customers in the region that was affected and distribute that credit back automatically once the credit is received from Microsoft. This reduces the workload of managing an individual case per tenant.

In these cases, there is no action required from any partner to raise a claim. If a claim is requested, you will be notified that the incident was considered major and that we are already processing SLA claims with Microsoft.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This outage has hurt my business and I need compensation. How can I claim that?

In order to use Microsoft Online Services, you are required to agree to the Microsoft Customer Agreement. This would have been agreed to at the time of tenant creation, or when an existing tenant was connected to Crayon in PRISM Portal. This agreement terms state that:

Microsoft warrants that each Online Service will perform in accordance with the applicable SLA during Customer’s use. Customer’s remedies for breach of this warranty are described in the SLA.

In the agreement, there is no additional compensation outside the SLA credit. Therefore, any requests for compensation will not be entertained by Crayon.

 

Why can I not have a credit immediately?

Crayon is not able to provide credits without a claim being approved by Microsoft first. Additional credit data is needed before we can process approved credits back to your account, including any specific discounts, promotions or foreign exchange conversions which need to be applied to the credit also. This unfortunately does take time, and we value your patience while the SLA credit claim is being processed.

 

I have raised an SLA Claim. Can I hold off paying my invoice until the credit is applied?

An SLA claim is only a claim until a credit is approved. There is no guarantee that an SLA Claim will be approved by Microsoft and result in a credit. Your invoice terms still apply, and you are required to pay your invoice in full within the terms provided. Failure to pay invoices on time may result in credit hold, suspension of your licenses and services, or further legal action. Once approved and processed, a credit can be applied to any CSP invoice within terms.