In my last newsletter, I shared my opinions and recap on Microsoft’s recent announcement, Exciting Updates Coming to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. I covered the key points, takeaways, and things we can deduce from what they didn’t say.
Since then, I’ve received many questions from you through my newsletter, my article, and the associated YouTube video.
In this article, I want to address some of those questions and share my hopes and wishes for this new developer program that Microsoft plans to announce.
My Biggest Questions About the “Future Developer Tenants”
What Makes This Different From a Commercial Tenant?
My most pressing question is simple:
Andrew Connell
Microsoft MVP, Full-Stack Developer & Chief Course Artisan - Voitanos LLC.
For instance, I want to know:
- Will the dev tenant be cheaper than a standard commercial offering?
- Will it be more flexible, especially for features like Microsoft 365 Copilot?
- If there’s a Copilot expense, will I be able to easily turn it on and off when I’m not using it so I’m not constantly spending money for something sitting idle?
- Also, will it include the full-featured version of Microsoft 365 Copilot, not just the limited Copilot consumption experience?
Little-Known (But Significant) Copilot Consumption Pricing Limitation
The consumption model, also referred to as metered billing, only supports custom instructions and custom actions that reach out to real-time data sources. It doesn’t give you access to grounding data from Microsoft Graph or knowledge sources that you add to your tenant.
Why?
Because those features require something called the semantic index, which is the index of the content in Microsoft Graph that Copilot queries for the grounding data. The semantic index isn’t provisioned or updated in any tenant until you have at least one constant Microsoft 365 Copilot license ($30 per user per month).
So if you really want to do development with this dev tenant and build agents with full functionality (as I discussed in my last issue), you currently need to buy at least one Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Today, that means you’re forced into a one-year commitment for a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
As I mentioned last week, the minimum cost for this setup comes to $432:
| License | Unit Cost | Commitment | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Essentials license | $6/user/month | annual | $72/year |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot license | $30/user/month | annual | $360/year |
| Total | $432/year |
Will the new dev tenant cost less than this?
Will it have more flexibility?
These are questions we don’t have answers for yet, and we’ll need to wait for Microsoft to provide those details.
My Wishes for the Future Developer Program
Bring Back CDX-Like Features
I would love to see features similar to what we had with Microsoft’s Customer Digital Experience (CDX) tenants. Microsoft’s CDX is a program where partners could create Microsoft 365 tenants with specific features enabled.
The CDX program offered different tenant types focused on specific scenarios like business intelligence or collaboration. It was an easy way to spin up a tenant, demo to a customer, and then discard it when finished.
These tenants were active for 90 days or up to a year, and as a CDX customer, you could have a few 90-day tenants and one year-long tenant. This flexibility is exactly what developers need!
Disposable, Purpose-Specific Tenants
If I’m working on a project with a client, teaching a class, speaking at a conference, I’d like to quickly create a tenant and throw it away when I’m done with that specific use case.
If I can only have one or two active at a time, that’s fine. Just let me have a license that I can move between different tenants. Maybe it’s a dev license and a Microsoft 365 Copilot license that I could use across different active tenants without being tied to any specific tenant. Maybe they have quotas enabled so they’re clearly limited to demo or test experience
Perhaps I could only use one at a time with some limitations, but the flexibility would be incredibly valuable.
Rich Sample Content
One of the best things about the CDX tenants was that they came populated with sample content:
- Calendar events
- Populated mailboxes and contacts
- Documents in SharePoint
- Chat messages in Teams
- Past meetings with chat transcripts
This rich, dummy data created a realistic environment for development and testing. Developers need this kind of comprehensive sample data to build and test real solutions.
My Ideal Developer Program
If I could make a wish to Microsoft today, it would be: Give us a way to buy access to what we used to call CDX tenants. Let me apply certain licenses to those tenants, even if I need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Allow me to use that license in different tenants as needed, maybe one at a time.
Let me buy as many of these tenants as I want. If I need one for a specific project, a conference where I’m speaking, or for teaching a class, I should be able to get what I need. If my customers need tenants for a class they’re taking, let me buy one for each student.
If that means making a one-year commitment and spending $200 on it, that’s very useful. If I want to use it on a month-to-month basis at a slightly higher cost because I don’t want a long-term commitment, give me that option too.
These are the kinds of answers we need to see real value from the dev program and to better understand what Microsoft is planning so we can plan accordingly.
My Current Recommendation
For now, my guidance remains simple: If you need a development environment, buy a commercial tenant and use it for development purposes. If you’re doing Copilot work, especially custom agents using the Teams Toolkit, go with the $432/year option I outlined above.
By the time Microsoft’s new program rolls out, we may have a better, more affordable option. But if you need a development environment for a project in the next month or two, I wouldn’t wait—or at least wait until the last minute and then get a commercial tenant.
I can recommend this because it’s exactly what I do. I still have one of the legacy dev tenants, but I also have a paid commercial one because I don’t want to lose access to the tools and environments I use for my customers.
What Do You Think?
I’m curious to hear your thoughts. What are your biggest questions about these developer tenants? What features would you like to see?
Drop a comment below and let me know what you think. As we saw last time, Microsoft is listening. They’re paying attention and trying to make things better for developers.
Microsoft MVP, Full-Stack Developer & Chief Course Artisan - Voitanos LLC.
Andrew Connell is a full stack developer who focuses on Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365. He’s a 20+ year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP award and has helped thousands of developers through the various courses he’s authored & taught. Whether it’s an introduction to the entire ecosystem, or a deep dive into a specific software, his resources, tools, and support help web developers become experts in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, so they can become irreplaceable in their organization.
