Customer Support Account Without Device

[bcolesberry]

 Hello,

We would like to transfer management of a customer's device from our support account, to theirs. However, they do not currently have a customer support account. All the documentation I have read online indicates that you must register a device in order to create a customer support account. As we currently manage the device, there is no device for them to register.

How can we accomplish this transfer?

[JayGolf]

Hi @bcolesberry ,

Do you work for a VAR? 

[JayGolf]

@bcolesberry please see below:

"Upon receipt of a purchased device on the secondary market, you must place two orders through a Palo Alto Networks authorized local reseller. The first order must be for a non-refundable certification fee and the second for a one time activation fee and the purchase of a one year support subscription (you may purchase a longer support subscription if desired but the purchase it at minimum a one year subscription). The purchase of other subscriptions or services are optional."

It looks like the one time activation fee may allow your customer to create a support account. I found this information from our Secondary Market Policy

NGFW 

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@bcolesberry,

Unfortunately it sounds like you may work for an MSP sort of company (IE: You manage someone else's equipment, but don't actually own it)? If that's the case, the device should have really been registered to the customer in question, and they should have had their own account created at the time of purchase. Your company would then have an account under that company's support account, or otherwise have access to the account. That of course, does you absolutely no good now.

If I'm correct in my understanding and the customer actually owns the device in question, this gets a lot more difficult to get cleaned up. Assuming you aren't transferring ownership, you really need to reach out to your own account manager and explain what happened. They'll need to have an account created on the backend so that you can actually transfer the device to the customer. Keeping in mind that this looks to PAN like you have someone trying to bypass the secondary market policies, and even when you transfer management over to the customer you'll run into renewal issues if the customer migrates away from your service. 

[bcolesberry]

@BPryYes, I work for an MSP of sort. The devices in question are AWS Marketplace devices that the customer does own and pay for directly from their AWS account.

In the original setup, we were managing the devices almost exclusively, and by extension their support cases. The customer would now like to do more work within the devices, and manage their own support cases (while leaving us the ability to manage the devices, and potential future support cases). The solution you mentioned, having the devices registered with the customer's support account and then adding our own users to that account, was the solution I thought of. It is unfortunate that the original architecture did not have this in place.

Given this information, do you have any suggestions for how to accomplish this? You original answer mentioned creating an account on 'the backend' to transfer ownership. I imagine you mean we would create a user (for the customer) within our own support account. Transfer the assets over to the new user. Then remove the user from our own support account, and presumably their user would then be tied to a new support account?