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Lab success exit criteria

At the end of this lab guide you will have successfully activated your Visual Studio Enterprise benefit using your corporate Microsoft account (@microsoft.com) and created a new Azure Subscription that is linked to your personal MSA account (@outlook.com).

Step 1. Visual Studio Subscription Activationā€‹

  1. To activate your Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription, you first need to login to https://my.visualstudio.com using your corporate Microsoft FTE account (you@microsoft.com).

  2. Next you will need to link your personal MSA account to this newly activated Visual studio subscription. This step is necessary so you can then access your Azure subscription benefit via https://portal.azure.com with an account other your FTE one.

  3. To add an alternate account, navigate to the Subscriptions tab.

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  4. Then find theĀ Alternate accountĀ section at the bottom of the page and enter your personal MSA account (you@outlook.com).

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  5. Navigate back to theĀ BenefitsĀ tab and ensure that you see a small note indicating that your account has been linked.Ā 

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  6. Whilst still on the Benefits tab you should see an Azure featured benefit tile with theĀ ActivateĀ button in it like below. ClickĀ Activate.

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  7. This should pop-up a new window indicating that you will need to activate the monthly credit with your personal MSA account that you added in Step 2. ClickĀ Next.

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  8. CopyĀ theĀ activation URLĀ andĀ saveĀ it to a temporary location.

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  9. Next open anĀ incognitoĀ orĀ InPrivateĀ browser session and sign-in toĀ https://my.visualstudio.com/Ā with your linked personal account from Step 2.

  10. Copy and pasteĀ the savedĀ activation URLĀ into this new browser session to activate your Azure subscription benefit against your personal MSA account.

  11. After the activation has been completed you should now see a new Visual Studio Enterprise Subscription showing from within https://portal.azure.com when logged in with your personal MSA account.

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Tip: If you donā€™t use an in-private session when navigating to https://portal.azure.com you will always be logged into the Azure portal with your corporate you@microsoft.com account which means landing into your default FTE Azure subscription, which is obviously cumbersome and undesirable for this lab. To rectify this, I highly recommend setting up a new profile in Edge for your personal account (that you used in Step 3) so that you can easily switch between accounts to use the Azure portal without having to resort to in-private browser sessions, with the added benefit that your credentials are also saved for each Edge profile so you can get SSO when you switch between profiles.

See Sign in and create multiple profiles in Microsoft Edge for more details.