How to use Visual Studio (MSDN) credits in a Microsoft 365 Developer tenant

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Important Note: This blog post was created for the purpose of moving Visual Studio subscription credits to a Microsoft 365 developer tenant and should not be used for tenants holding production workloads without planning.


If you were provided with a Visual Studio subscription (previously MSDN subscription) as a Microsoft Certified Trainer, by your employer, or provided a subscription for being a Microsoft MVP, you’ll know that you are entitled to a certain amount of credit per month to build resources in Azure. However, the subscription provides Azure AD Free licenses, not allowing you to benefit from features such as Azure Dynamic Groups, Azure PIM and a number of other awesome features that come with Azure AD P1/P2 licenses.

Did you know that as a developer you can sign up for a free 90 day renewable trial of a 365 Developer Subscription tenant including 25 Microsoft 365 E5 licenses to prototype apps and solutions at the following link Join the Microsoft 365 Developer Program today?

Note: 365 Developer account cannot to be utilised for production usage.

No Azure credits are provided in the 365 developer tenant, therefore, you cannot build Azure resources, but you can utilise the 365 E5 licenses which include Azure AD P2 licenses for development purposes.

An image from the Microsoft website displaying the benefits of a free Microsoft 365 E5 sandbox environment. Details also listed below this image,

What’s included in a Free Microsoft 365 E5 instant sandbox?
Cut your configuration time from days to seconds. Be your own administrator and prototype apps and solutions on your fully pre-provisioned sandbox subscription.

  • Includes 25 user licenses for development purposes
  • Preconfigured for sideloading Teams apps
    Fully loaded sample data with 16 sample users, user data, and content to help you model your solutions.
  • Easy access to pre-provisioned core Microsoft 365 workloads and capabilities (Windows not included), including:
    – All Office 365 apps
    – Everything you need for Power Platform development
    – Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
    – Advanced analytics with Power BI
    – Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) for compliance and information protection
    – Azure Active Directory for building advanced identity and access management solutions

    More info at: Join the Microsoft 365 Developer Program today

Ok, so we are aware of the Visual Studio subscription (previously known as a MSDN subscription). We know that the Visual Studio Subscription includes an amount of credit per month, however, does
not include Azure AD P2 licenses. We also know that the 365 Developer subscription includes 25 Microsoft 365 E5 licenses (for development purposes) which includes Azure AD P2 licenses but does not include credits for building Azure resources. The result, we have two separate tenants, the Visual Studio subscription allows us to build Azure resources and the other for 365 development purposes. This could be an inconvenience as in my case I wanted to be able work from the one tenant without having to switch between tenants, such as switching from Visual Studio subscription to the 365 Developer tenant when required.

Did you know you can move the Visual Studio subscription to your Microsoft 365 developer tenant, allowing you to make use of the credits to build resources and the 25 365 E5 licenses within the same login, no need to switch from one tenant to another and becomes so much more convenient.

In this blog post, I go through the process of moving my Visual Studio subscription credit to a 365 Developer tenant. Here goes,

Invite user from Visual Studio Subscription to 365 Developer tenant steps

1) Login to your Microsoft 365 Developer tenant at portal.azure.com

2) Launch Azure Active Directory

3) Click to create a new user and click invite external user.

Image from Azure AD displaying option to invite user

4) Enter the email address for an account located on your Visual Studio Subscription. In my case I invited the account from my Visual Studio subscription that I use to login to the Azure Portal. I granted the invited guest the global administrator role.

5) Check and accept the invite when it appears in your inbox

How to check Microsoft 365 Developer Tenant is listed in Visual Studio Subscription

6) Once you’ve accepted the invite, login to you Visual Studio tenant, click Azure AD, click overview, and then click manage tenants.

screenshot of the Manage Tenants option available in Azure Active Directory

7) Click refresh, your Microsoft 365 Developer tenant should be listed

How to change Azure Visual Studio subscription to 365 Developer tenant

8) Next, whilst still in your Visual Studio subscription, search and click subscriptions

9) Click on your Visual Studio Subscription

Important Note and reminder before continuing: This blog post was created for the purpose of moving Visual Studio subscription credits to a Microsoft 365 developer tenant and should not be used for tenants holding production workloads.

10) Click the option change directory

11) Select the 365 developer subscription from the drop down and click change.

12) That’s it for now. This process can take up to two hours to complete.

13) Finally, if you wish to deploy resources within the subscription, grant the guest account (guest email address added at step 4) owner permissions to the subscription.

A short blog post, but I hope it was useful and allows you to be more productive when using your Visual Studio subscription and Microsoft 365 Developer tenant.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.