The partner programme
The partner programme lets a managed service provider run Sigil across a client base: sign clients up, configure their signatures, support them day to day, and receive one consolidated bill covering every client’s usage.
It follows the delegated administration model MSPs already know from Microsoft’s CSP and GDAP programmes: a partner organisation, a client list, delegated roles, invite-then-consent onboarding, aggregated per-seat billing, and per-client usage export for rebilling.
A partner is not a tenant
Section titled “A partner is not a tenant”The distinction matters and it shapes everything else.
Your own signatures live in a normal Sigil tenant, exactly like any customer’s. The partner record is a separate entity that owns the client relationships and the commercial arrangement.
Keeping them apart means a managed client is still an ordinary tenant in every respect: same data model, same isolation, same portal. Nothing about being managed changes how a client’s signatures work.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Partner | The MSP organisation |
| Partner staff | A person at the MSP, authenticated from the MSP’s own Entra tenant |
| Managed client | A tenant linked to a partner |
| Direct tenant | A self-signed-up, self-billed tenant |
| Partner home tenant | The MSP’s own Sigil tenant, for their own signatures |
How access works
Section titled “How access works”Partner staff sign in from the MSP’s own Entra tenant. There is no extra consent beyond the admin consent the MSP already grants for its own tenant.
When a member of partner staff acts on a client, the portal switches into that client’s context. Every existing view works unchanged, with a persistent banner showing which client is being edited and a one-click exit.
Partner staff never appear in a client’s user list. Their access comes from the partner relationship rather than from a role granted inside the client’s tenant, which means removing somebody at the MSP removes their access to every client at once.
This is delegated administration, and it is read-write. It is a different mechanism from the read-only “view as tenant” that Tophhie Cloud’s own operators use for support.
What partner staff can see
Section titled “What partner staff can see”The partner console has its own section in the portal, shown when you sign in as partner staff. Which pages you see depends on your partner role: an Owner sees all four, an Admin or Technician sees Clients only, and Billing staff see Partner billing and Usage & rebilling but not Clients.
Clients, which is the workbench. One row per managed client, showing its name and primary domain, the seat count last recorded, whether a template has been published, and how many portal users the client has of its own (often none, since you administer it), with a badge for a client that is suspended or not being billed to you. It is the way into any of them. See managing clients for what it does and does not tell you.
Partner billing, covering the consolidated subscription, the current aggregate seat count, the average so far this billing period, how you pay, your invoice history and any credits applied to the account. Your charge is the average of the nightly measurements across the period, less any mailboxes you have prepaid for a client. See partner billing.
Usage & rebilling, with each client’s seat count day by day for any date range or billed period, and an Export CSV button for your own billing system.
Partner staff, for managing who at the MSP has access and at what level.
Onboarding a client
Section titled “Onboarding a client”An MSP cannot grant admin consent inside a client’s Entra tenant. Only an administrator of that tenant can, which makes onboarding an invite flow rather than something you can complete alone. See managing clients.
Billing
Section titled “Billing”Managed clients have no subscription of their own. Their seats are counted into the partner’s single subscription, and the partner receives one bill covering every client.
You then rebill through your own arrangement, using the per-client usage export. See partner billing.
The partner agreement
Section titled “The partner agreement”The partner agreement is published at portal.usesigil.app/partner-agreement.
Acceptance is recorded against the partner, with the accepted version tracked, so
what was agreed and when is a record rather than an assertion.
It covers how client data is handled, the uptime Sigil commits to and the credits if that commitment is missed, who answers a client’s support questions, billing, what happens to your clients if your own payments fail, use of the Sigil name, confidentiality, liability, and the grounds on which a partnership can end. Only a partner Owner can accept it. Until the current version is accepted, nobody at the partner can add or manage a client, and that includes clients you already have when a new version is published. See the partner agreement, support and service level and leaving the programme.
Accepting it also accepts the data processing agreement, read with your client as the controller, you as its processor and Tophhie Cloud as your sub-processor. That is the Article 28 contract behind everything you do for a client, and the version recorded against you names both documents.
It remains separate from the DPA a client accepts for itself. A partner cannot accept a client’s DPA on their behalf, because the client is the data controller and that agreement is theirs to make.
Getting set up
Section titled “Getting set up”Partner onboarding is not self-serve, because it establishes a commercial
relationship rather than just a tenant. Contact Tophhie Cloud through
portal.usesigil.app/support to start.
What you get back is a single link. Following it walks through the programme terms offered to you, then sends you to Microsoft admin consent for your own organisation. Granting it provisions your tenant and creates the partner record on those terms. The first administrator to sign in to the portal afterwards becomes the partner Owner, which is normally the person who consented. There is no further step at either end.
To accept the invitation you need to be a Microsoft 365 administrator of your own organisation. Somebody who is not can forward the link to whoever is.
- Open the invitation link.
- Read the terms it shows. Read the partner agreement opens the full text in a new tab.
- Choose Set up your partner account.
- Sign in with your Microsoft 365 work account and approve Sigil for your organisation on Microsoft’s consent screen.
- Sign in to the portal at
portal.usesigil.app/admin.
The sidebar gains a Partner section, and Clients opens with a card asking you to accept the partner agreement. See accepting it.
The link is single-use and lasts 30 days unless Tophhie Cloud set a different expiry when sending it. An expired or used link opens a page headed “This invitation isn’t available”, with a button to ask for a fresh link from partners@usesigil.app. The link is also honoured only for an organisation Microsoft confirms has granted consent. If Microsoft says it has not, a new organisation is stopped before anything is created and asked to try again, and one that already uses Sigil carries on as an ordinary customer. Either way the link is left unused so it can be sent again.