Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Contract Management portal stopped accepting new agreements, renewals, and extensions on July 10, 2026. That cutover means partners still relying on eAgreements for non-Enterprise Agreement transactions are already locked out of creating packages, and with full retirement expected in August, the remaining weeks are not a migration window—they are a cleanup window.
The July 10 Cutover: What VLCM Can No Longer Do
As of July 10, 2026, VLCM is read-only. Partners can view, search, and download existing records, but they cannot create new packages, process renewals, extend agreements, or submit Customer Information Change Requests. This affects the seven non-EA programs Microsoft enabled in VL Central Contracts on April 7, 2026: Open Value, Open Value Subscription, Campus/EES, SPLA, ISV Royalty, Select, and Select Plus.
Microsoft’s partner enablement materials confirm that full retirement of the legacy portal is slated for August 2026, though some guidance places the final shutdown in an August–September window. Either way, the operational deadline was July 10. August is the archive-access deadline—the point at which read-only access itself disappears.
Why VL Central Contracts Is the Only Path Forward
Microsoft unified the backend agreement data between VLCM and VL Central during a parallel-production period. That means packages created through either platform were visible in both. But with VLCM now read-only, VL Central Contracts is the sole authoritative environment for all active licensing work.
This transition has been years in the making. Microsoft has been gradually retiring legacy volume licensing tools, a pattern familiar to anyone who watched the removal of legacy Windows components. The April 2026 enablement of those seven programs in VL Central was the final signal that partners should migrate. Yet many teams continued using VLCM out of habit, while others split work between both interfaces—a practice Microsoft explicitly warned against.
The Hidden Traps of a Shared Backend
Because the two systems share underlying data, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking a record that appears in VL Central has been successfully migrated. Seeing a package does not mean your team can work with it. Workflows involve permissions, approval paths, internal procedures, and customer communications that may still be tethered to VLCM.
Consider a renewal that someone started in VLCM before the cutover. That agreement may appear in VL Central, but if the responsible employee only has view access, lacks the training to complete the renewal in the new interface, or is working from outdated runbooks that reference eAgreements, the workflow stalls. The migration isn’t complete until the user can perform the required action end-to-end in VL Central.
Internal documentation is another blind spot. Procedure libraries, onboarding materials, shared mailboxes, ticket templates, and customer instructions that mention eAgreements or VLCM will lead staff down dead ends. Every reference must be updated—not just bookmarks and desktop shortcuts, but the institutional knowledge embedded in everyday processes.
Your Five-Step Migration Plan
The days of “we can still do it in eAgreements” are over. Here is a practical sequence to eliminate dependence on VLCM before the shutdown:
- Inventory every active item. Export or record all packages, agreements, customer records, and pending tasks that your team still consults in VLCM. Don’t just list agreement numbers; include statuses like “awaiting renewal,” “needs customer info change,” or “admin lookup only.”
- Classify each item by what it needs next. Is it a new package, a renewal, an extension, a Customer Information Change Request, or purely historical? The action determines the migration priority.
- Verify that the responsible employee can find and act on the record in VL Central Contracts. Simply logging in isn’t enough. They must locate the correct customer and agreement, identify the required transaction, and understand the new approval sequence.
- Re-create or continue all actionable work in VL Central, assigning a named owner and an internal completion date. For extensions, note that Microsoft specifically supports them for Open Value, Open Value Subscription, and Campus agreements. Test the full route now, not later.
- Download historical material needed for audit, customer service, or compliance. But don’t turn this into a bulk-retention free-for-all. Preserve only what your contractual and records-management obligations require, and store it securely.
This is not a data-copy exercise. The goal is to confirm that every active workflow—not just every record—has a future in VL Central. If a team cannot locate, access, or process an item, treat that as a current blocker, not something to investigate shortly before the portal goes dark.
Don’t Wait for the Final Shutdown: August Is Cleanup, Not Prep
Microsoft’s ambiguous retirement window—August 2026 or August–September—has led some partners to believe they have extra time. That uncertainty should not be interpreted as operating room. The July 10 cutover removed the ability to create and modify transactions. The remaining access is for looking up old records and downloading archives. Delaying migration in the hope of a grace period only increases the risk that critical information becomes unreachable.
August should be spent closing gaps: validating that renewal workflows function, ensuring that Customer Information Change Requests can be submitted by the right teams, and auditing administrative lookup procedures. It is also the time to remove any lingering references to VLCM from internal runbooks and customer-facing documents.
Managers should ask every team responsible for a licensing workflow these four questions:
- Who owns the next action?
- Where will that action be completed?
- What evidence shows the user can complete it?
- What historical material must be retained before VLCM disappears?
Any answer that includes “we can still do it in eAgreements” is incorrect. Any answer that depends on “we will download it later” carries avoidable risk.
What to Watch Next
Partners should monitor Microsoft’s VL Central What’s New guidance for the final decommissioning date and any scope clarifications. The priority order remains the same: first, eliminate active dependence on VLCM; second, validate all workflows in VL Central; third, preserve required historical records. The shutdown will not announce itself with months of warning—when VLCM disappears, it will do so quickly, and the only safety net is a completed migration.