This is no trick and most likely not a treat for partners. Microsoft is making partners who subscribe to the Microsoft action pack take a Microsoft E-Learning course and pass its corresponding assessment test.
I honestly don’t know what Microsoft is trying to achieve by doing this, other than maybe ensuring their partners have some book knowledge in the products they are supposed to be trying to sell. I can’t really find anything on the public side explaining the reasons behind the change.
Anyways, I don’t think passing the assessment test will be too difficult if you work through the E-Learning course, finding the time will be the difficult part for most partners I think.
Details are here for partners here.
Reference: http://blogs.technet.com/james
I couldn’t understand why I was late for everything yesterday until last night around 5:00. Turns out my Blackberry, which I purchased from Bell over the summer didn’t recognize the time change or the fact it doesn’t change until next weekend. My first instict was to curse Bell but then I realized in the date/time option that the network time was correct. So it was the device’s fault, stupid me for assuming the device was good to go patched out of the box.