Expansion of web API

Hey Robin,

Yes, we're continually expanding the API. We'll consider adding the ability to iterate over product versions, but there's not really any use in doing that. Products and versions are rarely added, thus they're the type of thing you can just hard-code into your web API calls.

for example it would be handy to get a list of products even if no keys have been created for them yet.

Well, you could always just hard-code the product version ids in your web API calls.

my own "lite" version of the dashboard for our everyday use which would hide things that we don't really need, such as product versions and trial extensions.

This sounds more like you're finding the LimeLM interface less than appealing. We are thinking about ways to make it better, and we're still bouncing around ideas.

I would be interested it hear your ideas (or even see rough mockups if you've done them). What's your ideal LimeLM interface? What's working? What's not? What's confusing you? What absolutely should not be changed? What's "kludgey"?

Hi Wyatt,

>I would be interested it hear your ideas (or even see rough mockups if you've done them). What's your ideal LimeLM interface? What's working? What's not? What's confusing you? What absolutely should not be changed? What's "kludgey"?

Well I don't have any mockups, but I can certainly send you some screenshots if I do knock up something like that. TBH I'm still playing with the whole setup so am not sure yet if that is really needed or not. My initial impressions of the dashboard are that it is quite busy, and full of stuff that most of the time I don't need. For example there are bits of help all over the place which I must admit is great at the moment, but once I have the system working I would like these to go away. Maybe a simple "show help" option in the settings would do it. Also there is some stuff I won't ever use such as product versions and trials, and TurboActivate translations.I have now created a second non-admin user with limited permissions which has helped a little, but I think this could be taken further. Basically once we are up and running, our non-technical admin user would want to create product keys and monitor activations, but that is all they would really want to see and do.

One other thing I would like to mention is that it would be nice if "rental" (time-limited) licences were first class citizens, rather than having to manage this ourselves through the custom fields option (this one feels kludgy!), as a large proportion of our licences are like this. At the least a very useful addition for us would be to be able to pick a certain number of days rather than specify a date, as we often issue licences for 30 or 60 days etc - obviously this still needs to translate to an actual date, but maybe this could somehow be integrated with the date picker. We would then also find it useful to search for product keys based on this expiry date, e.g. to find ones that expire within the next week so we can contact the customer about a possible extension.

I think that's enough for now, except to say that so far I am quite impressed with the flexibility and ease of use of the whole system, it looks like it will fit our requirements nicely.

Cheers,Robin

Also there is some stuff I won't ever use such as product versions [...]

I'm a bit confused about that. Product versions are necessary. You have a product name ("Your App") and you have a product versions ("1.0" or "2.0", or however you delineate "major" versions of your product). Product versions are a way to separate different products from different versions of a same product.

Does that make sense? Or did you mean something else?

Maybe a simple "show help" option in the settings would do it.

You're talking about things like the "getting started" link on the dashboard? You're right, that shouldn't be visible at all times. We'll work on make it show only for new accounts and "relatively empty" or unused accounts.

At the least a very useful addition for us would be to be able to pick a certain number of days rather than specify a date, as we often issue licences for 30 or 60 days etc - obviously this still needs to translate to an actual date, but maybe this could somehow be integrated with the date picker.

This will be added soon. You'll be able to set a "default date" for date/time custom license fields. And you'll have a choice for the default value to be either an absolute date/time or a relative date/time (e.g. "time the product key is created" +/- X day/months/years/minutes/hours).

It'll be easy to use and reduce the number of clicks you have to do.

We would then also find it useful to search for product keys based on this expiry date, e.g. to find ones that expire within the next week so we can contact the customer about a possible extension.

You're right, we need this. We'll bump this up in priority. You can already do this with the web API, but the advanced search UI in LimeLM doesn't yet have the ability. The web API is leading the UI in this case.

>I'm a bit confused about that. Product versions are necessary. You have a product name ("Your App") and you have a product versions ("1.0" or "2.0", or however you delineate "major" versions of your product). Product versions are a way to separate different products from different versions of a same product.

We don't differentiate major versions, we just increment through e.g. 3.98, 3.99, 4.00, 4.01 etc. The 4.00 version isn't really major, we just ran out of digits after the point for 3.xx. When our customers get a licence, they are usually time limited so it nearly always includes all future versions. We may change to more meaningful numbers in the future, but this way works well enough for us at the moment, especially as we tend to do frequent incremental releases rather than introducing major new features.So this means I'll just set the version for all our products to 1.0 in the dashboard and then forget about it

Could I also suggest a feature in the dashboard where you would navigate to an existing License key and be able to "duplicate" it. I have a scenario where someone will come to me and ask for an additional license key and I just want to duplicate an existing one, but maybe change 1 or two of the fields.

So Duplicate -> New Key Displayed w/Edit Screen and dupped values -> Change Any Values -> Save

Would this be possible for you to implement?

So Duplicate -> New Key Displayed w/Edit Screen and dupped values -> Change Any Values -> Save

Would this be possible for you to implement?

I can see its use. We're thinking about the best way to implement something like this.

What is your estimate on when you will get the web interface to have the advanced searching capabilities? That is, searching by certain custom fields, etc.

Very soon. We're pushing out a large update to the LimeLM interface in the next week. That is followed shortly after by the advanced search improvements.

Ok, thanks- I am looking forward to those changes.

The new advanced search is up and available for everyone. 2 of the biggest features are:

1. The ability to search for custom license fields (exact matches, between/before/after certain times, and wildcard).
2. The ability to edit searches (without having to re-type all of the information).

There are a whole bunch of other small improvements and fixes.