We've also learned that the customer in #2 wants to run multiple users on the same machine, logged in at the same time. We license per user, but were having trouble with the two applications getting the license info of the other - are we doing something wrong?
Saas Licensing and Offline Activation
We time license all of our software, and have integrated the web API with our internal system to maintain expiration dates and available features, and that is working like a champ for us.
Unfortunately, we do have 6-8 customer sites that have no internet. We've implemented the TurboActivate static libs in our software, and have done the file exchange dance successfully so far. We set the expiration dates 6 months out for those licenses (normally we do 30 day rolling expirations for internet customers), with the expectation of sending a tech rep out to update the licenses prior to expiration.
Here are my two questions:1) How do we update the license fields on the machines? Right now our software is dependent on the license expiring and presenting the product key screen again to get to the file import/export capability. We could present the UI to the user prior to expiration (is there a way to know a license was offline activated?) - do we simply save the offline file and do the file exchange again?
2) We had a customer who came to us for training and had his license activated online, but is now back home with his computer, and has no internet. We set online activated licenses to fail if they haven't called "home" in 30 days, and so his locked down. Is there a method to convert an online activation to an offline one? Do we have to deactivate the previous key first?
Thanks,Chris
Hey Chris,
We cover how to get changed custom license fields here: https://wyday.com/limelm/help/license-features/#change
For offline activations they need to generate a new activation request and get a new activation response from you. The activation response contains the latest custom license fields, etc.
Basically do what the article says, and if you get TA_E_INET, then give the user the option to do things offline.
RE question #2:
To convert and online activation to an offline activation simply generate an activation request and then send them and activation response. No need to deactivate first.
>> We've also learned that the customer in #2 wants to run multiple users on the same machine, logged in at the same time. We license per user, but were having trouble with the two applications getting the license info of the other - are we doing something wrong?
Yes, activations are node-locked, thus per machine. Even if you use TA_USER theres no guarantee that TA_USER will be used. If you ever use TA_SYSTEM then it will always be converted to using TA_SYSTEM. This is by design.
To do per-user-session licensing use floating licensing: https://wyday.com/limelm/help/licensing-types/#floating
Thank you for the clarifications.
I see now that our issue is not presenting the opportunity to redo the file exchange ahead of the expiration date. We will make these changes.
Is there a way through the static libs to determine whether an activation was online or offline?
Ok on the node locked approach, that was our misunderstanding on TA_USER. We will evaluate whether this need is big enough to explore using the floating licensing.
>> "Is there a way through the static libs to determine whether an activation was online or offline?"
Nope, it's handled internally.