This Quick Start for License Activation Center (LAC) administrators takes you through a simple example to quickly learn how to:

  1. Log into the administrative area of LAC.
  2. Add a license generator.
  3. Add a product and product features.
  4. Create templates for the product.
  5. Add customers.
  6. Create license orders using product templates.
  7. Activate a license.

Logging into LAC

First, log into the administrative area of LAC by going to https://license.x-formation.com. From this page, log in by entering your username and password in the login box.

If the login box is asking for an activation key, you are on the end-user login page. Click the Log in as a license administrator link at the bottom of the login box to switch to the administrator login.

Note: LAC does not support concurrent logins using the same user credentials. If a user logs into LAC using the same username and password as another user that is currently logged into LAC, the currently logged in user will be signed out of LAC automatically. (Users are also automatically signed out after 1 hour of idleness when using the UI or 3 hours of idleness using SOAP.)

Adding a license generator

You must define a license generator for each product you'll add to LAC. It's easiest to add the license generator before adding the product that will use it.

Since you can use the license generator you add during this quickstart for your own LAC products, enter values that will define a real license generator for your environment. If needed, you can edit the values for the license generator later.

To add a license generator: 

  1. Click the Administration tab at the top of the LAC web application page.
  2. Click the License Generators tab in the Administration page. (Note that this page will display all license generators that currently exist in LAC, and you can edit values for existing license generators here at any time by clicking the Edit icon under the Action column.)
  3. Under the Menu area, click Create License Generator. The Add License Generator dialog appears. 
  4. For License Manager, select the license manager you will use for license generation. You can select LM-X License Manager, FlexNet Publisher, or Reprise License Manager. For this example, we'll use LM-X License Manager.
  5. Enter an appropriate name for the license generator. For this example, we'll use xmllicgen Windows_x86.
  6. If you selected FlexNet or Reprise as the License Manager in step 4, you must also enter the vendor/ISV daemon name, which defaults to "demo" for both these license manager types. This setting is not applicable to LM-X License Manager.
  7. Select the platform for the license generator from the License Generator Platform selection list, for example "Windows (x86)".
  8. To the right of the Executable field, click the "..." button to browse for and select the license generator executable (which for LM-X is xmllicgen.exe).
  9. If you selected LM-X as the License Manager in step 4, you can browse for and select a configuration file in the LM-X Security Config File field. This is not normally needed, so we'll leave this blank for our example. This setting applies only to LM-X, and is not present for other license manager types. 
  10. Note that the Command Line Parameters field shows the command-line parameters that will be used used to call the license generator executable. This field is view-only. 
  11. The Optional Parameters field lets you enter additional parameters that are needed for calling the license generator executable. Normally, you don't need to enter anything in this field. However, if you need to set a flag for backward compatibility, for example, you can enter the flag here.  
  12. Enter the extension you will use for license files generated using this license generator. By default, this is ".lic," but you can enter any string from 1 to 10 characters.
  13. If desired, enter a description for the license generator in the Description field.
  14. Click Save. The dialog closes and you return to the License Generators tab. The grid in this tab should now contain the license generator you just defined. For our example, the license generator is named "xmllicgen Windows_x86." 
  15. Download the license generator by clicking the Download icon under the Action column.

Adding a product

In this section of the quick start, we'll add a new product to LAC called "Flagship," and select the license generator we created in the previous section to generate licenses for the Flagship product. We'll also add features and templates to the Flagship product.

To add a product:

  1. Click the Products tab at the top of the LAC web application page.
  2. Under the Menu area, click Create Product. The Create New Product dialog appears.
  3. Enter Flagship for the product's Name. 
  4. Enter 1.0 for the Version.
  5. From the License Manager pick list, select the license manager you used for the license generator you defined in the previous section. For our example, we will select "LM-X License Manager."
  6. Select the License Generator you defined in the previous section from the License Generator field. For our example, we will select "xmllicgen Windows_x86."
  7. The Description is optional. If you like, enter a descriptive note for the product, such as "Our primary software product."
  8. Click Next to add the product to LAC and continue to the Features tab.

To add features to the product:

  1. Under the Menu area in the Features tab, click Create Feature. The Add New Feature dialog opens.
  2. In the General tab, enter F1 for the Feature Name.
  3. Click Next to create the feature and continue to the Templates tab. 
    In the Templates tab, you will see that only the Default template is available to associate with the feature, because we haven't yet created any custom templates for the product. Features must be associated with at least one template, so we'll associate it with the Default template for now and customize the template in the next section.
  4. Select Default and click Save. You return to the Features tab in the Create New Product dialog, where you now see feature F1 listed in the Features grid. 
  5. Create another feature named F2 in the same way you created feature F1.
  6. Click Next from the Features tab to open the Templates tab. We'll create customized templates to use for the product in the next section.

Creating templates for the product

Now, we'll create two templates for the product. All the template settings are default values that will be used to generate licenses for the product, and any setting can be changed when generating licenses. 

One of our templates will be for Corporate customers, and the other will be for Small Business customers.  

To define a Corporate template for the product:

The Corporate template will have default settings to generate licenses for larger customers. By default, this Corporate template will include 10 network licenses with both features F1 and F2 included, with F1 an annual license and F2 a perpetual license.

  1. Click the Templates tab in the Edit Product dialog. 
  2. Under the Menu area, click Create Template. The Add New Template dialog opens.
  3. In the General tab, enter Corporate for the Template Name, and select:
    1. Network for the License Type.
    2. Customer Name for the Licensee Type.
  4. Click Next to proceed to the HostIDs tab.
  5. In the HostIDs tab, select Ethernet as the HostID to lock licenses to when using this template. Leave the other settings at their defaults.
  6. Click Next to proceed to the Features tab.
  7. In the Features tab, select both F1 and F2 as the features to include in licenses generated using this template. Click Next to proceed to the Settings tab.
  8. In the Settings tab, specify the following for Feature F1:
    1. Fixed for Expiration Type.
    2. One year from today's date for the Expiration Date. (You can select the date using the calendar or type the date. If typing the date, the format must be YYYY-MM-DD.)
    3. 10 for Network License Count. (This indicates that Corporate licenses are network licenses that include 10 seats by default.)
  9. For Feature F2, specify:
    1. No Expiration for the Expiration Type.
    2. 1 for the Network License Count.
  10. Click Save to close the dialog and return to the Templates tab. You will see the Corporate template has been added to the Templates grid.

To define a Small Business template for the product:

The Small Business template will have default settings to generate licenses for smaller customers. By default, this Small Business template will include one local license, will include only feature F1, and will expire 6 months from license activation.

  1. From the Templates tab, edit the Default template by clicking the Edit icon in the Action column. The Edit Template dialog opens. Note that you can click on any tab in this dialog to quickly access whatever settings you want to change.
  2. In the General tab, change the name from "Default" to "Small Business," and specify the following settings:
    1. Local for the License Type.
    2. Customer Name for the Licensee Type.
  3. Click Save to save the changes to the General settings.
  4. Click the HostIDs tab. Select the Lock License to toggle and select Hostname as the HostID type to lock licenses to when using this template. Leave the other settings at their defaults.
  5. In the Features tab, select only F1 as the feature to include in licenses generated using this template. 
  6. Click Save to save the Feature settings.
  7. Click the Settings tab. Specify the following for Feature F1 (this should be the only feature shown in the Settings tab):
    1. Days From Activation for Expiration Type.
    2. 180 (6 months) for Days From Activation.
  8. Click Save and Close to save the template settings and close the dialog.
  9. Click Save from the Create New Product dialog.

The templates we've created are directly associated with the individual product, for our example, "Flagship." The templates are available to use for all existing features and any new features you add later to the product. To assign features to templates, you can use the Features tab from the Edit Product dialog.

For example:

  1. Open our example product, "Flagship," for edit (by clicking the Edit icon in the Action column of the Products grid).
  2. Click the Features tab in the Edit Product dialog. 
  3. Open feature F2 for edit. You will see that it is assigned only to the Corporate template. If you want to also include it in the Small Business template, simply select Small Business from the list of templates to include the feature in.
  4. Close the Edit Product dialog.

We're done defining the product, the product features, and the templates associated with the product. 

Adding customers

Before you can generate a license for a customer, you must enter that customer into LAC. We'll add a couple of customers to LAC who will be purchasing our Flagship product.

To add a customer:

  1. From the main LAC page, click the Customers tab.
  2. Under Menu in the left sidebar, click Create Customer.
  3. Enter ABC Enterprises for Customer Name. This is the only required information for adding the customer; all other information is optional.
  4. Enter Corporate customer for the Description.
  5. Click Next. The Contacts tab opens.
  6. In the Contacts tab, select Create Contact. The Create New Contact dialog opens.
  7. Enter Joe Biggs for Contact Name, and jbiggs@abcenterprises.com for Email.
  8. Click Save to create the contact and exit the dialog.

Enter a second customer named "XYZ Ltd" in the same manner as above. This will be our Small Business customer. 

Creating license orders

Now that we've added customers into LAC, we can create license orders for those customers. Let's create a license order for our Corporate customer.

To create a license order:

  1. From the LAC main page, click the Licenses tab.
  2. Under Menu area, click Create License Order.
  3. In the Add License Order dialog's General tab, select the following:
    1. ABC Enterprises from the Customer selection list.
    2. Flagship from the Product selection list.
    3. Corporate from the Product Template selection list.
    4. To create multiple license orders (generate multiple activation keys), you can enter 2 or higher in the License Order Count field. Let's leave the license order count blank to generate only one activation key. (This should not be confused with the network license count, which indicates how many instances of a product feature can be run using the generated license. We'll look at the network license count in a moment.)
  4. Click Next to accept your choices and open the HostIDs tab. The HostID settings are set according to the Corporate template settings.
  5. In order to be able to activate our license later without providing a HostID, toggle the HostID locking to Not Locked.
  6. Click Next to continue to the Settings tab. The values in the Settings tab are set according to the Corporate template settings.
  7. Review the settings. Note that the Network License Count for both features F1 and F2 is 10, which is the default we set in the Corporate template. For our example, let's increase the number of seats from 10 to 15.
  8. Click the Expand arrow at the left side of the Settings panel. This opens the Bulk Editor panel. Bulk editing lets you change settings for all features at once, instead of making changes to individual features.
  9. In the Bulk Editor, enter 15 for the Network License Count. Note that the Network License Count for both features F1 and F2 change from 10 to 15. 
  10. Click Save to accept the changes and return to the Licenses tab, where you will now see the order you created for ABC Enterprises added to the top of the License Orders grid.
  11. To review the license order, click the Edit icon in the Action column for the ABC Enterprises license order to open the Edit License Order dialog. From this dialog, you can see all the license order details and make any needed changes to the license order. For example, using the Settings tab, you could change the template that was used for the order, which will also let you review and edit that template's settings.
  12. To see the license you've created, click the Preview tab.
  13. When you're done reviewing the license order details, click Close (or from the Preview tab, click OK) to close the Edit License Order dialog.

If you like, create a license order for the Small Business customer in the same way you created the Corporate customer license, selecting XYZ Ltd as the customer and Small Business as the product template.

Activating a license

To let ABC Enterprises activate their license, you simply copy and paste the Activation Key from the License Orders table into an email with instructions on activating the license.

Next, we'll assume that you are the end user at ABC Enterprises and want to activate your license using the activation key you've received via email. To prepare to activate the license, first:

  1. Copy the activation key from the License Orders table.
  2. Log out of the administrative area of LAC by clicking the Log Out link in the upper right corner of the page. You return to the LAC login page.
  3. Switch to the end user area of LAC by clicking the Enter your activation key to get your license link at the bottom of the LAC login area.

Now, you can log in as a LAC customer and use your activation key to activate the license.

To activate the license:

  1. Paste the activation key (which you copied to the clipboard in step 1 above) into the Activation Key field in the LAC login page. 
  2. Click Log In. This opens a Licenses page that list the license details, including the product name and version, the template used to create the license order, the license type (Network or Local), creation/activation dates, and HostID requirements for activating the license. We changed the HostID type for this license to "Not Locked," so no HostID information is needed to activate the license.
  3. Click Activate. 
  4. After the license is activated, click Download to get the license. The license is downloaded and can be placed in an appropriate directory as required to run the licensed software. The license can be re-downloaded anytime, as long as the license is valid (not expired).

To see the license file contents:

  1. Log out of LAC and log back in using your LAC administrator login. (See "Logging into LAC" at the beginning of this quickstart.)
  2. To see the license that has been activated, click the View License icon in the Action column for the license we just activated. The license file text is shown in the License dialog. This text is view-only. 
  3. When you're done reviewing the license, click OK to close the License dialog.

This concludes the License Activation

Center Administration Quick Start. For complete information about LAC features, including the LAC API, see the License Activation Center Vendor Guide. For more information about activating licenses, see the License Activation Center End User Guide.

  • No labels