License activation is necessary when you distribute an application that will be locked to a particular end user's machine, or when the expiration date depends on the activation date. Otherwise, license activation is not usually necessary.

LM-X gives you three different approaches to license activation:

• Manual
• Semi-automated, using LM-X API
• Automated, using License Activation Center (LAC)

Manually activating licenses

Manually activating licenses is feasible for issuing fewer numbers of licenses, but is difficult to manage for larger numbers of license activations.

To manually activate a license, you need to work individually with your end users as follows:

1. You ask the end user to run the LM-X End-user utility or End-user Configuration tool to obtain their HostID(s).
2. The end user sends you their HostID(s).
3. Using xmllicgen, you enter the HostID tag(s) in the license template and generate a license file, which you send to the customer. The LM-X License Generator GUI lets you send emails with license file attachments to your end users, making license delivery quick and easy.