Managing Licenses for Your Altium Account through the Altium Dashboard

Parent article: Altium Dashboard

Main page for managing licenses within the Altium Dashboard.

The Licenses page is part of the Altium Dashboard. Use this page to view and manage the licenses for your account that your organization has purchased from Altium. For On-Demand and Standalone licenses, you can manage who has access to the license, through allocation to one or more specific Groups of Users for the account. This is especially relevant when controlling access to, and usage of, a multi-seat On-Demand License. For Standalone and Private Server type licenses, you can also activate those licenses directly from within the Dashboard.

Top-Level Listing of Licenses

The page presents a top-level listing of all licenses in the account, initially grouped by license name. Each license in the list is displayed in terms of:

• License Name/Permission Set – defines which features of the software the license owner can use (for example; Altium Designer, PDN Analyzer powered by CST(R), etc).
• Seats Count – number of seats provided by the license that may be in use at any one time (for an On-Demand or Private Server type license).
• Serial No.
• Activation Code.
• License Type – defines the relationship between the license and the software usage rights (On-Demand, Standalone, Private Server).
• Usage – contractually defines the environment in which, and the purpose for which, the license can be used (for example; Commercial, Evaluation, etc).
• Geography – contractually specifies the region(s) in which the license can be used (for example; Global, Single Site).
• Contact – the user within the account who is the primary notification contact for the license.
• Start Date – date of license activation and therefore the start of its valid use.
• Expires – the expiry date for the license, which is the date when your right to use the software ends. For a perpetual license, the entry here will be Never. This field is only really meaningful when talking about a time-based license.
• Subscription Expires – the expiry date for Subscription on the license, the date on which your right to access content and updates for the software ends.

Grouping, Sorting and Filtering

Controls located above the list allow you to group, sort and filter the list in a variety of ways, to better target the licenses that you wish to view and/or manage.

• Group by – use the options here to group the licenses by a specific criteria. Four options are available: Name (arrange licenses according to their license name/permission set); Usage (arrange licenses according to their Usage attribute); Type (arrange licenses according to their Type attribute); Status (arrange licenses according to their status (Perpetual, no subscription; Perpetual, with subscription; Time-based)).
• Sort by – use the options here to sort the licenses by a specific criteria. Four options are available: Name (sort alphabetically by name, in ascending order from A-Z); Date (sort by license start date, from earliest to latest date); Contact (sort alphabetically by notification contact, in ascending order from A-Z); SerialNo (sort by license serial number, in numerically-sequential increasing order). Note that sorted lists are read left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
• Filter – use the options here to filter the licenses by a specific criteria. Three options are available: Active (present only licenses that are currently active for the account); Expired (present only licenses that have expired); All (present all licenses associated to the account – both active and expired).

Managing a License

To manage a license for the account, either click on an individual license's name in a license list, or use the Details command from the associated control drop-down. This will give access to the management page for that license.

Access and make changes to a license for the account as required.

At this management level, you are able to change the notification contact for the license, as well as determine the allocation of that license across one or more groups that have been defined for the account. You can also set up Auto Pay for the associated subscription for the license. The following sections take a closer look at these aspects of license management.

Changing Notification Contact

To change the notification contact for the license, click the  icon, to the right of the currently named user in the Notification Contact field. In the Select User field that opens, start typing the username (First Name Last Name) or email address for that user. As you type, a drop-down list will dynamically populate with matching results, based on active users in the current account – select the required user and click OK to effect the change.

The specified user will become the new notification contact for the license. Note that if the user is not a member of the Group Administrators group, they will be added to a special License Administrators group, which will allow the user to manage that license without full administrator privileges.

Select a different user to change the License Notification Contact.

License Allocation

Both On-Demand and Standalone type licenses can be allocated (targeted) for use by specific groups within the account. This allows you to control exactly who has access to, and use of, your licenses. For a multi-seat On-Demand license, you can assign seats across one or more defined groups. This provides global floating license capability – within the geographic scope of your license and the conditions set out in the EULA – without needing to implement your own server.

In terms of license allocation within the Dashboard, there are two ways to associate software Licenses with user Groups:

• In the License Management page, allocate which groups can use that license.
• In the Group Management page, allocate which licenses that Group can use.

Note that this applies only to On-Demand and Standalone type licenses.

Associate Groups to a License

From the License Management page, allocation of the license is performed from within the License Allocations region. This area lists all groups that the license is currently allocated to. The default All Account Members group should be removed once the license has been allocated to specific groups – otherwise, it will override those new license allocations..

Controls for allocating the license to a specified groups of users within the account.

Click the New button to allocate the license to a user group. In the following Create Assignment window, use the Assign to Group field to choose the group to which you wish to allocate the license. The drop-down list is populated with all currently defined groups for the account.

Assigning the license to user groups for an On-Demand license (back) and Standalone license (front).

When allocating an On-Demand license, a number of additional options are available in the Create Assignment window:

• Automatic leasing – forces Altium Designer to automatically lease (use) this license when it becomes available. In Altium Designer's License Management view, the normal process of choosing the license from the list and selecting Use is performed automatically, for this license. 
• Seat availability – use the Seats count field to specify the number of license seats (up to its total seats rating) that will be made available to the specified Group, or simply check the All available seats option to assign the total number of seats for the license.
• Roaming – allow a license to be 'roamed' (used by Altium Designer when its host PC is not connected to the network) by selecting the Allow Roaming option. The Max roam duration setting will configure the license to disable a roamed seat after the nominated period. See Using an On-Demand License for more information about license Roaming.
• Notifications – notifications are messages that will be sent to Users in response to specific events, such as when almost all of the assigned license seats have been leased. Specify the % level at which a notification will be sent (this will be sent to all members of the Group(s) to which the license is allocated). Select the Send reject notifications option and optionally nominate a target Group to enable alert messages for Users that have been disconnected from the assigned license (seat revoked).

When the new license assignment configuration is complete, click Save to commit the assignment to the selected Group.

A license assignment can be edited by using the  button and making changes in the Edit Assignment pop-up window. To remove a license to group assignment, click its associated  button and then confirm the action in the pop-up window that follows.

Associate Licenses to a Group

From the Group Management page, allocation of a license is performed from within the License Allocations region. This area lists all licenses the Group is currently allocated to – no licenses are allocated by default, such as when a new Group is created.

► See the Dashboard's Managing Groups page for more information on user groups.

Controls for allocating a specified license to a group of users within the account.

Click the New button to allocate a license to the current group. In the following Create Assignment window, use the License field to choose the license from the drop-down list, which is populated with all licenses available in the account. The Assign to Group field defaults to the currently open group, but can be set to another group from the drop-down list.

Assigning licenses to a user group for an On-Demand license (back) and Standalone license (front).

When a new license assignment is configured and saved, its related entry is added to the License Allocations list in the Group Management page – expand its entry for full details.

License Allocation Type

The License Allocation section of both the License Management and Group Management pages includes an Allocation Type column that indicates how the product entry has been allocated. This can be as a Single License or as Multiple Licenses, where the latter applies to all available On-Demand licenses for that product.

This option can be specified when assigning a product license to a Group from the Dashboard’s Group Management page, where the Create Assignment window’s License drop-down list offers an additional All on-demand option. When selected, all licenses associated to the account that have the same Product Name will be automatically allocated to that group, and are used to provide the licensing as defined by the selected licensing options. This license allocation choice provides a quick way to assign a pool of your available On-Demand Product licenses to the current Group.

Allocating multiple licenses of the same name to a group defined for the account.

Once allocated to the group as All on-demand product licenses, the entry’s Allocation Type is Multiple Licenses, and when expanded, will show the details of the included On-Demand licenses.

Single License and Multiple Licenses entries in the License Allocations section.

When viewing one of the above included license entries in the License Management page, its License Allocations section will show the license allocated to the group as the Multiple Licenses type – it is one of multiple on-demand product licenses available to the group.

A license that has been assigned to two groups, and an indication of the Allocation Type.

Managing License Subscription

Purchasing a License enables you to access and use the associated Altium Solution. To stay up to date with your software solution, and take advantage of new content and software updates from Altium, you need to also have current Altium Subscription. The Dashboard is arranged to help you manage your allocation of licenses across your account usership, but also helps you stay up-to-date by flagging the state of software Subscription for each license in your account. And while you can contact Altium to renew your subscription(s), the Dashboard offers a more automated method of doing so – Altium Online Payments.

Altium Online Payments provides a secure system with which to streamline the payment of your subscriptions for Altium design solutions. As part of your Altium Dashboard, you can set up and manage your financial profile, including your preferred payment method. With this information in place, you are then able to easily:

• Pay for your subscriptions for licenses.
• Browse financial activity, including access to listings of invoice and payment histories.

Once this financial profile is defined, you can also use the Auto Pay feature for selected licenses as required. This ensures that subscription is paid before expiring and avoids potential disruptions to your service.

License Activation

Related articles: Using a Standalone License, Concord Pro PLS, NEXUS Server PLS

If you have purchased a Standalone or Private Server License, you can activate that license directly from the detailed License Management page by clicking the Activate button. The Activate License section will appear, from where you can select which version of Altium Designer the license is to be activated for.

Choose which release of Altium Designer to activate the Standalone License (left) or Private Server License (right) for.

Once you have made your selection and click OK, the *.alf file(s) will be saved to the default download location specified for your browser.

Once you have saved the required license file(s) you can then install the license(s) onto the target computer that is running Altium Designer, or as a license file for an Altium on-site server's Private License Service (PLS), as required and in accordance with the EULA. For a Standalone License, this is performed from the My Account page within Altium Designer – see Adding a Standalone License File. For an Altium server's PLS, this is performed wth the Add License – From File option on the Admin – Licenses page of the server's browser interface.

For more information on providing licenses over your local network see:

• Private License Service in the Altium Infrastructure Server.
• Private License Service in Altium Concord Pro.
• Private License Service in the Altium NEXUS Server.
• Using a (legacy) Private License Server (performed from within the Private License Server Setup dialog).

License Usage Statistics/Analytics

Main page: Reports

For On-Demand licensing, a range of license usage monitoring and reporting features are available that can be used to audit how your licenses are used within your organization. This is useful for ensuring that the best use is being made of the available license seats, for anticipating future license requirements, and to determine the usage of individual Users.

Usage statistics and analytics are accessed on the Reports page of the Dashboard. This offers the following reporting options, accessed from the drop-down field at the top of the page (hover over the name of the reporting type currently being used):

• Real-Time Usage
• Usage History
• Usage Log
• Time Log

By default, the Real-Time Usage reporting will be active, with all On-Demand licenses for the account listed. Use the filter to narrow the report to specific licenses as required (click Apply to confirm the filter setting). Expanding a license entry will show statistics for Users of that license, with an ability to force the release of a listed license seat ().

Example report showing real-time usage of On-Demand licenses for an organization. Expand a license to see usage per user.