If you are an administrator for your account with Altium, you have access to the Altium Dashboard. The Dashboard provides you with a number of tools with which to view and manage your account – from the general-level details regarding your organization, through to creation and management of users (and specific groups of users) associated to your account, and the assignment and use of the licenses you have purchased.
Account management of any type should never feel burdensome. With the Altium Dashboard, being able to manage all aspects of your organization's account is both intuitive and expedient, and all from the one convenient location. The Dashboard will even notify of pending items requiring action, such as renewing that subscription that is about to expire – and enable renewal to be conducted right there-and-then, online and hassle free, allowing your organization to remain licensed with continuous subscription, and access to all the benefits that entails.
Accessing the Dashboard
Access to the Dashboard can be made in the following ways:
- By entering the URL: https://dashboard.live.altium.com in a tab of your preferred Web Browser. Depending on your browser, you can drop the https:// prefix.
- By clicking the Dashboard link at the top of any page within the AltiumLive community (such a page will have a URL ending in .live.altium.com).
To access the Dashboard, and any page within the AltiumLive community for that matter, you must be signed in to the AltiumLive community using your AltiumLive Account Credentials.
Only those with administrative privileges (Group Administrators) will have full access to the Dashboard, and the ability to view and modify aspects of their organization's account. If you don't have such privileges, you will only be able to view the Dashboard's landing (Overview) page.
Access the Dashboard as part of the wider AltiumLive community.
Dashboard Content
The Dashboard consists of the following sub-pages:
- Overview – this page presents an overview of your Altium account.
- Profile – use this page to manage organization details, including general information (website, contact numbers, description), billing and shipping addresses, and ability to upload a corporate logo.
- Users – use this page to manage users associated with the account.
- Groups – use this page to manage groups (of users) for the account.
- Licenses – use this page to manage and allocate licenses associated with the account.
- Reports – provides a range of license usage monitoring and reporting features, that can be used to audit how your On-Demand licenses are used within your organization.
- Payments – use this page to create and manage your financial profile, including your preferred payment method. This enables you to use the Altium Online Payments system, a secure system with which to streamline the payment of your subscriptions for Altium design solutions.
- Workspaces – use this option to navigate to your AltiumLive account details, which include a listing of the Altium 365 Workspaces to which you currently have access. See Managing Workspaces for more information.
- Authentication – use this page to configure the active Altium account for access to your company's Single Sign On (SSO) service.
Each of these sub-pages can be accessed from links at the top of the Dashboard. Sub-pages are also interlinked to varying degrees, allowing you to quickly jump to the information you need to view, or the aspect of the account that you need to modify.
Access the various areas of functionality provided by the Dashboard, through the links available at the top of a page.
The following sections take a closer look at the constituent pages within the Dashboard and provide a summarizing overview of what each one offers, in terms of managing your organization's account and assets with Altium.
Overview
This page, as its name suggests, provides an overview of your Altium Account. The page is essentially divided into three regions, as illustrated in the following image and listed thereafter.
Access an at-a-glance summary of your Altium account.
This region of the page provides two pieces of information:
- Company Logo – the image currently used to represent your organization. This is the logo that will be seen by other organizations and their users within the AltiumLive community and helps to raise the profile of your organization within the community. After all, a name is powerful, but people often recognize a company instantly by its associated logo. A logo can be uploaded and changed from the Profile page of the Dashboard.
- Company website link – the URL currently specified for your organization's website. This web-link is defined as part of your organization's profile, on the Profile page of the Dashboard.
This region of the page presents two sections of information for the account, displayed both textually and graphically:
- Users – the total number of users associated to the account, and how many are Active and Inactive.
- Licenses (Seats) – the total number of license seats available in the account, broken down into license status (Perpetual, with subscription; Perpetual, no subscription; and Time-based), along with the number of license seats that have expired.
In each case, the 'breakdown' information is represented graphically through the use of an associated pie chart. Hovering the cursor over a 'pie portion' will display the quantity represented by that portion.
Clicking on a View link will take you to the corresponding page within the Dashboard offering more detailed information on users or licenses, and with the relevant grouping and filtering applied accordingly.
This region of the page presents various listings of items associated with the account that require your attention. These include:
- Licenses with Recently Expired Subscription – listing perpetual licenses whose software Subscription has recently expired.
- Licenses with Subscription Expiring Soon – listing perpetual licenses whose software Subscription is nearing its expiry date.
- Time-Based Licenses Expiring Soon – listing time-based licenses that are nearing their expiry date.
Click on an item entry in a list to jump to the detailed page for the associated license. Click the Contact Sales button associated with a list to contact Altium Sales, directing you to the Contact Us page of the website, in which to submit an inquiry and have Altium contact you to effect a solution.
If you have a financial profile set up, you can use the
Altium Online Payments system to pay for your expiring subscriptions. For one-off payments, click the
Pay Now control next to a license entry. As part of payment, you can also set up recurring payments through the
Auto Pay feature. This means that subscription for that particular license will be automatically renewed at its expiration date – using the default payment method specified for your financial profile. It is recommended to use this feature to avoid any potential disruptions to your service through missed or delayed payments.
Note that the name of the account is presented as the last breadcrumb entry in a separate, static pane above the page. This is available irrespective of the page of the Dashboard currently being viewed. This same pane also houses the Dashboard's search facility.
Any changes you make to information on any of the pages within the Dashboard should refresh automatically in your browser instance. However, it is possible that others, who have administrative access to the account, are also making changes. To ensure that you are viewing the latest account information, you can manually refresh the account details by clicking the Refresh button at the top-right of the page – essentially retrieving the latest stored details for the account, from Altium.
Profile
This page presents top-level information for the account itself, with editable sections for general company details, billing address, and shipping address.
View and edit top-level information for your account.
To make changes, click in a field and type the required entry, or select from a drop-down listing, as applicable. To commit the changes, click the Update button at the bottom-left of the page.
All organizations will have a profile that can be made public, for viewing by other organizations (and their users) within the AltiumLive community. The following information, sourced from your organization's Altium account, will be available on your organization's profile page:
- Organization's Name – the name of your organization.
- Company Logo – the visual tag that accompanies your organization's name. A company is typically recognized instantly through its catchy, visually engaging logo. Use of a logo is optional, and the associated image can be uploaded through the Dashboard's Profile page. Click the Change company logo link at the top of the page. In the dialog that appears, browse to the relevant logo image (maximum size 220x220 pixels and stored in JPG or PNG format) and click the Upload button. To clear use of a logo image, access the dialog again and click the Clear button.
- Description – a brief description of your organization, such as what it does, the services it provides its customers, and so on.
- Website – the URL to your company's website. This is specified using the Website field, on the Dashboard's Profile page.
- List of Users – all the active users associated with your organization's Altium account. This list is optional, with control over its inclusion provided through the Display Users option, on the Dashboard's Profile page.
To make your organization's profile public – for viewing by the wider AltiumLive community – ensure the Public option is enabled in the General Information region of the Dashboard's Profile page. An organization's profile can be accessed by clicking the related link to that profile, on the profile page of any of its users.
A link to an organization's profile page can also be accessed from other areas within the AltiumLive community, typically located in the vicinity of a user's name. For example in a Forum post or in a BugCrunch report.
Users
Main Page: Managing Users
This page is used to manage the Users for your account. Users are individuals that are registered in AltiumLive as members of your organization's Altium Account. A user is a person who is intended will use a licensed seat of an Altium Design solution. Users can access various features and capabilities within the AltiumLive community, determined through the relationship they have with their parent organization.
If you are an existing Altium customer, getting an AltiumLive account is quick and easy – just ask the Group Administrator for your organization's Altium Account. Using the Dashboard, the Administrator can quickly create new AltiumLive accounts for all members of your organization, with activation taking less than 5 minutes!
All active users will be listed by default, with controls available to group, sort and filter the list in a variety of ways, as required.
Create a 'database' of people who are to use the license(s) associated to your Altium Account. The users inherit access to AltiumLive services available to their
parent organization.
Each user in the list is displayed in terms of:
- User Name
- Email address
- An avatar icon/image uploaded as part of their AltiumLive account.
At this top level, you can add a new user to the account, deactivate an active user, or reactivate (or delete) a currently inactive user.
Clicking on an individual user's name in the list, or using the Edit command from the associated control drop-down, accesses their full user details, from where you can:
- View and edit the user’s account member details.
- Assign the user to a group or number of groups.
- Deactivate/Activate/Delete the user.
Groups
Main Page: Managing Groups
This page is used to manage the Groups (of users) for your account. Groups allow you to further organize your users according to, for example, the particular section of your organization in which they are involved, or the design team they are in. Groups make assignment of licenses more streamlined.
Create specific groupings (or 'memberships') of users and then assign licenses to those groupings.
There are two system groups, defined by default for an account. These are:
- All Account Members – this group automatically includes every user in the account. So if a license is allocated to this group, then any user in the account can use that license.
- Group Administrators – this group gives administrative privileges to the members of the group. Anyone who is a member of this group has access to, and the ability to make changes within, the Dashboard.
Clicking on the entry for a group in the list, or using the Edit command from the associated control drop-down, will display the details of members and licenses assigned to that group, and provide the option to add and remove both members and licenses. When adding an On-Demand type license, a proportion of the available seats can be allocated to the group (say, 5 from a 10-seat license) and the license can be set to Roam (will function offline) for a nominated number of hours. You can also enable Automatic Leasing (supported in Altium Designer 16.1 and later), which forces Altium Designer to automatically lease (use) the license when it becomes available.
On-Demand licensing also caters for multi-assignment. Performed from the Group Management page – for the group to which you wish to assign licenses – it gives you the ability to quickly create license assignment for that group, by license name. Again, this feature is available in Altium Designer 16.1 and later.
The two system groups cannot have their names changed, nor can they be deleted. You can, however, manage license assignment for these groups, as with any user-created group. For the Group Administrators group, you can also manage membership.
Licenses
Main Page: Managing Licenses
This page is used to manage the Licenses for your account. From here, you can view the licenses that your organization has purchased from Altium. All active (non-expired) licenses will be listed by default, with controls available to group, sort and filter the list in a variety of ways, as required.
Browse purchased licenses associated with your account.
Clicking on the entry for a license in the list, or using the Details command from the associated control drop-down, displays the details of that license, including the ability to change the Notification Contact, as well as performing license allocation.
For an On-Demand license, you can:
- Allocate the license to one or more defined groups of users.
- Determine how many seats of the license are allocated to each group (for a multi-seat license).
- Determine, on a group basis, whether or not the licenses can be 'roamed', and for how long.
- You can also enable Automatic Leasing (supported in Altium Designer 16.1 and later), which forces Altium Designer to automatically lease (use) the license when it becomes available.
For a Standalone or Private Server license, you are able to activate the license – to obtain the licensing file(s) (*.alf) required to use the license. You can also allocate a Standalone license to a specific group within the account, giving you control to narrow down which set of users can access and use such a license, rather than have it accessible for use by all account users.
You cannot add licenses to, nor delete licenses from, your account using the Dashboard.
Reports
Main Page: Reports
This page provides a range of license usage monitoring and reporting features for On-Demand licensing. These reports 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.
Reporting is available regardless of the version of Altium Designer being used.
The following reporting options are available:
- Real-Time Usage
- Usage History
- Usage Log
- Time Log
By default, 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.
Use various reporting features to interrogate the usage of your organization's On-Demand licenses.
The current report can also be exported to disk in CSV format – compatible with Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet applications – for administration and accounting purposes.
Payments
Main Page: Online Payments
This page is used to create and manage your financial profile, in order to use Altium's Online Payments facility. This is a secure system with which to streamline the payment of your subscriptions for Altium design solutions. With your financial profile defined, including your preferred payment method, you are then able to quickly:
- Pay for your subscriptions for licenses.
- Browse financial activity, including access to listings of invoice and payment histories.
Create a financial profile for your Altium account, including associated payment methods, to be able to use Altium's Online Payments facility.
This functionality puts you, as an administrator for your Altium account, in the driving seat – providing the means to keep the payment of subscriptions for your organization's licenses up-to-date. Streamlined, secure payment online, without having to contact your usual sales channel.
Note that all Group Administrators for your Altium Account can access and update the financial profile, and have the ability to pay for license subscriptions.
Altium's Online Payments facility is currently only available for customers residing in the United States. The facility will be rolled out to other countries in due course.
Authentication
Main Page: Authentication
This Dashboard page is provided for account Administrators to configure and enable Single Sign-On (SSO) capabilities for your AltiumLive account. When setup for account users, SSO offers the convenience of signing in to Altium software and services using the same set of credentials that apply to your company-wide systems.
The SSO functionality is not available if your level of software access is
Altium 365 Standard.
The SSO system establishes authorized identities from your company's nominated Identity Provider (IdP), for example Okta, OneLogin, etc, with the ID assertion communications based on the standardized Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML 2.0).
The SAML Single Sign-On settings in the Authentication page include the following sections:
1. Altium metadata configuration – Preconfigured entity and SSO URLs for the AltiumLive account service. This information is used when integrating the Altium SSO service with your company's specified Identity Provider (IdP).
2. SAML Identity Provider configuration – Provides an entry system for browsing to and uploading an SSO metadata configuration (SAML XML file) generated by your IdP, or manually entering those configuration elements. Once the metadata is entered, the SSO service can be tested and enabled.
The preconfigured Provisioning section provides support for SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) user and group provisioning, which automates the exchange of identity data between your company and its Identity Provider (IdP).
► See the SSO Setup documentation page for more information on configuring SSO in the Dashboard Authentication page.
Search Facility
To quickly source a user, group, or license within your account, the Dashboard has been fitted with a search facility, which can be found at the right-hand side of the static pane containing the account name.
Search for a user, group or license using the Dashboard's search feature.
Enter keywords for a search as required, then either press Enter, or click the button. The search facility is case-insensitive.
Searching is across the following account elements:
- User Name (First Name and/or Last Name).
FAQs
Only those with administrative privileges (users in the account who are members of the Group Administrators group) will have access to the Dashboard, and the ability to view and modify their organization's account.
A user is an administrator for the account if they are added as a member to the Group Administrators group. Admission to this group occurs in two ways:
- When a new license is purchased for the account, the Notification Contact for that license is added automatically to the group.
- A user can be manually added to the group by another account administrator. In other words, a member of the Group Administrators group has the power to bestow administrator powers to another user, simply by making them a member of this group.
The uploaded image of your company's Logo can be 220x220 pixels or less, and either JPG or PNG format.
An organization's profile can be accessed by clicking the related link to that profile, on the profile page of any of its users. A link to an organization's profile page can also be accessed from other areas within the AltiumLive community, typically located in the vicinity of a user's name. For example in a Forum post, or in a BugCrunch report.
To make your organization's profile private - hidden from viewing by the wider AltiumLive community - ensure the Public option is disabled, in the General Information region of the Dashboard's Profile page.
A new user can only be added to the account, provided the email address supplied is not already in use by an existing user. If you attempt to create a new user with a duplicate email address, an error dialog will appear, alerting you to this fact.
This is performed by deactivating, then reactivating the required user. It is the act of activation that triggers the password reset and issuance of an email to that user containing a new, temporary password.
Outside of the Dashboard, a user can reset their own password. This is performed from the AltiumLive Sign-In page, by clicking the Forgot Password link. An email will be sent to that user containing a new, temporary password.
Your password must be at least 8 characters long. It must contain only English letters, one digit, one upper case character, and one lower case character. It cannot contain spaces.
The delete operation cannot be undone. If you delete a user by mistake, you will need to add that user back, in the same way that you would add any new user to the account.
A user can be added as a member to any number of defined groups for an Altium Account.
To remove a user from the list of members for the group, simply uncheck the associated Member checkbox - they will be removed from the list upon updating.
No. You cannot add licenses to, nor delete licenses from, your account using the Dashboard. You will need to contact Altium Sales to discuss purchase of licenses for your account.
This is the expiry date for Subscription on the license, the date on which your right to access content and updates for the software ends.
In terms of license allocation within the Dashboard, you can either browse to a particular license and allocate which groups can use it, or you can browse to a specific group and allocate one or more licenses to it. This applies only to On-Demand and Standalone type licenses.
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.
Yes. Simply drill down to the management page for such a license and click the Activate button.
When activating a Standalone License, you can activate for any of the supported releases of Altium Designer, but only one at a time. When activating a Private Server License, you must repeat the activation process for each supported release of Altium Designer that you wish the license to serve.