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 - 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 (e.g. Altium Designer, Altium Designer SE, PDN Analyzer powered by CST(R)).
• 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 hardware on which the right to use the software can be exercised (On-Demand, Standalone, Private Server).
• Usage - contractually defines the environment in which, and the purpose for which, the license can be used (e.g. Commercial, Commercial Trial, Evaluation, Viewer).
• Contact - the user within the account who is the primary notification contact for the license.
• Start Date - date of license activation and therefore the commencement of valid use of the license.
• Expires - the expiry date for the license, the date on which your right to use the software ends. For a perpetual license, the entry here will be Never. This field is really only 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 allocation of that license across one or more groups defined for the account. You can also setup Auto Pay for associated subscription for the license. The following sections take a closer look at these these aspects of license management.

Changing Notification Contact

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

With the user selected, simply click OK to effect the change. The specified user will become the new notification contact for the license.

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.

By default, when an On-Demand or Standalone License is created by Altium for your account, that license (and all of its seats for a multi-seat On-Demand License) will be allocated to the system group All Account Members. Reallocate the license as required.

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.

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

To allocate the license, simply click the New button. In the Create Assignment window that appears, 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 the required group 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 clicking the  button, and making changes as required in the Edit Assignment pop-up window. To delete a license assignment, simply click on its associated  button. A pop-up will appear, asking for confirmation to remove the license allocation from the Group - click OK to proceed.

License Allocation Type

Once a license has been allocated to a group, you will notice that it has an Allocation Type - reported in the summary License Allocations section. This can be either Single License or Multiple Licenses.

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

Multi-assignment is a feature that is specific to On-Demand licensing. 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.

Once you have assigned a specific license to a group, you can edit that assignment from the Group Management page, by clicking the associated button, accessing the Edit Assignment pop-up window. In the License field, select the All on-demand entry from the drop-down listing. After making any additional changes and saving, 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 in accordance with the defined licensing options. The Allocation Type will change from Single License to Multiple Licenses, and those licenses will be listed under a single top-level entry for that license name.

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

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 streamlined 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 far more automated and streamlined 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 setup and manage your financial profile, including your preferred payment method. With this information in place, you are then able to quickly:

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

And once this financial profile is defined, you can also use the Auto Pay feature for selected licenses as required, ensuring that subscription is paid before expiring, and so avoiding potential disruptions to your service.

License Activation

Related articles: Using a Standalone License, Private License Service

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, simply click the OK button, the *.alf file(s) will be saved to the default 'downloads' 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 the Private License Server, 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 a Private Server License, this depends what type of PLS is being used:

• Private License Service in the Altium Infrastructure Server (available for Altium Designer 16.0 and later).
• Private License Service in the Altium Vault (available for Altium Designer 17.0 and later, and Altium Vault 3.0)
• Private License Service in the Altium Vault (available for Altium Designer 16.0 and 16.1, and Altium Vault 2.6)
• Using a (legacy) Private License Server (performed from within the Licensing 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 (clicking Apply to effect).

Example report showing real-time usage of On-Demand licenses for an organization.

Expanding a license entry will show statistics for Users of that license.

Expanding a license to see usage per user.