Return Licenses Back

Why you may need to return a license

When a license administrator activates an offline Floating license on an On-Premise License Server in your network, the license becomes bound to the License Server computer. This means it cannot be activated on another machine. To move it to another computer or convert it back to an online license, you need to release the license on your On-Premise License Server first and return it back to the License Management portal.

How to return a license

Here is an explainer video guiding you through adding and returning licenses. Alternatively, follow the below steps.

Free the license on the On-Premise License Server

  1. Ask all users actively using the license to close their SmartBear products.

  2. Log in to the On-Premise Licensing Portal as an administrator (you specified this user’s name and password during the License Server installation).

  3. On the Portal, find the license you are going to return and click return-license-b.png Return License Back:

    The 'Return License Back...' command

    This will invoke the following dialog box:

    The Return License dialog

    Click the image to enlarge it.

    Click Download Fingerprint File. This will do the following –

    • Generate and download the file with the data on your On-Premise License Server and the license.

    • Important

      Unbind the license from your On-Premise License Server computer and remove the license data. You will see a notification like this:

      Notification on license removal

      That is, your On-Premise License Server doesn’t control the license anymore. However, the removal is not complete. You need to update the information on the License Management portal available on the Web.

Import license into the License Management portal

  1. Open the License Management webpage in your browser:

    go.gifhttps://manage.smartbear.com

    Since you are working in a private network, you will need to find a computer with access to that site.

    Log in to the Portal using your license administrator credentials.

  2. On the Portal, find your offline Floating license and click Import from On-Premise License Server:

    The 'Import License' command

    This will invoke the following dialog box:

    The Import License dialog
  3. In the dialog, upload the fingerprint file you’ve downloaded from the On-Premise License Server, or insert the content of the file:

    Uploading the fingerprint file

    Note

    To activate the “insert content” mode, click this link in the dialog:

    The 'insert its contents' link

    Click Upload File. This will update the SmartBear license database and mark the license as free. The Portal will display the following notification:

    Notification on license import

The license now is not bound to your On-Premise License Server anymore. It is still an offline license. You can now activate it on any other machine or another private network.

See Also

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