License Management for License Administrators

Last modified on December 2, 2022.

License administrators use License Management to assign, revoke, and manage the license use.

Start

Log in to the portal using your SmartBear account:

https://manage.smartbear.com

To manage licenses, you need to have the license administrator role.

The portal displays information on all the licenses you can manage. Here is a sample view:

License Management Screen

Click the image to enlarge it.

If you work in an organization where several people buy licenses, you might need to select from the list of customers in the top right corner.

  1. Find the product and license in the portal.

  2. Expand the license node to see SmartBear accounts to which the license seats have been assigned:

    Users to whom the license is assigned

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Assign license

  1. Find your product and license on the portal.

  2. Enter the user email and click Assign (this button is disabled until you enter a valid email address):

    Assign a license

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    .

  3. The portal will check if a SmartBear account is associated with the specified email.

    • If an account is found, the portal will ask for your confirmation for the assignment. After you confirm, the portal will send an email to the user notifying them about the license assignment.

    • If no account is found, the portal will show a message box asking you to invite the user:

      The Invite User dialog box

      Click Invite User.

      The portal will create a new SmartBear account for the specified email address and will send a message to that address asking the user to complete the account creation. After this, they can download their SmartBear product, install, and run it using the created account (see Activate and Use Licenses).

      If you need to assign a license to multiple users, use the bulk assignment procedure or share a license by using a link (see below).

You can use this approach to quickly share licenses with your teammates. It works both for those who have a SmartBear account and for those who don’t have it yet:

  1. Find your product and license on the License Management portal and click Share License by Link.

  2. In the subsequent dialog box, click Generate to get a URL matching the license and then copy this URL to the clipboard:

    Share a license by link

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  3. Send the URL to those to whom you would like to assign the license. They will use it to get a license seat (see below).

    You can send the link to the users who already have a SmartBear account and to those who don’t have it yet.

    After assignment, a Fixed User license can only be reassigned once per seat. Choose the assignees carefully for this license type!

  4. After users receive the license URL, they should open it in a browser and follow the instructions they will see on the screen:

    • They will need to log in to License Management. If they don’t have a SmartBear account for this, they need to create one (they can do this from the Login form).

    • The portal will display a message box asking for the license acceptance. They need to confirm they will use the license:

      Accept the license assignment

You can use this approach to assign license seats to your teammates who have a SmartBear account:

  1. Find your product and license on the portal and click Bulk Assign.

  2. In the subsequent dialog, select the desired user accounts, click Enter the user email, and click Assign (this is disabled initially and remains disabled until you enter a valid email address):

    Bulk assignment

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    If the person is using the license on two or more machines, the portal will display a dialog showing information on the machines used:

    Using multiple license seats

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To resend an invitation, take the following steps:

  1. After logging in, find and click on the Manage Organization Members icon   near the top of the screen:

    Manage organization members

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  2. Click Invite to Organization.

    Invite to organization

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  3. Reenter the user's email address and click the Invite to Organization confirmation button. A success notification appears once the invitation has been resent.

Check if the license is in use

Find your product and license in the portal and look at the License status column. It will tell you if the license is in use or not.

Idle time will report the idle period.

Check if license is in use

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Release a license (Disconnect a user)

It’s quite possible for a user to be consuming the license seat without working with the product. For instance, that user may forget to close the product before going home. In this case, you may want to release the user’s license seat (disconnect that person from the license server) and make the license available to other users. To do this:

  1. Find the product and license in the portal.

  2. Look at the License status and Idle time.

    If they indicate the license can be released, click Disconnect to release the license:

    Release a license seat

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  3. If the person is using the license on two or more machines, the portal will display a dialog asking you to specify the machine for disconnection:

    Disconnect from multiple machines

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Don’t confuse releasing of a license (or disconnecting a user) with license revoking. Releasing (or disconnecting) terminates the use of the license by some user, but keeps this user in the list of assignees (that is, in the list of those who can use the product). Revoking removes a user from this list.

Whenever users close a SmartBear product for which they have a floating license, that license is released for other users in the pool to take up.

Revoke a license

If a user doesn’t need a license any more, you can revoke that license.

  1. In the License Management portal, find your product and license. Expand the license node.

  2. Find the user account in the list. Check the License status and Idle time column to ensure the user is not working with the product.

  3. Click to revoke a license from the user:

    Revoking a license

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You can then assign the license to another user. See above.

Note: Revoking works differently for Floating and Fixed User licenses:

  • Floating license: A license administrator can revoke it at any time. There are no limits on the length of usage periods and the number of revokes.

  • Fixed User licenses have a limit on the number of revokes/reassignments, which is determined by the number of seats. If for example a license has 10 seats, license administrators can either revoke and reassign each seat once, or one seat 10 times, or in any combination up to a maximum of 10 reassignments. License Management will return an error message once the limit on reassignments is reached.

Manage organization members

A license administrator can give administrator permissions to other persons or remove these permissions from existing administrators.

To manage the administrator list, click   at the top of the page. This will invoke the following dialog box:

Manage Organization Members dialog

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Users who can manage licenses have the Is Admin check box selected in this dialog.

These persons can manage all the licenses that you see on your License Management screen.

Add a person to the list of license administrators

If the person has one of your licenses:

— Type their account email in the Search box (you can enter a part of the email address) and select the Is Admin check box next to the person’s name in the list of found users:

Make an existing user a license administrator

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You can select multiple persons that way.

Click Apply to save the changes.

If the person doesn’t have any license yet or has no SmartBear account:

— Click and, in the subsequent dialog, enter the person’s email and click Invite License Administrator:

Invite a license administrator

Click the image to enlarge it.

If the portal didn’t find a SmartBear account for the specified email address, it will create a new one and will send an email message to that address asking that person to complete the account creation.

The person must accept the invite and complete the account creation before you are able to add them to license administrators.

If your license administrators are unavailable, and you need to add another person to the administrator list, please contact our Customer Care Team.

Remove a person from the list of license administrators

  1. Find a person in the list of license administrators.

  2. Clear the Is Admin check box next to the account name. Click Apply to save the changes.

Remove an organization member

  1. To remove an organization member, find that person in the list of organization members.

  2. Click Remove Organization Member beside their name.

    Removing an organization member does not automatically revoke their licenses. Instead their licenses will appear highlighted, so that the License Administrator can easily identify which licenses are to be reassigned to other members (where applicable).

License priorities

A given user may find themselves assigned to multiple licenses for the same SmartBear product. If that happens, License Management will apply a license according to the following rules:

  1. A license already in use has higher priority than any other — i.e. when users request a license, License Management checks whether that computer already has a license checked out.

  2. A commercial license has higher priority than a trial license.

  3. A fixed license has higher priority than a floating license.

  4. An older license has higher priority than a newer license.

To move a user from a license applied by License Management to another, revoke that license (see above), and the next license in the prioritisation will be applied.

See Also

License Management Documentation
License Types
Activate and Use Licenses

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