Upgrading licenses to the next version of your software

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Article ID: 188

Last Updated: 19th June 2009 07:38:50 pm

Assuming that version 1 of your software has been successful, you will want users who are under subscription to continue to be able to use the license with version 2. Sending each user a new Order ID would be tedious and inefficient, as you would need to send out hundreds or even thousands of emails.

Instead, you can use License Distribution Service to ensure that when you ship version 2 you can simply notify users to enter their existing Order ID to get their new license.
First, you would need to determine which users are eligible to receive the update. You could accomplish this by inserting a special custom property into each Order object, such as "LICENSE_TYPE = SUBSCRIPTION." Whenever you read such an object, you would then:

Delete the existing license that was created in the system.
Update the Order object using new license keywords related to your new application.
Update the Product relationship to ensure you use the appropriate license generator.
Update template hostid information if needed.

As a result, you would have an unactivated Order that is adapted to your next software version. Once the user activates the license using his or her existing Order ID, the system will generate a new license using the license generator you specified for version 2.

You can also prevent licenses from being activated before the release of the new version by specifying the activation start date for each Order object.

The recommended deployment of this type of solution would be to set up a second License Distribution Service for test purposes that is completely separate from your production environment. This system should be used to make scripts that automate the above tasks. Then, once you are sure that everything works, you can deploy the changes onto your production system.