Licenses and entitlements
To support both B2B and B2C licensing scenarios, 10Duke Enterprise uses the concepts of entitlements and licenses.
Entitlements
In 10Duke Enterprise, entitlements hold the licenses granted to an organization or a consumer.
Organization entitlements
An organization can have one or more entitlements, and each entitlement can contain one or more licenses. In each entitlement, you define which user groups and device client groups are authorized to consume the licenses in that entitlement.
An organization must have at least one entitlement to store their licenses, and in many cases, one is enough. However, there may be cases where you want to create multiple entitlements as “containers” for organizing the licenses that a customer has bought.
As an example, in a customer organization, users might be distributed into multiple user groups, and each group needs access to different types of or a different number of licenses. If the organization’s licenses are distributed to multiple entitlements, this can provide more flexibility and control both for you as the software vendor and for the customer’s organization administrator.
Personal entitlements
A consumer user must have one personal entitlement that stores all their personal licenses.
A user who only consumes organization licenses doesn’t need a personal entitlement.
Managing entitlements
You can manage entitlements either using the 10Duke SysAdmin tool or through the 10Duke Entitlement Management REST API.
There’s also some automatic behavior associated with granting licenses through the Entitlement Management REST API:
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If the organization or user doesn’t have an entitlement yet, an entitlement is automatically created for the organization or user. With an organization, the entitlement is also set as the organization’s default one.
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When granting organization licenses, they are always created in the default entitlement (an organization can only have one entitlement set as the default).
Licenses
Licenses can be granted to organizations and to consumers (individual users).
Organization licenses
Organization licenses are licenses that a company customer has purchased for the end users in their organization.
The organization owns the licenses, and they authorize their users to consume the licenses through user groups. Depending on the license model, this can mean, for example, assigning named seats per user or a floating pool from which users consume seats.
If the organization has device licenses, the licenses are consumed by the devices (machines or PCs) on which your licensed software is running. These device clients are authorized to consume licenses through device client groups. The license model again determines how the device clients can consume the licenses.
You can allow each organization to manage their own licenses using the 10Duke OrgAdmin tool, for example, to manage their users’ and device clients’ access to licenses and to reserve seats.
Personal licenses
Personal licenses are licenses that a consumer customer has bought for themselves. Personal licenses are associated with a single user and can only be consumed by them according to the license model defined.
Granting and updating licenses
You grant licenses using product packages, and the customer gets a separate license for each licensed item in the product package.
You can grant new licenses and make changes to existing licenses either using SysAdmin or through the 10Duke Entitlement Management REST API.
On the Entitlement Management REST API side, you can group multiple license grants into one transaction. For example, when a customer purchases multiple products at a time, you can handle and update their whole order within the same transaction in 10Duke Enterprise.
By using activation codes, you can also provision licenses that your customers can redeem later when they start using your software.
Note that licenses are also updated by the following actions:
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A license is updated if you edit the actual licensed item or the license model itself used by the license. Changes to the licensed item and license model settings within the product package have no effect.
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Depending on the license model, a license may be updated when you grant a new license to the same licensed item. A custom license model can be set to always update the existing license if the entitlement already has a license for the licensed item.