Please note that this article is meant to help with the activation of Subscription Entitlement Service enabled products for academic users. For older product activation, please see our article here. Note that Subscription Entitlement Service was formerly called CONNECT Licensing- the process has not changed from the CONNECT Licensing procedures.
Activating your Subscription Entitlement Service for students and teachers:
Many of our products now use Subscription Entitlement Service for licensing purposes. This includes the latest version of MicroStation, along with many others, including the latest releases of STAAD.Pro, RAM, and OpenRoads Designer. The full list of product releases can be found here.
The good news is that the Subscription Entitlement Service does work with academic accounts! We have worked with the Subscription Entitlement Services team to help them create a system to associate students’ accounts with their school’s Subscription Entitlement Service system when they create STUDENTserver accounts. The students will then log into STUDENTserver and download the software they want.
One new change is that now the student will also need to download Bentley CONNECTION Client, which is Bentley’s user portal tool. Sign into CONNECTION Client before using your software to activate your license. Once you have signed into CONNECTION Client, you can start the software and CONNECTION Client will activate the licenses.
There is also slight difference in workflow for on-campus users. Previously, students would not need any log in to use software on campus. Now, because Subscription Entitlement Service associates licensing with the user, students will need to create STUDENTserver log-ins to use on campus. This is an additional step that some of our account administrators might not know. Because of this, we recommend that you provide your students at the computer labs with the school code they need to activate their STUDENTserver sign-ins.
Please find more information about Subscription Entitlement Services here.
Troubleshooting licensing with Subscription Entitlement Services
Some academic users are experiencing problems with licensing currently, and are getting a "7 day trial" message when using their software. We are currently making improvements to STUDENTserver to address this, but there are also some troubleshooting methods one can try to remedy the problem in the meantime.
Ensure that you have entered your school code properly in the "software downloads" section of STUDENTserver:
STUDENTserver will prompt you for your school's school code when you enter the software downloads section; this is a necessary step to do to be properly licensed, even if you are not downloading software yourself (in case you are using on-campus computers with pre-installed software). If you do not have your school's school code, please contact the academic team at academic@bentley.com.
Update CONNECTION Client:
Ensure that the CONNECTION Client is updated to the latest version. You can do so by logging into CONNECTION Client and looking for updates in the "Applications" section.
Refresh the licensing cache:
In some cases, it may help to refresh the licensing cache on your computer. To do so, complete the following steps:
1. Close the CONNECTION Client
2. Stop the license service (from Windows Task Manager - right click on the task bar, choose Task Manager, click the Processes tab, sort by name, right click on Bentley.Licensing.Service.exe and choose to end task)
3. Navigate to the following folder location: C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Bentley\Licensing
4. Delete the file named LicenseService.db
5. Restart the CONNECTION Client, using your credentials
6. Launch the Bentley Software you are trying to use.
7. If a trial pop-up appears, click on OK.
8. Launch “Bentley Licensing Tool” separately > Click on “Tools”> “Activation Wizard”> “Activate one or more products”> Proceed to step 2 and 3 on Activation Wizard to successfully activate the product
You can also contact the Bentley academic team at academic@Bentley.com for assistance.
For administrators: adding students to your account manually
There may be cases in which the school’s account administrator would like to manually manage student’s access to the Subscription Entitlement Service license. This can be done by following these steps:
Firstly, they should create user accounts for the students who need access. This can be done individually or in bulk; this process is explained here.Please note that in order to do this, the account administrator will need the names and email addresses for the students being added (or school email addresses that can be used on the students’ behalf).
The second step is to go to the “Entitlement Management” part of their account and add entitlements for the desired programs to the students’ user accounts. Information on this can be found here. Once the students have accounts with the proper entitlements for the software they want to use, they can log into that software with their Bentley accounts and use the software.