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Bentley will be launching Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices (the first of many Bentley CONNECT services) in early 2014 as a replacement for SELECTserver. Bentley CONNECT will further serve as a hub for infrastructure projects, connecting individuals and organizations to on-demand services through a personalized interface. Bentley CONNECT will improve the visibility of project performance, quickly connect multi-organizational, multi-discipline project teams, global supply chains and application vendors, and accelerate workflows and processes. Bentley CONNECT delivers cloud services that:
Bentley's licensing philosophy is centered on ensuring that users are never deprived of access to software when it is needed. This approach means that licensing never gets in the way of users getting productive work done, while the commercial terms for any additional licenses are confirmed later.
Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices, Bentley’s license management and reporting cloud service, arms the administrator with various reports to monitor product usage. Since the Bentley license usage reporting model is passive, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices does not have instantaneous usage data and will not know who is presently using an application. But over time, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices reports are an invaluable tool, enabling administrators to make more informed decisions.
Software Licensing and SELECT Pooled Licensing
Bentley SELECT offers the facility to pool your software licenses. This gives the opportunity to subscribers to install and use the products on more machines than the number of Perpetual Licenses acquired. This is in contrast to many enterprise software agreements that provide for licenses on a named user or host/node-locked basis. Pooled Licensing enables Bentley's licensing philosophy, as outlined above. However, similar to other enterprise software licensing agreements, there remains a responsibility to ensure that subscribers are sufficiently licensed for their production needs. This can be achieved through purchasing Perpetual Licenses in advance of using the software, or Term Licenses, in arrears of the software usage occurring. You can find more details about Term Licenses here. As stated, the reponsibility to ensure that users have sufficient licenses, through appropriate management of the deployment of licenses or through Term Licenses are the responsibility of the subscriber. (Many IT departments manage such deployments using System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or other similar software license administration tools.)
Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices determines usage by counting the total number of unique machines that access an application during each 10-minute interval throughout the day. The intervals are precise 10-minute intervals resuming at 00, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 minutes during the hour. The following rule are applied against recorded time:
(For example, a session for a specific user with a start time of 11:03 a.m. would begin to be counted in the 11:10 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. interval. Use in any interval thereafter in this session results in each of those intervals being counted. This method ensures that accidental or incidental use is not counted and provides an accurate count of true production use.)
Following these exceptions, the total number of unique machines accessing a Bentley product within each interval is calculated and the highest number of machines accessing an application during any one 10-minute interval is the Peak Daily Usage.
Without a real-time connection between the licensed application and the license server, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices will not cap usage. It will report those instances where usage exceeds license pools, but cannot be configured to limit the number of licenses of an application that are used. Even when license usage exceeds license pools, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices will continue to provide licenses for that application. The fundamental reason for this is to guarantee that a user is never prevented from using a Bentley application when it is needed. As decribed above, if you wish to place better controls on the ability to use the software, this should be done by carefully administering the deployment of software licenses to users.
Enter the following link http://selectserver.bentley.com into your web browser to manage and monitor product use. You will be prompted to enter your Bentley username and password, and must have the correct authorization(s).
Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices has a rich and robust set of usage reports available. This feature alone allows the administrator to accurately plan future projects, evaluate current product needs and understand the distribution of products and versions across the enterprise. The true value of Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices is the insights gained from usage reporting.
The reports are divided into five sections; Summary, User Based, Machine Based, Passport Usage and Inventory Reports. The majority of Bentley applications are recorded by machine. As such, multiple sessions from multiple versions of an application may run concurrently on a single machine and only record a single usage in a given hour. However, if the user has the same application open on multiple machines, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices will record multiple usages within a given hour.
The Daily Peak Application Usage report will show the peak usage of an application by day.
To create this report:
1) When logged into the Admin page, go to Reports > Peak Usage Reports > Daily Peak Usage
2) Define a Date Range, select the Product you want to review, and then the Site.
3) Click on: Run Report (example below)
**Please see the HELP on the Admin Page for full details on running reports.
After identifying the Peak Usage, you can narrow down the machine use by application and user with the Application Usage by Hour report.
The report also displays the start and stop time of each application session. Sessions displayed in this report have a minimum duration of 10 minutes.
1) When logged into the Admin page, go to Reports > Machine Based Reports > Application Usage By Hour
The Daily Usage by User report enables the administrator to look into individual users' usage habits. Sorted by date, usage is separated into pooled and checked-out use. The report begins with a summary of total use by application in a table at the top.
1) When logged into the Admin page, go to Reports > User Based Reports > Daily Usage By User
As you become more familiar with usage reporting, there will be certain reports that have periodic relevance. In an effort to be more efficient, Bentley CONNECT SELECTservices provides the ability to schedule reports to run and emailed to a recipient.
Scheduled reporting provides the flexibility to automatically produce license-usage reports on a predefined schedule, without requiring manual intervention. Features include:
Reports can be scheduled in advance to run automatically, for example:
Found under the Reports tab, the Schedule Reports link will direct you to the Report Scheduler. You have the ability to notify as many individuals as you feel is appropriate.
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