What is Product Activation?

Product Activation is the act of authenticating a product for entitled use. Most Bentley applications are equipped with several behavioral states to support product evaluations, the activation process, and offline use.   For more about behavior states, please see Product Activation Modes of Behavior.   An application is activated when it is licensed, which is most commonly achieved by connecting to a valid SELECTserver that has a license for the application.

How do I activate my Bentley Application?

How you activate your Bentley Product will be determined by the version of licensing you are configured for as well product version.  License information is provided to a Bentley Site Administrator or License Manager.  The Site Administrator or License Manager may then distribute the license information at his/her discretion.   Once you have your license information, you'll need to determine your activation type.  Please see the following TechNotes for details of activating:

SELECTserver Online

Locally Deployed SELECTserver

Non-SELECT/Nodelock XM/V8i

Pre-XM Nodelock

Pre-XM through a SELECTserver or SELECTserver Gateway

Do I have to activate every Bentley application I install on my machine?

No, the activation is stored in the registry.  After one product successfully activates, products installed thereafter will automatically detect the license information and will activate.

At the end of the activation wizard, there is a screen to check out a license. Do I need to check out a license in order to run my application? 

No, this option is provided for those users who will not have a periodic connection to their SELECTserver to send log files.  

Bentley has renewed my SELECT contract, how do I get my new license?

Please see Renewal Process for All Licensing

What happened to MicroStation's 15-minute "Demo Mode"? 

MicroStation still has a 15-minute time-out mode, which is invoked after the 30-day Activation period has lapsed. This is also referred to as "deactivated behavior".  

How does activation work for a large site? Will SELECTserver allow a system administrator to activate machines in batch mode? 

SELECTserver is not designed to pre-activate a desktop application, although there is a way to activate desktops in an efficient manner. XM Licensing provides support for Microsoft's Group policy settings, for more details, please see Activating Client Side Products and Registry Basics

Is the 30-day activation period also available to pre-XM applications? If so, are there any special settings that need to be applied? 

Pre-XM applications require a real-time connection requirement with the SELECTserver.  However, when licensing Pre-XM applications with the SELECTserver Gateway Service it is important to understand that the SELECTserver Gateway is, in fact, an XM application.  Therefore, it has the benefit of working in a disconnected mode for up to 30 days, which enables the applications it serves to run, as long as it's activated itself and contains license for the product in question. 

The difference for a pre-XM application is that the 30-day pre-activation period is at a Site level, not a machine level. So if I begin using it on August 1st, I am starting the 30-day period on behalf of every user at the Site. If someone else tries to use it on September 3rd (and our site still doesn't have a license), the pre-activation period is already over (>30 days) and they will enter the application's deactivated behavior, which is likely a 15-min timeout mode.

An administrator installed and activated my product. Why does the product fail to activate when run from my user account?

If an administrator activates a product while logged in as a different user, the license settings are typically stored for that user account only, not for all user accounts on the computer. To check whether the license settings are stored in your user account, perform the following steps:

1. Open the License Management Tool. Most products provide a way to open this tool from the Windows Start menu or from within the product.
2. You may receive a dialog box with the following message which can be dismissed:
   All settings will be stored for current user only.
3. In the window that appears, select Options from the Tools menu.
4. Verify whether a server name and site activation key are entered. If blank, get them from your site administrator. Once entered, your product should successfully activate.

How do my products activate?

When a Bentley product using the SELECTserver licensing system opens, a usage transmission for any outstanding product usage will be initiated if the last transmission was more than 24 hours ago. If current licenses are present for the product usage submitted, an acknowledgement from SELECTserver will activate the product or keep it activated.

See Also

Product TechNotes and FAQs

Licensing TechNotes and FAQs