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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 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
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.
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.
No, this option is provided for those users who will not have a periodic connection to their SELECTserver to send log files.
Please see Renewal Process for All Licensing
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".
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
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.
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:
Product TechNotes and FAQs
Licensing TechNotes and FAQs