I was alerted through email on 11/24/2020 that a staff member accepted a term license. I immediately went over to the staff member and had them close Bentley to avoid going over the grace period and being charged. Now that 11/24/2020 is available in subscription analytics, it shows the staff member as spending 10 minutes inside the program. I know that this cannot possibly be accurate based on how quickly I got to his desk and watched him close Bentley products.
He is adamant that he was not given the option to accept or deny the use of a term license, and I have no reason not to believe him. The messaging we have set up for usage alerts makes it very clear that staff are under no circumstances allowed to accept the use of a term license without permission from a senior member of staff.
We have gone through the process ensuring we are using the SES, of disallowing software downloads for anything we do not have a license for, set up license alerting, and made it very clear to staff that they are not to accept term licenses without permission under any condition. If we are not able to totally lock staff out of using excess licenses, I don't understand what more can be done. We have seen the license alerts pop up in the past, so I know that they should be working, but I know for certain that in this instance something was not working as intended.
Is there a dedicated account rep that I am able to reach out to about this? I'm not seeing contact information anywhere on the website.
This is getting ridiculous. I just ran into the same issue.
We have all of our products set up such that offline usage is not allowed. I just got an email from Bentley saying we had a user accept a term license. We've had other overages where the user was adamant about not ever seeing the alert dialog about hitting the threshold.
That's on the heels of this problem I encountered earlier today.
https://communities.bentley.com/products/licensing/f/licensing-and-activation-forum/208627/how-to-see-ses-current-license-usage
Bentley says the real time reporting may not be accurate, but how are we supposed to manage our licenses? If all of our products are configured to not allow offline usage, how can our real time count not be accurate? They don't give us the tools to block unwanted usages, but are happy to charge us when we go over.
Under no circumstances should our users be accepting a term license (be able to click the green Acknowledge button when the alert displays). That button is way too easy to click by accident, and the wording of the dialog can be a bit confusing to some.
At the very least we need the ability to disable users from selecting the Acknowledge button and accepting the charges for a term license. Given the state of Bentley licensing I know this won't be full proof, but it will help reduce the risk of inadvertent overages.
Rod WingSenior Systems Analyst
As bad as it is, it seems like it's going to get worse. Bentley support told me that they are no longer going to be going by 10 minute minimum use. If a staff member is using it from 2:49-2:51, that will be a legitimate interval for Bentley to count because it crosses the threshold into the next 10 minute time frame.
Me: Regarding the 10 minute increments, are you saying that if ***** were to have logged on at 9:39 and logged off at 9:41 we would have been charged for a QTL, or does someone actually need to have the software open for 10 minutes?
Bentley: Yes, the usage from 9:40 onward would be counted because it is in the second interval. Only usage from the first interval is dropped which could be up to 10 minutes. For example, if ***** had opened the product at 9:30 and used it to 9:41, only the usage from 9:40 onward would be counted. This important change will be officially communicated soon since it conflicts with the 10-minute minimum currently in our documentation.
As far as I can tell the license alert will not display if you are in that 10 minute window after another user has exited the application.
Same thing happened to us yesterday. There was no warning, no nothing. By the time i saw the email come through about the authorization which my employee assured me never popped up, 10 minutes had passed. We shut it down and opened yet another ticket.