Introduction to SES for ProjectWise Design Integration

What is SES?

• SES stands for Subscription Entitlement Service. It is the latest Bentley licensing system, replacing the legacy SELECT Server service. The Subscription Entitlement Service is Bentley's new process for product activation. The entitlement service replaces site activation keys with user validation, enhancing security around your Bentley licenses and subscriptions.
• With activation key-based licensing, a single activation key provided access to all products and services your organization has licenses for. With entitlement based services, administrators can manage product activation based on a user profile.

What are the advantages of SES for ProjectWise Design Integration?

The Subscription Entitlement Service (SES) provides administrators settings to define what licenses users have access to, for PW that is namely a Visa or a Passport. Organizations have insight into who is using the licenses by providing a consistent user identity across all SES enabled products and services. 

How is SES configured for ProjectWise Explorer?

SES is enabled by default. There is no option to switch between SES or activation keys. When using an SES version of ProjectWise Explorer, the entitlement (product activation) is determined by the user signed into the Connection Client, not only the user signing into the ProjectWise datasource.

What ProjectWise Administration settings are available in the Subscriptions Entitlement Management portal?

The Entitlement Management portal is where administrators can define access to a ProjectWise product or service by IMS username. This option is only available to users inside of your organization. To define access to ProjectWise Explorer based on product go to the entitlement portal and select users and groups. Filter by the user or group name and then search for product to add or remove the PW Explorer (PWDI Visa) entitlement.

What’s changed in the activation process from previous versions?

With the ProjectWise Explorer 3.4 release (10.00.03.4xx), all users will be required to bring your own (BYO) PWDI Visa. The datasource level user setting for determining who pays for a user in PWDI datasources (3.2 and earlier) will be disregarded by PW Explorer 3.4. When using this version of PW Explorer, the PW Server will not be able to record usage on behalf of the user. This means the user must have a PWDI Visa license if they want to use PW Explorer 3.4. The user setting is being refactored and will be included with PWDI SES Servers. If your organization needs to pay for a user outside of your organization that user will need to remain on an older version of PW Explorer (10.00.03.334 or earlier). 

What has changed in the login process from previous versions?

Nothing. All forms of user authentication are still supported, however if the user does not have the proper entitlement (license), then they will be denied access.