Licensing for Add-In Applications

Sites have flexibility in adding new applications , processes, and tasks to their Navigators.

Third-party developers in the Archibus Developer Network can create licenses that copy-protect their own third-party add-ins. These developers can create the license themselves.

Creating New Navigator Processes

Adding New Processes

You can create new processes at will and name them what you like.

You can use any view from any domain or application that you have licensed from Archibus on any of your processes. You can also use any views you have created yourself, such as views you created using the View Definition Wizard, so long as those views reference tables included by your licensed domains or applications.

Note: A table is included in a domain or application if it appears in any of the views for that domain or application. For instance, the “Country” (ctry) and “Rooms”(rm) tables appear in the views of the Space Inventory & Performance application. As such, they are included and can be used in views by any licensed user of that application.

Do not use views from any Archibus domain or application that you have not licensed, as it will not load and its workflow rules will not run.

Licensing for New Processes

If you are using application-style licensing, determine the count of users for each application according to the number of users that will be using it, regardless of how they will be using it. Archibus will always sign out an application license for each user using all or part of an application.

For instance, if you assign an entire process from the Space Inventory & Performance application to User ABERNATHY, or if you assign just one view from the Space Inventory & Performance application to User ABERNATHY (by creating a new process, adding this view to the process), the program will sign out a Space Inventory & Performance application license when ABERNATHY signs in and start using Archibus.

Note : Since you can create your own new processes, even for stock Archibus applications, you cannot create new domains (starting in V19.1). However, if you created your own domains in V.17.1 and V.18, to upgrade you must create application licenses as described below for third-party applications.

Controlling License Usage

The Archibus Administrator controls which users consume which licenses:

  • If the Administrator assigns a stock Archibus process to a user, that user will consume a license for the application to which that process belongs.
  • If the Administrator assigns a view to their own new process, and assigns that process to a user, that user will consume a license for the application to which that view belongs.

How Customers Create Add-In Applications

Customers can add entire new applications. To do so, name the application beginning with AbMyExtension; for example, create applications such as “AbMyExtension01”, “AbMyExtension02”, “AbMyExtensionForChargeback”.

Place your new application under any domain that you wish. You can see the current domain assignments in System / Add-In Manager / View Application Assignments to Domains view.

In your own new applications, you can use any view from any domain or application for which you have a license.

You cannot use a view from any Archibus domain or application for which you do not have a license, as the view will not load and its workflow rules will not run.

How Third-Party Developers Create Add-In Applications

In Archibus V.19.2 and later, third-party developers registered with the Archibus Developers Network program can create their own applications with their own names, such as "MyArchibusAddIn." They want to distribute these applications to their customers, while copy-protecting them using their own license file.

To do so:

  • Create your own application. Name it anything you wish, but avoid beginning new applications with “Ab”, as these names may conflict with stock Archibus names.

Note : This naming recommendation differs from the recommendation for versions V.14.3 through V.18.2, which required that you use a prescribed application name.

  • Assign this application to any domain that you wish.
  • When creating processes and tasks for your application, do not use any stock Archibus views or workflow rules unless you are certain that your customers have a license for those views or workflow rules, as otherwise these views or workflow rules will not load or run.
  • Ask Archibus Professional Services for the password and location of the license generator form (shown below).
    license_form_467x362.gif
  • Use this form to create your own license file for each customer, for example, ai-licenses-add-in-MyArchibusAddIn.bin . The program will create this file in the \ WEB-INF\config folder.
  • When you ship your application, also send this per-customer license file, and instruct the customer to copy it to their own \WEB-INF\config folder.
  • Now when Archibus loads, it will enable your third-party application. The Archibus program will show your application on the System / Archibus Administrator / View Program Information and License Usage summary of installed applications. The Archibus program will also keep a count of concurrent users, and disallow new users to sign in if that site has exceeded the total number of concurrent users that you specified.