Altium licence administration consists of two toolsets. The Company Dashboard is a web area in which Group Administrators and License Administrators of a Company Account manage users, licences and other assets.[4] The Private License Service (PLS) is a licence server that Altium ships in the Altium Infrastructure Server and the Altium On-Prem Enterprise Server so that Altium Designer installations that are isolated from the internet can still lease seats.[2][3] Both tools matter to a software asset manager because they hold the seat counts, allocations and usage history against which compliance is measured.
Editions
Company Dashboard
The Dashboard’s Subscriptions and Licenses page shows the organisation’s subscription plan and a tile for each purchased licence with its type, geographic scope, available seats, user access and term.[1] Group Administrators and License Administrators have full access to this page. All other pages are read-only for License Administrators.[1] Administrators can add a new licence through the Altium Store, add seats, renew, enable or disable auto-renew, and choose pay by card or pay by invoice.[1] Licences without an active subscription are listed under Off-Subscription Licenses, and the Trade Up action converts a perpetual licence with an expired subscription into a term-based one-year licence.[1] For Private Server and Standalone licences the Dashboard activates the licence for a specific product version and downloads an .alf file, which is added manually to the target software or to an on-premises Altium server for distribution from its PLS.[1]
Altium Infrastructure Server
The Altium Infrastructure Server (AIS) is described as a free, on-premise server that provides remote Altium product installation and licence management.[4] Its PLS lets installations that must stay offline lease seats over the local network.[3] The AIS is itself licensed by importing licence files or acquiring an AIS licence from the cloud. It then acquires Altium software licences from Altium’s online licence service, and the licences are converted to Private Licenses for local access.[3] It does not offer design data storage or data management, but can license Enterprise Server workspaces that stay offline.[3]
Altium On-Prem Enterprise Server
The Enterprise Server is a server-based solution for design data management. Its functionality, including its PLS, becomes available when it has been licensed with an Altium Enterprise Server licence, and a valid Enterprise Server CAL (Client Access License) is also required to let users sign in to it from Altium Designer.[2] A CAL is not needed if users will not access the Enterprise Server, because it is used as a licensing server only.[2] At least two licences are needed to license the server, the server licence and the CAL.[2] The Altium Enterprise Server CAL is the catalog metric for the client access count.
Metrics
The licence service leases seats. A seat of a PLS-hosted licence is leased by the software when it is in use and revoked, returned to the available pool, when no longer needed.[2] A seat can also be leased on a roaming basis for a specified time so that a laptop can work while isolated from the network.[2] In the Dashboard, a seat count is assigned to each group allocation, with an All Available Seats option.[1] The CAL is the only counted object specific to the Enterprise Server.[2]
Counting / floors
Allocation. A new licence is by default allocated to all registered members of the organisation, which overrules more specific allocations until it is removed.[1] An administrator can assign seats to defined user role groups. Licences can effectively be over-subscribed, where a group has more users than seats, and the user sees a “maximum usage reached” message when all seats are leased.[1] The License Management view in Altium Designer reports seats available for the groups the user belongs to and does not account for seats used by other groups.[1]
Options per allocation. The Dashboard allocation window includes automatic leasing, release of seats on inactive clients (On-Demand only, for Altium Designer 25.1 or later, with a verification interval of 1 to 12 hours), roaming with a maximum roam duration, and notifications when a percentage of seats are leased or a request is rejected.[1] See Release seats on inactive clients and Roaming.
Server groups. On the Enterprise Server, licences acquired by the server are assigned to an All Users group by default, which makes them available to anyone who connects to the PLS. The PLS can instead offer software licences selectively to specific groups.[2]
Virtualization & partitioning
The PLS is described as implemented on a PC connected to the company LAN or WAN, set up by an administrator.[3] The retrieved documents give no rules on running the PLS in a virtual machine or on partitioning. They describe the Enterprise Server modes instead.
| PLS mode | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| No PLS | Default configuration; acquired licences are not served on the network[2] |
| Local PLS | Acquired licences are served to Altium Designer and server installations on the network[2] |
| External PLS | The server uses an external PLS, such as a central Infrastructure Server, instead of its own licensing[2] |
In Local PLS mode the authentication mode determines access. In Server Session mode, the standard setting, licences are available to a user who signs in to the Enterprise Server from Altium Designer, and other servers cannot use them. In No Authentication mode any connection to the PLS is granted access to the available licences, which suits a central licensing server in a multiple-server setup, and the PLS creates a user named in the form user_name server_name whose group membership decides which licences are offered.[2]
Cloud / BYOL
The Dashboard and the cloud licence service are Altium-hosted. Private Server licences are first acquired from Altium’s portal, “From cloud”, or imported as licence files, “From file”, and then served locally. The server may be offline once the licences are acquired. If the host cannot reach the internet, an administrator can activate the licence file in the Dashboard and add it to the server by file.[2][3] The documents describe no third-party cloud hosting rules for the PLS.
Programs
- Private License Service. Local leasing of licences for offline installations.[2]
- Roaming. In the Dashboard, roaming can be allowed per allocation, with a maximum from 1 hour up to the licence expiry, or 0 for unlimited up to expiry.[1]
- Trade Up and Auto-renewal. The Dashboard offers both. A lapsed subscription to a perpetual licence cannot be renewed, and enabling auto-renew avoids access problems and attracts a payment discount.[1]
- Workspace administration. The Workspaces page shows the Workspaces created for the Company Account, the region, the number of users with access and the owner, and allows ownership change and deactivation.[5]
- Requests. Licence requests sent from Altium Designer by non-administrators, for example to add a seat or renew, appear on the Licenses page for administrators.[1]
Audits and compliance
The Dashboard’s Reports page offers real-time and historical usage, activity logs and downloadable CSV reports. Altium calls the licence usage report useful for auditing the overall and individual usage of On-Demand licences.[1] The Enterprise Server’s Reports tab provides usage monitoring and reporting that, according to Altium, can be used to audit how licences are used, to anticipate future requirements and to determine usage by individual users, with filters by licence, group, user and time period and export to CSV.[2] A Group Administrator can force-release any seat of an On-Demand licence from the Dashboard reports.[4] These reports are the evidence that an asset manager can use before responding to a verification request under the MSA, which gives Altium the right to ask for documentation, information and physical access within 30 days.[6]
Out of scope
- Server installation, sizing and upgrade steps for the Infrastructure Server and Enterprise Server.
- The legacy standalone Private License Server application (14.0.0.34), which the Enterprise Server documentation mentions as the historical form of the PLS.[2]
- Prices of server and CAL licences, which Altium does not publish on the pages retrieved.