Sisense Fusion is licensed by role-based Users, by hosting capacity and by the volume of data held in the platform’s analytics database. The Master Subscription Agreement (MSA) defines the terms used in the Sales Order, and Sisense’s documentation describes the roles in the product. The Sales Order, not the MSA, sets the quantities, so this article explains the counting rules and leaves the numbers to the customer’s own contract.[1]
Users and roles
The MSA defines a User as a user granted access to use the Product on an individual basis, in other words an individual assigned a unique login ID, the number of which is specified on the Sales Order.[1] It also defines three role terms that appear in order forms.
| MSA term | Definition | Catalog row |
|---|---|---|
| Admin | A User with authorization and access for user and data management of the Product | Admin |
| Designer | A User authorized to create, edit and share data models and dashboards | Designer |
| Viewer | A User authorized to view and filter the dashboards | Viewer |
All three definitions are in the MSA.[1] Each User receives a unique login and password or other personal authentication, called an Authorized ID. The Authorized ID is used by that individual only, and it cannot be shared or used by more than one User at a time.[1] Shared service logins that several people use therefore fall outside the licence. The Customer is responsible for all acts and omissions of its employees, subcontractors, agents and other personnel and of all other Users.[1]
Roles in the product
Sisense’s documentation states that Sisense licenses the following categories of roles: Administrator, Designer and Viewer. Within them the product has finer roles.[2]
- Admin can access the Admin page and manage system configuration, data sources, ElastiCubes, users and groups, and Sisense supports multiple administrators. Data Admin manages data sources and servers but not user management or system configuration.[2]
- Sys.Admin is a special administrator who installs Sisense, and there is only one per account.[2]
- Data Designer creates and edits ElastiCubes and can see, but not add, servers. Designer creates, designs, edits and shares dashboards and decides whether the people they share with can edit (Designer) or only view (Viewer).[2]
- Viewer can view, explore, drill down, make selections and filter dashboards that designers share, but cannot create or edit dashboards.[2]
- Viewer Plus builds on Viewer, letting users compose their own dashboards using widgets created through the AI Assistant or copied from another dashboard. It cannot create dashboards from scratch or share dashboards, and it consumes the same Viewer (consumer) licence as the Viewer role.[2]
The documentation adds that Admin and Designer roles are divided into sub-categories to give more granular permissions, and that roles can be customised through the Sisense REST API.[3] The MSA defines Designers and Viewers by what the User is authorized to do, so a licence manager who customises a role through the API should confirm with Sisense which licence category the customised role consumes.
Role precedence
Roles are defined per user, and a user may also belong to groups that have their own role. The documentation states that a user created manually keeps the role assigned at creation even if added to a group with a different role. Users who are imported, or created automatically in any way, take the role of the group they are imported into.[3] When importing users from a directory, the group’s role therefore determines the licence category that each imported person consumes, so a group set to the Designer role gives every imported member the Designer role.
Capacity: Instances and GB Elasticube
Sisense measures data volume in GB of Elasticube data. The MSA defines GB Elasticube Capacity as the aggregate quantity of data in all Elasticubes in all Instances as of the time of measurement, and it gives separate definitions and Sales Order quantities for Production and Non-Production capacity.[1] An Elasticube is an analytics database created within the Product.[1]
An Instance is a single authorized installation of the Product on a single operating system, connected to one or more customer data sources. Each Instance is limited to its allocation of GB capacity, in increments of 20 GB. Separate installations in different locations, including different cloud data centres, and separate installations for non-production uses such as development, staging, testing and quality assessment, count as separate Instances.[1] The practical consequences are as follows.
- A disaster-recovery or staging copy of Sisense is an Instance of its own and needs its own capacity allocation, even if it holds a copy of the production data.
- Because capacity is measured at “the time of measurement”, the figure that matters is data held at the point Sisense or the customer measures, so the customer should know how Sisense measures it and keep its own records.
- Allocations come in 20 GB increments, so allocations are made in multiples of 20 GB.
The MSA states that the Product is not a system of record and that all Customer Data remains in the Customer’s original data source.[1] Capacity is therefore counted on data loaded into Elasticubes, not on source databases queried live.
Cores and servers
For Customer Hosted subscriptions the MSA defines Authorized Servers/Cores as the number of the Customer’s (or End Customers’) servers or Cores on which the Product may be installed, as specified in the Sales Order. Each Authorized Server is restricted to a specific number of Cores, and Authorized Cores may be deployed on any number of servers provided that the total operating concurrently never exceeds the Sales Order. A substitute server may be used if an Authorized Server becomes non-operable with Sisense’s written authorization, but concurrent use of the same Authorized Server subscription on two or more servers requires explicit written authorization and payment of fees.[1] A Core is a collection of one or more processor threads and a set of shared execution resources, and hyperthreading and similar technologies that materially expand a Core’s capacity may not be used in connection with a Core-based subscription.[1]
Activation and licence keys
Customer Hosted installations are activated against Sisense’s licensing service. For machines behind a firewall or without internet access, the customer installs the full Sisense installation file and provides an offline activation key. If it has no licence key, it copies the ID shown on the Behind a Firewall screen, logs in to its account at my.sisense.com, pastes the ID into the Get License Key section and clicks Get Key.[4] My Sisense lets customers view their account and licence details, add a user to the licence to enable activation with additional users, generate an offline key for air-gapped on-premises deployments and, for Sisense for Windows only, reset activations.[5] These records are the starting point for reconciling what has been activated against the Sales Order. They are not a measurement of compliance, since the MSA’s usage limits apply regardless of how many activations the key allows.
Updates and support
The Support Services Addendum defines the End of Support Date as 12 months after the Version release date and excludes from support any Failure after that date or caused by use outside the licence scope.[6] Updates and Versions that Sisense makes generally available during the Subscription Period are part of the Product, whereas optional modules, plug-ins and future products sold under a separate agreement are not.[1]
Out of scope
This article does not cover Fusion Embed, Compose SDK or white-labelling (see Sisense Fusion Embed and Compose SDK licensing), the audit, renewal and liability terms (see Sisense Master Subscription Agreement terms), or Sisense’s pre-2024 agreement forms and the Licensing Terminology page of older documentation, which was not retrievable in text form.