SharePointBoost License Management Center Tutorial For SharePoint 2007

The SharePointBoost License Management Center (LMC) provides a convenient way to manage the licenses of all SharePointBoost products in your SharePoint environment.

A major change from the previous version is the introduction of server licenses. This affects many major features of our License Management Center.

NOTE: With the new License Management Center and all versions of SharePointBoost products released after May 2010, only Farm Administrators can manage licenses for SharePointBoost products.

License Management Center Activation

To activate the License Management Center, please navigate to Farm Features in SharePoint Central Administration. There the SharePointBoost License Management Center is displayed in the Operations tab.

Navigation

After activation, navigate to the Application Management section in Central Administration. There, you will see a link to the LMC under “SharePointBoost Software Management.”

As of 15-Oct-10

Click the License Management Center link to access the main page displaying all SharePointBoost products currently installed in your SharePoint environment. Included in this list is detailed information regarding the product version number, license status, and whether or not you have purchased Premium Annual support for any given product.

In the General Information section, all general information relevant for the licensing of SharePointBoost products is displayed, including the number of servers in the SharePoint farm and the Server Code (which is necessary for acquiring the actual server license).

NOTE: Server here refers to all Web Front End (WFE) servers in the SharePoint farm.

If you are interested in a Site Collection License, you can also find a link to the Site Collection List where you can retrieve the Site Collection ID and view the number of users in any given site collection within the farm.

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Clicking on the "Download user details" link will open a dialogue to either save or open a .csv file. This file contains detailed information about the users in the selected site collection.

The Products section displays a list of all SharePointBoost products installed.

By clicking on the product name, the administrator will be directed to the License Management page for that specific product.

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After Installation

If a product has just been installed the product will be working with a trial license. No selection has been made as to whether a Site Collection License or a Server License will be used.

The License Management page for just installed products provides a radio button with which administrators can toggle between the Server License and Site Collection License view.

In the Server License view, the Server Code is displayed in the General Information section. In the Server Selection section all WFE servers are displayed; as the product has not yet been licensed, the License Status column displays "No Registration".

In the Site Collection view, the Server Selection section has been replaced with the Site Collection List. After installation no site collection has been licensed yet, so this list will initially be empty.

Also, a link is provided to the Site Collections List where you can find the Site Collection ID for each site collection in the SharePoint farm.

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Validating and Managing Licenses

To receive your license code, the relevant information has to be submitted to the SharePointBoost sales team. This information includes whether or not you want to purchase Premium Support, the Server Code itself, and number of servers to be licensed (in the case of a Server License purchase) or Site Collection ID and number of end users in this site collection (in the case of a Site Collection License purchase).

There are two options to enter the license code received from the SharePointBoost sales team. The first way is to copy paste the license code into the box in the License Activation section.

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The second option is to use the "Browse..." button and upload the .txt file that contains the license code. After confirming by clicking the "Open" button, the license code will also be displayed in the License Activation section input box.

After inserting the license code, the administrator has to validate the license by clicking the "Validate" button. After validating the license, please press F5 to refresh the page.

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Server License

Before validating a server license, all WFE servers are displayed as "No Registration" in the License Status.

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Once the license has been validated, the administrator can choose which WFE servers on which to activate or deactivate the product. This is illustrated in the screenshot below. In this example there are 3 WFE servers in the SharePoint farm, while a SharePointBoost product license has only been purchased for 2 WFE servers.

By deactivating one of the Activated WFE servers, the administrator can then activate the one that is currently displayed as Not Activated. These operations can be performed without contacting SharePointBoost, as selecting which servers to activate does not require any license upgrade or change in license code.

NOTE: Activating or deactivating a server license will NOT automatically transmit any information to SharePointBoost or its registered offices, nor does it connect to SPB servers in any way. SPB does not collect or store any information about your environment or machine as a result of the activation process.

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Site Collection License

Managing and validating Site Collection Licenses works basically as described in the Validating and Managing Licenses section.

If the end user count exceeds the number of allowed users, please contact the SharePointBoost sales team with the Site Collection ID and number of users required. They will provide a new license code, which then has to be validated as described above. This will not be a new license, but an upgrade of the old license. This means that if a new license is required SharePointBoost customers only pay for the price difference between the user count for the original license and the user count for the new license.

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Farm License

While Farm Licenses are not available anymore for purchase, previously purchased Farm Licenses will still be supported. The screen for the Farm License Management page changes to reflect the changes to the License Management Center.

Also, the button to activate the Farm License for all site collections has been removed; this will now happen automatically.

NOTE: This functionality is only incorporated for product versions that support server licenses.

As of 15-Oct-10

As of 15-Oct-10