2023:License Activation

From Grooper Wiki

This article is about an older version of Grooper.

Information may be out of date and UI elements may have changed.

202520242023

Once you have your Grooper Repository initialized and connected, you need to activate your Grooper license.

FYI

When you purchased Grooper, you should have received a license key GUID, something like "1a2b3c4d-5e6f-7g8h-9i10-j11k12l13m14". You will need this GUID to license your Grooper installation.

About

There are three ways to license Grooper:

  • cloud hosted
  • stand-alone
  • self hosted


Cloud hosted licensing is the easiest but least secure method of licensing.

  • It is easiest because a Grooper Repository is licensed simply by entering the license key/GUID into a property at the root node in Grooper Design. Licensing is decremented over the internet. This has some pros and cons.
    • Pro: No additional setup is required to license Grooper. Just enter the license serial number into the root node of the Grooper Repository.
    • Pro: The license is not bound to any individual server or machine. This makes it easy to distribute licensing to multiple Grooper Repositories across multiple machines.
    • Con: The license is not bound to any individual server or machine. This means any user with the license key/GUID and an internet connection can use the license.
      • ALWAYS keep your license key/GUID secure and DO NOT share it with anyone that you do not wish to have access.
  • Also, be aware licensing is authorized by a licensing server internal to BIS. If that server goes down, you may temporarily loose licensing.
    • This is an exceptionally rare occurrence and our disaster recovery plan will switch to an alternate licensing server. However, that switchover could take between one and two hours, in which time Grooper would not be licensed.


The "stand-alone" and "self hosted" methods require additional setup using Grooper Config but are more secure.

  • These installations are more secure because the license is locked to an individual machine when the license key is activated.
    • If a user attempts to use the license GUID to license another Grooper installation, licensing will fail.
    • For "self hosted" installations, licensing is distributed to client workstations via a URL provided by the Grooper Licensing service not the license GUID.


Cloud Hosted Licensing

To license your Grooper repository using "cloud hosted" licensing, perform the following steps:

  1. Open the Grooper Web Client in a web browser. At the top you will see that the software is currently "UNLICENSED".
  2. Click the "Design" icon.

  2. With the repository selected in the root node, make sure the "Root" tab is selected.
  3. Click to the right of the License Serial# or URL property and paste your activation key.
  4. Click the "Save" button.

!!

IMPORTANT: KEEP YOUR LICENSE KEY SECURE

When licensing Grooper this way, the license serial number is not bound to any one machine. Your license key/GUID can be used by any user with an internet connection. This has pros and cons.

  • Pro: Multiple Grooper Repositories on multiple machines can be licensed quickly without the additional setup in Grooper.
  • Con: Anyone can license their Grooper Repository using the license key, even if they are on a separate domain.

When using the cloud hosted licensing method, ALWAYS keep your license key/GUID secure and DO NOT share it with anyone that you do not wish to have access.

  2. Close and re-open Grooper Design Studio. At the top the "LICENSEE" should now reflect your current license. You may begin using Grooper!


Stand-Alone Licensing

This portion of the article will instruct you how to perform "stand-alone" licensing. It instructs you how to activate a Grooper license on an individual machine, using Grooper Config.

FYI

If you only complete the steps below, you will have created a "stand-alone" licensed installation.

  • Grooper will only be licensed to the machine ID activating the license.

Be aware these steps are also prerequisite to creating a "self hosted" licensed installation. You must have an activated license in order for the Grooper Licensing service to hand out licensing information to client workstations!

  • The steps below describe how to activate a license on the host server.
  • Importantly, the machine running the Grooper Licensing service (i.e. the host machine/server) must be the one that initially registers and activates the license.

Obtain a Grooper License

Frist, you will need to obtain a Grooper license in order to register and activate your installation. You may receive your license in one of two ways.

  1. As a license key.
    • This is by far the most common method. You will receive a serial number key you can use to activate the product online (something like "a1bc2de3-12a3-a123-a1b2345c6de7")
  2. As a license package.
    • This is much less common. A license package is a ".lic" file you can use to activate the product. This is typically used for "locked down" environments where activating online is not an option.

⚠

If you are planning on installing a Grooper Licensing service to hand out licenses to other workstations, the machine activating the license must be the one to install the service.

If you try to install the Grooper Licensing service on a product that has not activated a license as described in the next steps, it will fail to distribute licensing to other machines.

Open Grooper Config

License activation and management is performed in the Grooper Config application. Open Grooper Config and you will immediately see two things relating to licensing.

  1. The License property will inform you if the product has activated and registered a license. In this case, we have not registered a license yet. So, the property informs us No License Found.
  2. The "Manage License..." button. This button will navigate us to a license activation window.

FYI

License activation changed somewhat in Grooper version 2021. Prior to this version, license activation was performed in Grooper Design Studio. As of Grooper 2021, license activation is performed in Grooper Config.

Activate the License

  1. Press the "Manage License..." button.
  2. The "Manage Licese" window will appear.
  3. Select the Activation Method property and use the dropdown menu to choose how you're activating the license.
    • For this tutorial we will choose OnlineActivation. This is the most common method, activating online with a serial number key.

  1. Select the Serial Number property.
  2. Enter your license serial number key.
  3. Press the execute button to activate your license.

  1. Upon successful license activation, you will see the following notification.
  2. Press the "OK" button to continue.

Verify Your License

After activating your license, you will see the License property change from No License Found to Installed. It will also list your company's name (or who the license is registered to).

You can also view more specific information about your license from Grooper Config.

  1. Select the License property.
  2. Press the ellipsis button at the end.
  3. This brings up a window displaying basic information about your license: the serial number used to activate Grooper, the licensee name, its expiration and last time the license was reset.
  4. Select the Licenses property and press the ellipsis button at the end to view even more specific information about your license.

This will bring you a window displaying the specifics of your product license, including licensed OCR engines, how many concurrent connections to Grooper Design Studio can be made, volume licensing, and worker thread licensing.

Self Hosted Licensing

Imagine you have a second workstation from a machine you've already licensed (using the "stand-alone" licensing method). Opening Grooper Design Studio for the first time on the second workstation, you will see that the repository is listed as "UNLICENSED" and several tabs and options will not be available to you.


No big deal. That's what "self hosted" licensing is for! With one machine already running a licensed version of Grooper, you can install the Grooper Licensing service to hand out licenses to multiple other workstations.

Self-hosted licensing is accomplished in three steps:

  1. Activate the Grooper license on the machine that will be the host server for licensing.
  2. Install the Grooper Licensing service.
  3. License client workstations

Installing a Grooper Licensing Service

Once a license has been activated on a machine, you can distribute licensing to client workstations by installing a Grooper Licensing service. This makes the single licensed machine a host, serving licenses to multiple machines. Installing the Grooper Licensing service is the first step in creating a "self hosted" licensing setup.

  • Grooper Services are various executable applications that run as a Windows Service to aid Grooper.
  • The Grooper Licensing service will allow one licensed machine to hand out licensing information to other workstations.
  • To do this, the machine installing the service must have an installed version of Grooper that has been activated with a product key or licensing package.

Open Grooper Config

Services are installed and configured in the Grooper Config application.

⚠

You must run Grooper Config as an administrator to install, configure, start and stop services.

⚠

The Grooper Service User must have the "Log on as Service" permission.

Add a New Service

  1. Press the "Edit Services..." button to add a new service.

This will bring up a Service Manager window to install, configure and otherwise manage Grooper services.

  1. Press the "Install..." button.
  2. This will bring up a window to install a Grooper Service.
  3. Select Grooper Licensing
  4. Press the "OK" button to continue.

FYI

Be aware the service is installed for whichever repository is selected in the Repository dropdown in the upper right corner. This defaults to whatever is selected for the Default Repository in Grooper Config, but can be changed using the dropdown list.

  1. Grooper Licensing runs as a web service. Client machines will point to the host machine, port number and URL path indicated here via the Connection URL.
    • The settings here are populated by default. However, you can edit these if necessary.
  2. You must always enter service user authentication in order for the service to run. Use the User Name and Password property to enter service user authentication.
  3. Press the "Execute" button to continue.

FYI

You may also configure default service user settings on the main Grooper Config screen. If you enter authentication credentials here, you do not need to enter them when configuring the service. This can save you time when installing and configuring multiple services.

Start the Service

  1. Upon pressing the "Execute" button, a new Grooper Licensing server is added to the list of services.
  2. However, notice its Status is listed as Stopped
    • Also, the icon next to the item is red.

We need to start the service in order for this machine to start hosting license distribution.

  1. Select the service you wish to start.
  2. Press the "Start" button.

  1. Upon successfully starting the service, you will see the Status change to Running
  2. The icon next to the item will also change from red to green.

Now, this machine can use this Grooper Licensing service to hand out licensing information to workstations. We will discuss how to configure workstations to do this in the next tutorial.


Licensing Client Workstations

Once the Grooper Licensing service is installed and running on a server, all you have to do is copy out a connection URL and paste it into an unlicensed Grooper Repository's root node.

Copy the Connection URL

The first thing you will need is the Connection URL from the Grooper Licensing service.

From the machine running the Grooper Licensing service, open Grooper Config.

  1. Press the "Edit Services..." button.

This will bring up the "Service Manager" window.

  1. Select the running Grooper Licensing service.
  2. Press the "Edit..." button.
    • Note: We won't actually edit the service. We're just doing this to find the Connection URL needed to license the unlicensed workstation.

In this window, copy the Connection URL listed here.

You can close out of this window and Grooper Config at this point.

Open Grooper Design Studio on the Unlicensed Machine

Open Grooper Design Studio on the Unlicensed Machine. This machine will also either need to connect to existing Grooper Repository or have a new one created from Grooper Config at this point.

  1. Select the root node of the Grooper Repository's node tree.
  2. Make sure you have the "Root" tab selected.
  3. We will use the License Serial# or URL property to point to the Grooper Licensing service running on the other machine using the Connection URL we copied earlier.

Point to the License Sever

  1. Select the License Server URL property and paste the copied URL from the Grooper Licensing service.
    • Note: You can also simply type in the URL.
  2. Now if you save and refresh the page, you will see that you are no longer UNLICENSED.
  3. You will also see you have access to a new tab called "Licensing".

That's it! This machine is licensed now, using the product license distributed by the Grooper License service.

  1. You can verify the product is licensed by navigating to the "Licensing" tab. You can also view specifics about the product license here, as well.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.grooper.com/index.php?title=2023:License_Activation&oldid=25728"