Distributor licences

In this tutorial, as a distributor, we look at the licence pool, allocate seats to an organisation, renew in time, and see what happens when a licence ends. Every licence comes from the platform: it issues you a pool, with seats and a validity. Under Distributor, Licences, you see the pool's balance: seats in use, allocated, and free. A seat is an active user.

Deactivating or suspending a person frees the seat. Applications, API clients and phones don't count. To give an organisation seats, choose Allocate on the pool. Enter the holder, the seats and the end date, and save the licence. It's usable immediately; the signed record follows within minutes. An allocation never exceeds the free seats or the validity of your pool.

To renew customers beyond that date, first ask the platform to renew the pool. When the customer grows, choose Amend, and change the seats or the end date. Seats can't go below what's in use and allocated. A renewal automatically ends the warning, the grace period and read-only mode. The state changes on its own with the dates. By default, thirty days before the end the licence becomes Ending soon, and the customer sees a warning.

After the end, there are fourteen days of grace, when everything works. Then the organisation becomes read-only: sign-ins continue, but administrative changes are refused. Nothing is deleted. Revoking can't be undone: the organisation loses its seats and becomes read-only. To avoid surprises, filter the licences that are Ending soon, and renew your pool before renewing customers.

The platform also sets how many organisations you can have: see the quota under Distributor account. An organisation that was never activated can be cancelled, and frees its place immediately. And that's it: the pool, allocations and renewals under control. In the next tutorial, we'll install Edge.