Licensing

Instabase provides a licensing system to track and meter usage of the Instabase platform. This article provides an overview of how to manage licenses, along with frequently asked questions and related terminology.

Licensing terminology

  • License: A license provides the right to use a set of features of Instabase platform for a given period of time. Each license consists of credits, products, and an expiry date.

  • Product: A product represents an app in the platform whose usage is tracked via licensing, such as the Flow app. A license can have one or more products associated with it. To use a product on Instabase, the user needs to be assigned a valid license for the product.

  • CDU credits: Complex Data Units (CDUs) are the credits associated with a license. A CDU represents a unit amount of processing performed by a product.

  • Resource: Resource denotes a feature within a product. Each resource consumes a different quantity of CDU credits per page processed. Higher extraction complexity results in more CDU credits being used by a resource.

Managing licenses

Licenses are managed from the Licenses tab of the Admin app.

Install a license

License files are in the .iblicense format and are provided by your Instabase representative. To install a license:

  1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

  2. Click Add new license.

  3. Click Select license file.

  4. Select your license file (.iblicense) from the file explorer.

  5. Review the license details and click Install.

After adding a license, you’re prompted to assign the license to the entire site or to a subset of users. If this is the first license in the environment, we recommend assigning the license site-wide.

Assign and unassign a license

After installing a license, you can assign the license site-wide or to specific users. A site-wide license is available to all users registered on the platform. User-specific licenses have restricted usage, with credit usage only being available to the assigned users.

To assign a license:

  1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

  2. Click Details on the license to assign.

  3. Select the Assigned licenses tab.

  4. Click + Assign.

  5. Assign the license:

    • Site-wide: Click Assign on the Site tab.
    • To specific users: Select the Users tab, search for specific users, and click Assign next to that user’s name.

To unassign a site-wide license:

  1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

  2. Click Details on the license to unassign.

  3. Select the Assigned licenses tab.

  4. Select the Site tab.

  5. Click Unassign.

To unassign specific users from a license:

  1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

  2. Click Details on the license to unassign.

  3. Select the Assigned licenses tab.

  4. From the Users list, click Unassign for the user to unassign from the license.

Review license usage

The Licenses tab provides a high-level overview of credit usage for all licenses in the environment. To view detailed usage for a license, click the Details button.

From a license’s details page, you can review usage information in tabular or graph format for a specific time period, including the number of credits consumed so far and the number of credits remaining for the license.

Revoke a license

Warning

Revoking a license might prevent assigned users or sites from using Instabase products associated with the license.

To revoke a license and uninstall it from the environment:

  1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

  2. Click Details on the license to revoke. Alternatively, click More (the three-dot icon) to open the license’s submenu.

  3. Click Revoke license.

  4. Click OK.

Info

If you wish to restore the license assignment and products for a license you’ve previously revoked, you can re-install the same license.

FAQ

What if I can’t access the License tab of the Admin app?

Only site admin users can access the License tab of the Admin app. To verify that you are an admin user:

  1. From the Admin app, select Users, or visit https://{Your Instabase URL}/apps/admin/users.

  2. Using the search bar, search for your user account by username or email.

  3. Confirm that the Site admin toggle is turned on for your account. If it isn’t, ask an admin user to assign you site admin status.

Note

The following troubleshooting steps can be performed by site admin users only. If you’re encountering license-related errors and are not an admin, request help from your site admin.

  1. Confirm that the license is installed:

    1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

    2. Confirm that your license appears in the list. If it doesn’t, ask your Instabase representative for a license file and install it.

  2. Confirm that the license is applied site-wide:

    1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

    2. Select a license to open the details page.

    3. Select the Assigned Licenses tab.

    4. Select the Site tab.

    5. Confirm that the license is applied site-wide. You can tell if a license is already assigned if an Unassign button is present. If the button says Assign instead, it means the license isn’t yet assigned site-wide. Click the Assign button to assign the license site-wide.

  3. Confirm that you have enough CDU credits:

    1. From the Admin app, select Licenses.

    2. Select a license to open the details page.

    3. Confirm that the CDU CREDITS REMAINING value is more than 0. If you need more CDU credits, reach out to your Instabase representative.

Can I have more than one license active at a time?

Yes, you can install more than one license at a time. However, for a given product, only one license can be assigned to the site or specific user at a time. For example, you can have one license for Flow and a separate license for Marketplace solutions.

What should I do if my license has expired?

If your license has expired, contact your Instabase representative to issue a new license for you.

Can I assign the same license to the site and users?

Yes, you can assign the license to the site and users, but for any given user, only one license per product can be assigned at a time.

If I have installed one site-wide license and one user-specific license, which of the two licenses captures my usage?

License usage metering prioritizes using the more specific license first. So, in this case, the usage is first metered against the user-specific license. When the user-specific license expires, an admin can then unassign or delete the user-specific license to resume metering the site-wide license.

If my license meters a Marketplace solution, do I need to install a new license after I upgrade or downgrade version of the Marketplace solution?

License-based usage of Marketplace solutions is based only on name, not version; you don’t need a new license to continue using an upgraded or downgraded Marketplace solution.