If, when defining application licensing requirements (see the Getting Started topic for more information), it is determined that offering a trial or evaluation period is necessary, it is important to understand what this means and the different ways it can be achieved.
There are generally two approaches taken to issue trial licenses; however, you can contact us if these you feel these may not fit your requirements.
Using the WritableLicense implementation allows your application to write its own license files. Subsequently, these types of licenses may be implemented and used to allow your application to issue a trial automatically the first time it is run.
Since these files may be written to easily, it is important to take additional measures to prevent these licenses from being altered in a way that may result in additional, unauthorized evaluation periods. The sample applications that show you how to use these writable license files use additional validation and license file aliases (which are hidden copies of the license file) to help prevent this from happening.
There are some cases where it may not be acceptable for just anyone to install the application and automatically receive a trial. This could, for example, include cases where the trial or evaluation period requires purchase. Consequently, requiring activation and a higher level of security through the use of read-only license files is often desirable, if not required, in these types of scenarios.
PLUSManaged gives you the flexibility of defining your own license types, and their respective behaviors, using the various properties available to you in the License class or WritableLicense class. Our recommendation is to configure your Product Option in SOLO Server to for this as follows:
When configuring your product option, PLUSManaged requires the "Issue Installation ID" option to be checked!
Once you have defined and configured the Product Option, you can then expand on the license validation in your implementation as necessary. For example, if you picked a Trigger Code # of 1 to represent trial/evaluation licenses, you may always want to verify that the date in EffectiveEndDate is not a past day when the value of the TriggerCode property is 1.
You can chose to implement a variety and any combination of restrictions to limit the use of your trials, with the purpose of encouraging prospects to purchase a license. PLUSManaged provides you with the flexibility to implement more than just the common restrictions described here, of course. If further guidance is needed, contact us.
The most ubiquitous trial/evaluation restriction is limited time. This is where licensing restricts the amount of time the application may be used before a purchase is required. As an example, this could simply be a free trial which only runs for 30 days, and would use the EffectiveEndDate property to enforce the expiration date.
Another common restriction is the amount of times the application may be used or run. This is where the application may only be run or used for a given number of times, before requiring purchase for further use. For these scenarios, a WritableLicense implementation is often required, as it allows the application to use any of the numeric user-defined properties to keep track of uses/counters as needed.
Limitations on application features can also be implemented in a variety of ways, of course.
Applications that contain features that should be evaluated may want to make sure the feature is only used a reasonable number of times without allowing indefinite use. For these scenarios, a WritableLicense implementation is often required, as it allows the application to use any of the numeric user-defined properties to keep track of uses/counters as needed. An example of this scenario could include an application that transfers videos to a portable device. It's reasonable for users to expect they could test this functionality, but it is also reasonable that a trial might only permit the user to transfer a handful of such files to ensure it works as expected before purchasing.
In other cases, applications might have features that could alter output in a way that would require purchase for practical use. For example, if the application produces some kind of document output (say a PDF, for example), it could overlay the a word or phrase (like "DRAFT COPY" or "EVALUATION VERSION") on the document.
Other applications may simply have features completely disabled during the trial. An example could include image manipulation software which shows a limited preview of its output, but does not allow the manipulation/transformation to be applied to the photo and saved during the trial period.