Upcoming changes to license checks in VertiGIS Studio
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Upcoming changes to license checks in VertiGIS Studio
Today in VertiGIS Studio a variety of different license check approaches exist. This has made it difficult to troubleshoot and support customers who are experiencing issues with licensing. Over the next months, we will consolidate license checks to use a single approach.
What is changing?
All VertiGIS Studio products are moving toward using the same online license check mechanism, both at design time (e.g. when administrators sign-in to VertiGIS Studio Designers) and at runtime (e.g. when end-users run Web or Mobile apps).
For VertiGIS Studio products deployed as SaaS on apps.vertigisstudio.com or apps.vertigisstudio.eu, nothing changes. VertiGIS Studio products delivered on-premises will no longer cache a local license that is updated daily by a license assistant. Instead, license checks will be made directly to an online endpoint. We are also phasing out offline activation of licenses as they caused significant confusion and support challenges. VertiGIS Studio requires an Internet connection to operate, but offline activation allowed license verification without an Internet connection. This mistakenly led some customers to believe that VertiGIS Studio was supported in environments without outgoing Internet connectivity.
What is not changing?
VertiGIS Studio software will continue to behave as it does today when a license check passes or fails.
What is VertiGIS collecting?
VertiGIS logs some basic information when a license check occurs.
- Customer UID (non-identifiable unless you have access to VertiGIS commercial database)
- Hashed user UID (anonymous – actual user cannot be identified)
- Hashed Esri portal origin UID (anonymous – actual portal cannot be identified)
- VertiGIS Product (e.g. VertiGIS Studio Web)
- Designer? (allows us to distinguish design-time checks from runtime checks)
- Date and Time of Request
- Referrer (from the incoming request)
This information will be used for support purposes and to allow verification of commercial licensing between the customer and VertiGIS.
What do I need to enable on my network?
If you use a proxy in your on-premises environment, you need to allow access to:
https://licensing.geocortex.com/
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Thanks for posting this update about the upcoming changes to license checks in VertiGIS Studio. Do you know when these changes will take effect for on-premises installations? Just want to make sure we’re prepared and have everything lined up on our end.
Appreciate any details you can share on the timeline—thanks!
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The first on-premises installers containing this change will be seen in the August - October timeframe. For on-premises, your existing installed software continues to operate as it always has. When upgrading to new versions later this year, you'll begin to see this change.
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With the new change will this mean we will not be able to use VertiGIS Web/Workflow in an offline environment?
I work in the emergency management space and as such we try to build a critical tool to work and still provide a certain level of operational functions in the event we lose internet connectivity.
Can you please explain how these changes might affect these applications?0 -
Adam goodfellow … twofold answer to your question (general, and then your use case)
In general, VertiGIS Studio was built to address the market trends and increasing demands of our customer-base for a cloud-first, SaaS-first architecture and all the benefits that this enables. VertiGIS Studio does require an Internet connection for all regular use. This was true before this change, and continues to be true after this change.
Having said that we have lots of customers still using VertiGIS Studio for emergency management use cases. The two most common approaches I see are:
1. Building infrastructure redundancy. It isn't just about Internet connectivity, it is about power, network, connectivity, and a host of other questions when you are in an emergency management situation. Some customers are building redundant networks, ensuring generators for power, and have taken advantage of portable generator based WiFi stand-alone equipment to ensure power, network, and connectivity during response.
2. Assuming everything will be unavailable. Many customers are using VertiGIS Studio Mobile and building fully disconnected apps that never require anything external during an emergency response. Once it is built, a bank of ~12 iPads are updated nightly with latest key data, and always charging. When everything goes down, these devices have charge, and a local copy of required data to ensure timely responses to issues.
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HI Adam - Thanks for raising the issues and concerns with offline use of Studio Web and Workflow - I've been in discussions with the Woolpert team today and their service group will be reaching out to you shortly. Thanks!
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