Licenses

The Licenses node allows you to view and manage licenses configured on your environment, manage the users associated with those licenses and determine if you have exceeded your license via the server usage report.

The licensing information described in this documentation is for administrative purposes. Licensing policies described here are for information purposes only and may be superseded by other legal documentation, agreements or the EULA. Contact your product representative or sales representative, if you need assistance or more information regarding licensing and acceptable use policies.

The Licensing view allows you to add, edit and remove licenses, users as well as reset validation counts, generate the license audit and server usage reports. The licenses view also displays the amount of users, workflows and forms that can be created with your license. Use the server usage report to compare your license with deployed artifacts and determine whether you are within your license agreement.

Field Description
Add Add a new license.
Edit Edit a license, for example updating an evaluation license to a full version, or update license before expiration.
Remove Remove an existing license.
Refresh Refresh the list of available licenses.
Reset Validation Count Perform a reset of the validation count to "release" licenses consumed by users who should no longer consume licenses. (Used in conjunction with the Users tab)
Audit Report Generate a report on licensed users.
Server Usage Report Generate a report on usage data by month.
To request a license key, follow the steps below:
  1. Go to the Nintex Customer Central page.
  2. Click the License section.
  3. Click the On Premises tab.
  4. You see all license keys currently assigned to you.
  5. To get a new license key, click Request K2 License.
  6. Select the product that you require. Select the License Type you need, then copy the System Key from the License Configuration page in the Setup Manager and specify the Server Name.

    Copy the System Key to paste into the field in the Request K2 License dialog.
  7. Click Submit. You see a confirmation message, and an email is sent to you with a temporary key that you can use to continue with the installation.
  8. Check your e-mail and copy the temporary license key into the License Configuration page in the Setup Manager.
  9. You will receive an email, within four days of your request, that contains the authorized license key for the type of environment you selected. Use the Setup Manager or Management to update the temporary license key with the authorized key.

Follow these steps to add a license to your environment. (You must request a license key using the system key to add a new license)

  1. Click Add on the Licenses page.
  2. The Add License page opens.

    FieldDescriptionNotes
    ProductThe product to be licensedSelect a product from the list.
    System KeyThe system key uniquely identifies the individual machine.You must provide your system key to request a license.
    License KeyThe license key for the Product to be registered.Enter the license key from the page used to request the new license or the license key returned in email by the licensing system.
  3. Click Apply.

Follow these steps to edit a license. (You will have to obtain a license key for the system key to add a new license to your environment, or update your license before it expires)

  1. Select a license from the list in the Licenses view and click Edit .
  2. The Edit License page opens.
  3. Enter the new license key in the License Key field and click Apply.

Follow these steps to remove a license.

  1. Select a license from the list in the Licenses view and click Remove.
  2. On the Remove License? dialog, click OK to remove it.
  3. Removing all licenses from the Licenses page will cause you to be locked out of Management and an error is displayed.
    To update or add a new license, see the How to Obtain and Manage License Keys KB article.

Use the refresh button when a license has been added, edited or deleted, to refresh the list of licenses in the Licenses view and display reflect recent changes.

The Reset Validation Count option allows you to extend an exceeded license after you have cleaned out the Users view in Management of users who should no longer "consume" a license. The validation count keeps track of users who have connected to the environment. Depending on the license type of the environment, when the validation count exceeds the number of users licensed, the system will prompt you to enter a validation reset key. You must contact Nintex Customer Central for a new validation key.

  1. Select a license in the Licenses view and click Reset Validation Count.
  2. The Reset Exceeded License page opens.
  3. Enter the validation key in the License Key field and click Apply.

The Audit Report allows you to generate a report of active and inactive users. An active user is a person who has opened a connection to the product. You must have Administrator rights to generate the report.

  1. Go to the Management site and use the following path:
    Management > Licenses
  2. Click Audit Report.
  3. The License Audit Options page opens.

    FieldDescriptionNotes
    Sort FieldAllows you to sort by user name, status, or last access date of the userSelect a field from the list
    Sort DirectionSort by either ascending or descending order 
    Display User Names?Displays user names in the reportUncheck this option if you do not want user names shown in the report
    Display License Details?Displays license details in the reportUncheck this option if you do not want license details shown in the report
  4. Click OK.
  5. Open the PDF by clicking the link or save it for later use.
  6. The report, by default, displays your license details and licensed users. All licensed products that are active within the environment are displayed. Each product will have a License Type and Expiration Date.
    The License Details section displays license information by License Type and Expiration Date. A header graph shows a user count of licensed and exceeded users. The green section displays licensed users and red the section displays users that have exceeded the user license.
    • License Type: Displays the type of license associated with a specific product.
    • Expiration: Displays the expiry date of a specific license.
    • Objects: If the license type is subscription-based the number of objects (SmartObjects, forms, views and workflows) that have been created is displayed.
    • Users: If the license type is user-based the number of licensed users is displayed.

    The Licensed Users section displays a header graph with the number of active and inactive users followed by a list with the following columns:
    • User: Displays the user's full names or GUID ID depending on whether the Display User Names? option was selected in the License Report Options page.
    • Last Logged In: Displays the date the user last logged in to the product. This Last Logged In column can help you determine whether users have been inactive for periods of time. You can remove inactive users to free up user licenses.
    • Active: Displays active users with "Yes" and inactive users with "No".
      Active users are users who have recently logged in and their credentials cached in the Security Credential Cache. Typically, these are users who are actively working with product applications.
      Inactive users are users that were removed from the Users view in Management. Typically, these are users who have not logged in for some time or whose user accounts may have expired or been deleted in Active Directory. To update the list of users consuming your license, you have to manually remove them from the Users view.
      Only Active users are included in the license allocation logic.
      Take care when removing users from the Users list as this may prevent a user from accessing the product if all licenses are allocated.

Manage your license to ensure you always have access to all components of the product. Before your license expires, you can request a new license key and use the Setup Manager or Management to update it. Use the expired license check to check for expired licenses. Once your license has expired, you no longer have access to product components such as Designer, Workspace, and Management. See Update expired license for information about updating an expired license.
A check for expired licenses is done on a daily basis. This check is run by default at midnight every day. You can customize this setting by configuring the K2HostServer.exe.config file. Follow the steps below to configure the setting:
  1. Edit the K2HostServer.exe.config file. The file can be found here:
    [INSTALLDIR]\K2\Host Server\Bin
  2. Under the AppSettings section add:
    Copy

    AppSettings configuration

    <add key="LicenseExpiryCheckHour" value="Enter 24 hour value here, like 14" />
                                                
                                                
                                                

    Example:
    Copy

    AppSettings configuration

    <add key="LicenseExpiryCheckHour" value="15" />
                                                
                                            
    In the example above, the check is done daily at 15h00. The value must be a 24 hour value, where 0=midnight.
  3. Restart the K2 service.
If your license expires soon and you want to update it before it expires, you can use the Setup Manager or Management to do so. Follow the steps below to update your license with a new license:
  1. Request a new license from your product representative or from the License Key page on Nintex Customer Portal site. See Request a license for more information.
  2. Update your license using the Setup Manager or Management.
Once your license has expired you no longer have access to product components such as Designer, Workspace, and Management. To update your expired license, request a new license key and then use the Setup Manager to update your license. Alternatively you can contact Nintex Customer Central portal to update the database on your behalf. Once the database is updated you must restart the K2 service.
  • You must provide the system key when requesting a new license. Take care when copying the key, ensuring that no character is missed or extra space (treated as a character) is added to the copied string. If an incorrect digit is supplied or additional spaces are included, the system and license keys will be invalid.
  • The system key is found from the configuration manager, or from the Licenses node of the Management site.
  • Adding, editing or deleting a License requires a restart of the K2 service. In a farm environment, you can use the management site to configure the license once for the environment, but you will then need to restart the K2 service on each server within the farm environment to apply the licensing changes.
  • License keys can be obtained from the customer and partner portal at Nintex Customer Central portal.
  • Keep backup copies of your license keys before making changes to your server's license.
  • If you are locked out of Management due to a deleted or expired license, you can use the License Configuration page in the Setup Manager to update your license or contact Nintex Customer Central portal for assistance. Also see the article How to obtain and manage license keys for more information.

The Users view displays users who's credentials are cached (users who have connected to the product). From this page you are able to remove a user from the list. Use the Audit Report feature to see which users are active and consuming your license.

The Users section only lists users who are cached.

Field Description
Remove Remove a selected user from the Users list.
Refresh Refresh the Users list, when users have been removed.
Audit Report Generate a report on licensed users.
Selected Filter Select a default or custom filter to applied to the Users list.
Quick Search Quick search using the default fields.
User Displays a list of all user names.
State

Users actively consuming your license.

Last Access Date The last date the user was active on the environment. To reduce the number of users consuming your license, you can remove users who have not logged in for some time or whose user accounts may have expired or been deleted in Active Directory.
Take care when removing users from the Users list as this may prevent a user from accessing Nintex K2 if all licenses are allocated.

This option allows you to remove any users from your environment. This frees up licenses for other users. Once you have removed a user, you may need to execute the Reset Validation Count command.

Follow these steps to remove a user from the Users list.

  1. Search or select a user from the Users list for removal. Click Remove.
  2. On the Remove Licensed User dialog click OK to confirm that you want to remove the user.

The Server Usage report allows you to view the number of artifacts, such as workflow definitions, process instances, activity instances, event instances, SmartObjects, forms and views deployed in your environment. The purpose of this report is to compare this number with your license agreement. You can use the license audit report and the server usage report to determine if you are compliant with your license agreement.

Field Description
Export Data button Click the Export Data button to generate a PDF of the report
Refresh Refreshes the report
Month Displays the month of usage data
Workflow Definitions Displays the number of total workflow definitions
Process Instances Displays the number of process instances deployed
Activity Instances Displays the number of activity instances deployed
Event Instances Displays the number of event instances deployed
SmartObjects Displays the number of SmartObjects deployed
Forms Displays the number of forms deployed
Views Displays the number of views deployed
  1. Click Export Data.
  2. Open the PDF report by clicking the link or save the PDF report for later use.
  3. The report opens.
  • All data displayed begins when you first activated your license
  • The data is also displayed in a cumulative format by month, allowing you to see how many new artifacts were deployed in that month. For example, let's say that in a previous month, 300 SmartObjects were deployed, and in the current month the count of SmartObjects deployed is 310. This means that 10 new SmartObjects were deployed this month.
  • Copying a SmartObject adds to the count of deployed SmartObjects.