FredoTools: sketchUcation licensing for businesses
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Dear sketchUcation community,
I am a CAD administrator in a company with central IT and central purchasing department. Besides SketchUp Pro itself, we also use various SketchUp plugins. Also a few from the Fredo library. Today a user pointed out to me that the tools from Fredo will be chargeable. Now I have taken a look at how licensing for companies is supposed to work.
As I understand it, every Fredo user needs his own sketchUcation account and the purchase of a licence is done via the plug-in "Sketchucation Store extension". A process that is certainly no problem for individual users, but is very difficult to implement in a corporate environment. We would:buy a number of required licences as a complete package via central purchasing
distribute the Fredo tools via the IT department using SCCM
activate the Fredo tools on all computers of those colleagues who need them
manage licences in the normal scope (purchase additional licences, move licences when changing computers or users)
in short, everything that is required in connection with software licence management in a company environment.
Is there a solution / a concept for licence acquisition and licence management of SCF licences for central administration that does NOT require interaction at user level?Another question relates to the online status for licence verification. We have a lot of problems with software and plug-ins that require internet communication but the tools themselves are not able to handle a proxy server or there is no way to set up settings for a proxy server. Can the "Sketchucation Store extension" handle internet proxy servers?
Best regards,
Marc Scherer -
I understand the concerns, perfectly valid.
I will discuss with the Sketchucation team to see what we can do to ease your process.
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Thank you, at least i understood the existing explanation right: The whole stuff is on user level. I'm looking forward to your proposed solutions. best regards, Marc
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Hi Fredo,
you private mailed me here, but I am not allowed to reply to PMs ('cause i haven't contributed enough to sketchUcation).
So i have to answer here:
Q: "-how many users are you considering?"
A: We have 60+ SketchUp Licenses in use, so i think we'll need the Fredo tools for each of themQ:"-did you already encountered problems with Internet connection to validate licenses (i.e. your mention of proxy server)?"
A: Yes, we had. Especially with plugins. Enscape had a problem with it (solved now) but we still have problems with SUPlacemaker 'cause there is no way to set up proxy settings for Placemaker. Our IT security expert told me that Placemaker does not consider/read the Windows settings for proxy servers but tries to communicate directly with their license servers.best regards,
Marc Scherer -
Hi Sketchucation Team,
are there any updates regarding my problem?Best regards,
Marc Scherer
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@cadensaege said:
are there any updates regarding my problem?
Hopefully soon we will have bulk purchasing solved. Next week I hope. We will be in touch so you can test it before we roll it out live.
Fredo has his side ready it just the license sending on server side we need to make sure it behaves as expected.
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Hi Sketchucation Team,
I haven't read anything from you for some time now.
What is the situation with my problem?
Have you worked out a solution in the meantime?
If not, can I expect a solution within the next 2 weeks?
My users are already desperate and would like to continue using the Fredo tools, our company would like to buy but unfortunately we can not do that before the points raised in the first post are clarified.Best regards,
Marc Scherer
@rich o brien said:
@cadensaege said:
are there any updates regarding my problem?
Hopefully soon we will have bulk purchasing solved. Next week I hope. We will be in touch so you can test it before we roll it out live.
Fredo has his side ready it just the license sending on server side we need to make sure it behaves as expected.
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@cadensaege said:
Hi Sketchucation Team,
I haven't read anything from you for some time now.
What is the situation with my problem?
Have you worked out a solution in the meantime?
If not, can I expect a solution within the next 2 weeks?
My users are already desperate and would like to continue using the Fredo tools, our company would like to buy but unfortunately we can not do that before the points raised in the first post are clarified.You can now buy a corporate license (30 or 60 seats).
However, the validation has to be done on each individual computer. There is nothing such as a central management of licenses. You could put the corporate license file on a server and each user would simply validate with this license file (it would take less than a minute by plugin), and this is done once, for present and future version of Sketchup, regardless of the updates of the plugins.
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Hi,
thank you for your quick response.
Where can I find information about a bulk purchase of licenses? Are there any instructions or a manual on how to activate bulk licenses and how to handle a license file stored on a server?Best regards,
Marc Scherer@fredo6 said:
@cadensaege said:
Hi Sketchucation Team,
I haven't read anything from you for some time now.
What is the situation with my problem?
Have you worked out a solution in the meantime?
If not, can I expect a solution within the next 2 weeks?
My users are already desperate and would like to continue using the Fredo tools, our company would like to buy but unfortunately we can not do that before the points raised in the first post are clarified.You can now buy a corporate license (30 or 60 seats).
However, the validation has to be done on each individual computer. There is nothing such as a central management of licenses. You could put the corporate license file on a server and each user would simply validate with this license file (it would take less than a minute by plugin), and this is done once, for present and future version of Sketchup, regardless of the updates of the plugins.
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The corporate licenses for 30 and 60 seats are listed on the purchase page of each Plugin. For instance, here is the one for RoundCorner: https://sketchucation.com/purchase.php?plugin=RoundCorner
I suggested that the multi-seat license files are put on a shared drive (instead on user's PC). Then each individual user would validate locally on his computer against this license file accessed on the network.
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Hi,
thx again for your quick reply.
Do i understand this right?
It is not necessary to install the Sketchucation Extension manager to work with this kind of corporate license? The only thing i have to do is to use a centralized license file for plugin license activation for each user and plugin?Best regards,
Marc Scherer@fredo6 said:
The corporate licenses for 30 and 60 seats are listed on the purchase page of each Plugin. For instance, here is the one for RoundCorner: https://sketchucation.com/purchase.php?plugin=RoundCorner
I suggested that the multi-seat license files are put on a shared drive (instead on user's PC). Then each individual user would validate locally on his computer against this license file accessed on the network.
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Fredo will reply in detail, BUT as far as I understand it the SCFlicensing system needed to validate the licenses relies on sub-code provided by the installation of the SketchUcation Toolset RBZ...
This in turn provides the toolsets use by it...
The SketchUcation Extensions Manager is one of them, although its use is not obligatory, and it has been paralleled by changes to the native tool anyway: the ExtensionStore³ is still useful for accessing the vast number of extensions/plugins uniquely stored here, the SketchUcation Plugins Manager also offers unique ways of managing your loading files etc, and of course there are several other peripheral tools accessed by the Toolset's menu, outside of the toolbar... -
Hi,
thank you for your reply. The problem i have with the Sketchucation Extension manager is: You have to have a Sketchucation-Account to be able to use it. And that's something I really do not need in company context. Something like this is an administrative nightmare. We already have so many accounts and different logins for several Tools, I don't want this for each and every PlugIn. Evrything related to licenses/accounts have to be documented, users have to be informed and so on. We're not only using SketchUp, we are using a bunch of products, most of them are running with SSO and relative easy licensing mechanism.Best regards,
Marc Scherer@tig said:
Fredo will reply in detail, BUT as far as I understand it the SCFlicensing system needed to validate the licenses relies on sub-code provided by the installation of the SketchUcation Toolset RBZ...
This in turn provides the toolsets use by it...
The SketchUcation Extensions Manager is one of them, although its use is not obligatory, and it has been paralleled by changes to the native tool anyway: the ExtensionStore³ is still useful for accessing the vast number of extensions/plugins uniquely stored here, the SketchUcation Plugins Manager also offers unique ways of managing your loading files etc, and of course there are several other peripheral tools accessed by the Toolset's menu, outside of the toolbar... -
@cadensaege said:
Everything related to licenses/accounts have to be documented, users have to be informed and so on. We're not only using SketchUp, we are using a bunch of products, most of them are running with SSO and relative easy licensing mechanism.
The licensing system is a living and evolving tool. It's primary purpose is to give developers a free and robust licensing mechanic. It's main end user is single user to small teams.
I do understand that this does not suit large corporate environments. It may evolve to suit that but at the moment the vast majority of license users are outside corporate/networked systems.
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What we suggest is as follows
- You create a generic free account on Sketchucation web site. You give the credentials to all users
- Each user installs Sketchucation ExtensionStore and my plugins on his computer
- You purchase a corporate license (under the generic credential) for 30 seats
- You receive the license files and put them on a shared drive accessible as files for each user
- Each user validates licenses against these centralized license files
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@rich o brien said:
@cadensaege said:
Everything related to licenses/accounts have to be documented, users have to be informed and so on. We're not only using SketchUp, we are using a bunch of products, most of them are running with SSO and relative easy licensing mechanism.
The licensing system is a living and evolving tool. It's primary purpose is to give developers a free and robust licensing mechanic. It's main end user is single user to small teams.
I do understand that this does not suit large corporate environments. It may evolve to suit that but at the moment the vast majority of license users are outside corporate/networked systems.
Hi,
thank you for this information. This confirms my previous understanding of the Sketchucation Extension Manager. I understand that the target audience is not large companies and that developing a licensing mechanism that meets the needs of large companies would incur costs that would probably be disproportionate to the revenue to be generated. There are always two points of view in the efforts to monetize helpful tools: The developer side, who rightly wants to be paid for their work, and the customer side, who expects a low-maintenance, reliable and, above all, compliant licensing mechanism in addition to the services of the actual tool. This is the downside of monetization for the developer(s). -
@fredo6 said:
What we suggest is as follows
- You create a generic free account on Sketchucation web site. You give the credentials to all users
- Each user installs Sketchucation ExtensionStore and my plugins on his computer
- You purchase a corporate license (under the generic credential) for 30 seats
- You receive the license files and put them on a shared drive accessible as files for each user
- Each user validates licenses against these centralized license files
Hi Fredo6,
I send you my thanks for your effort to help me solve this problem. Probably in the end we will have to do it exactly as you suggest here. Unfortunately, such an approach violates several rules of our internal IT policy. I will have to discuss your suggestion with our internal IT and see if we can implement it as suggested. But as a food for thought for you and the Sketchucation team regarding the danger of such an approach: 60 users use SketchUp daily and an essential part of their workflow are the Fredo tools. All users share the same Sketchucation account. One user has now quit and wants to harm the company. So he logs in with the general Sketchucation account and simply changes password & associated email address. As a result, 59 users will have a slightly longer downtime of FredoTools, because it will not be so easy for us as a company to get back to the Sketchucation account. In my experience Sketchucation itself will first of all refuse to release such an account again, because of course every fool could claim that something like just described happened. Proving the legitimacy of such an account reset would be extremely difficult for us. -
You need to distinguish the installation of plugins from the validation of license.
For installation of plugins
You can centralize the downloads of plugins and their access from user computers. I have developed a plugin called AdditionalPluginFolders which allows to add additional directories for telling Sketchup where to find plugins (unfortunately, this is not supported natively by the Sketchup Plugin Manager, but it is by the Sketchucation ExtensionStore).
As an administrator, you download the rbz file of the plugins and expand them once in a shared directory (as rb file and folder). So, users would have no need to have an account on Sketchucation, or, if they have one, it would be personal.
Each user computer would have to install AdditionalPluginFolders once on his environment and set the additional directory to be this shared directory. After restarting Sketchup, the plugins stored there would automatically be loaded in Sketchup.
This is by the way how I share all my plugins while developing between my 3 computers (2 PC and 1 Mac), between all versions of Sketchup (I use myself Google Drive for the synchronization between computers).
License management
You have your administrative account on Sketchucation, not shared with anybody. This allows you to download plugins and purchase licenses.
Then you put the license files on a shared drive.
Each user computer would have to validate the license for the plugins from the license files in the shared drive, but this is done once for all, for all version of Sketchup and the plugins, past and future.
This is also what I do for my 3 computers.
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@fredo6 said:
You need to distinguish the installation of plugins from the validation of license.
For installation of plugins
You can centralize the downloads of plugins and their access from user computers. I have developed a plugin called AdditionalPluginFolders which allows to add additional directories for telling Sketchup where to find plugins (unfortunately, this is not supported natively by the Sketchup Plugin Manager, but it is by the Sketchucation ExtensionStore).
As an administrator, you download the rbz file of the plugins and expand them once in a shared directory (as rb file and folder). So, users would have no need to have an account on Sketchucation, or, if they have one, it would be personal.
Each user computer would have to install AdditionalPluginFolders once on his environment and set the additional directory to be this shared directory. After restarting Sketchup, the plugins stored there would automatically be loaded in Sketchup.
This is by the way how I share all my plugins while developing between my 3 computers (2 PC and 1 Mac), between all versions of Sketchup (I use myself Google Drive for the synchronization between computers).
License management
You have your administrative account on Sketchucation, not shared with anybody. This allows you to download plugins and purchase licenses.
Then you put the license files on a shared drive.
Each user computer would have to validate the license for the plugins from the license files in the shared drive, but this is done once for all, for all version of Sketchup and the plugins, past and future.
This is also what I do for my 3 computers.
Hi Fredo,
sounds like a better plan, thx.
Best regards,
Marc Scherer -
Hi again,
is PayPal the only payment method available?
Best regards,
Marc Scherer
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