Open topic with navigation

Tutorial: Activate Application Features

Overview

This tutorial is designed to demonstrate the features of Instant Protection PLUS 3 using the distributed Demo Application. The Demo Application may be provided by SoftwareKey in order to experience our licensing system in action without needing Instant Protection PLUS 3 installed.

Important

You can download the Demo Application here. It is a .zip file that contains an EXE and two image files.

For those who have Instant Protection PLUS 3 installed, the protected Demo Application can be found in the Instant Protection PLUS 3 installation folder. By default this is:

At install, a shortcut to the Demo Application is added to the SoftwareKey Licensing System folder in the Windows Start Menu. The Demo Application is a standard 32-bit native Windows application created with Microsoft Visual Studio.

What will this tutorial show me?

The Demo Application is already protected using Instant Protection PLUS 3 to demonstrate many features. By completing this tutorial you will:

Important

When activating application features, you must use the Instant Protection PLUS 3 API in order to retrieve the data from the license file needed to determine if a feature is enabled. The Demo Application uses the Instant Protection PLUS 3 API in order to demonstrate this feature.

Launch the Demo Application executable. If you have Instant Protection PLUS 3 installed, you may launch the application from the Windows Start Menu under SoftwareKey Licensing System / Instant Protection PLUS 3 Demo Application

At start up, the application will show a splash screen if the demo_application_splash.bmp file is present in the same folder. Showing a splash screen is one of the options that can be configured when protecting your application.

Once the splash screen has been shown, the initial licensing dialog window is displayed.

This is the first licensing dialog window your customers will see. Clicking the Purchase Demo Application Online link will open the browser to the SOLO Server shopping cart with the product already in the cart. The SOLO Server shopping cart appearance may be customized to match the appearance of your website. You can preview the default shopping cart Purchase link if you are logged into SOLO Server.

The image on the left of the dialog is displayed if the ip_prodlogo.bmp file is in the same folder as the application. This image may be easily replaced with your own logo.

We don't want to evaluate the application in this tutorial, we want to activate it! We will do just this in the next tutorial step.

What can be customized on this dialog?
  • The logo image on the left of the dialog window may use a logo image created by you, or omitted altogether.
  • Anywhere you see "Demo Application" will show the name of your product.
  • The options to Purchase, Activate, or Evaluate the application may be omitted.
  • The evaluation expiration. If you allow an evaluation of your application, you can specify the number of days and/or the number of times someone can run your application.
  • The "Go To Website" link URL. This can also be removed altogether.

Go ahead and click the Activate Demo Application button.

You will now be presented with new options.

We are only going to demonstrate the online activation method in this tutorial. When protecting your own application, you can choose which activation methods your customers may use. For example, you can only allow manual activations if you only want to allow your customers to activate by phone or email. Any activation options you disable will not be shown on this dialog.

What can be customized?
  • The "Click here for support" link URLcan be changed or removed.
  • Anywhere you see "Demo Application" will show the name of your product.
  • Any of the activation options may be omitted. If you only want to allow online activations, you can do so.
  • The logo image on the left of the dialog window may use a logo image created by you, or even omitted altogether.

Click the Activate Demo Application Online button. You will see the following dialog window.

You are probably asking yourself, "What is a License ID and how do I get one?" Each license generated in SOLO Server has a numeric License ID and alphanumeric Activation Password. The License ID and Activation Password need to be provided to the customer so that they can activate your application. SOLO Server will validate the License ID and Activation Password they enter and activate your application. If you use the SOLO Server shopping cart, the entire process is completely automated without the need for you to be involved!

Now we need a License ID and Activation Password.

What can be customized?
  • The "Where is my License ID?" link URL can be changed or removed.
  • The "Click here for support" link location. Or remove the link.
  • Anywhere you see "Demo Application" will show the name of your product.
  • The logo image on the left of the dialog window may use a logo image created by you, or even omitted altogether.

In order to create the test license we will need, we must login to SOLO Server's test author account.

Open this login link in your browser:

Use the following credentials to login to the SOLO Server test author account:

User ID: test

Password: test

Once logged in you will be taken to the SOLO Server Author Home page. While there is a lot to explore in SOLO Server, for this tutorial we only want to create a test license so we may activate our application.

What is a SOLO Server author?

Our customers who use SOLO Server to manage their product's licensing are called "authors" or "SOLO Server authors". When using SOLO Server you will see the "author" term used throughout the product and documentation.

As a SOLO Server author, you will need an easy way to test your applications licensing. We have added this ability with "test licenses". A test license works just like a real license except all test licenses are purged from the system at the start of each month. In addition, no fees are applied to creating or activating test licenses. Creating a test license is extremely simple.

Use the menu Customers / Add a Test License.

A list will be shown with all the products available for adding a license. Select Instant Protection PLUS 3 Sample Perpetual License with All Features Enabled from the list.

Click OK on the informational pop-up.

You have just created a test license in SOLO Server!

With this license, we now have the License ID and Activation Password we need to activate our protected application. While we manually created the license in this tutorial, SOLO Server authors using the eCommerce feature would have the license created automatically when the customer purchases. The customer would then receive the License ID and Activation Password by email as well as having it shown in their browser at purchase.

Leave this browser window with the license information open as we will want to get the activation information used in the next step.

Customers and licenses in SOLO Server

Customer records in SOLO Server contain contact and registration information about your customer. Each customer record is assigned a unique Customer ID generated by SOLO Server.

A license record contains all the data for activating a product. Each license record is assigned a License ID and Activation Password by SOLO Server. A license record is always attached to a customer record, and a customer record can have multiple licenses attached or even no licenses.

Note: when you created the test license, a customer record was automatically created for you with the test license attached.

Now we are all ready to activate the application.

Enter the License ID and Activation Password from the license record in SOLO Server into the application's activation dialog we had left open in step 2 then click the Continue button.

The application will communicate with SOLO Server to validate the license and process the activation.

Congratulations! You have just activated the application with a perpetual license. that also enables application features. Click the Continue button on the activation dialog.

In the Demo Application, click the Common API Features tab and you can see the feature status has all three features enabled. The Features menu now has the items enabled as well.

How does this work?

We created a test license in SOLO Server using the "Perpetual License with All Features Enabled" Product Option. This Product Option was configured to include an extra 14-bits of predefined data in the activation response from SOLO Server. The application was activated as a perpetual license and the extra data was stored in a field of the local license file.

In the Demo Application code, the Instant Protection PLUS 3 API is used to read this numeric field from the local license. The Demo Application was designed so each of the first 3 bits of this value correspond to one of the features. It checks if a bit is set, and if so it enables the menu item for that feature. Further information can be found in the Feature/Modular Licesning Tutorial.

Tutorial Completed

For your next tutorial, we suggest  Deactivating a License Remotely which will use the test license we created in this tutorial.

Optionally, you could reset the licenses for the Demo Application. The Resetting Licenses while Testing tutorial will demonstrate how this is done or return to the Tutorials Overview topic.