Managing your Relyence License

There are two types of licenses available for your Relyence products: Named Users and Concurrent Users. The choice depends on your specific needs.

Named Users License

With named user licensing, you purchase a distinct license for each individual who is going to use Relyence. For example, if you have a team of 5 people that use Relyence, you would purchase a 5-user license and enter account information for each of the 5 team members. Each user has their own username and password for signing in to Relyence. You must be one of the 5 named team members in order to use Relyence.

You cannot use a named license more than once. For example, you cannot share username and passwords and have multiple individuals sign in to Relyence using the same username and password. In this case, Relyence will automatically sign out users on a first-in first-out basis.

Concurrent Users License

With concurrent user licensing, you purchase a number of licenses that are not tied to specific users but are granted on a first-come first-served basis as users sign in to Relyence. For example, you have a team of 10 people that use Relyence; however, maybe only 5 are typically using Relyence at one time. In this case, you would purchase a 5-concurrent user license and enter account information for each of your 10 team members. Then as users sign in to Relyence, they are granted a license to use. Once the 5 licenses are in use, no further sign ins are allowed. The sixth user to attempt to sign in to Relyence will get a message indicating that no licenses are available, and they must wait until a license becomes available in order to use Relyence or request help from a Relyence Administrator.

Relyence concurrent user licensing can also control licensing based on the individual Relyence Products available. For example, one Relyence concurrent user license configuration could include 2 Full concurrent users for FMEA and Reliability Prediction and 2 Read-only concurrent users for FMEA. In this case, if all users request use of Full licenses for both FMEA and Reliability Prediction:

By the 3rd user sign in attempt, Full licenses for FMEA and Reliability Prediction will not be available and users attempting to sign in will see an informational message displayed on the Licenses Unavailable dialog indicating one of the following:
- Only a Read-only licenses can be activated for FMEA, if the user has permission to use a Read-only licenses.
- No licenses can be activated for FMEA and Reliability Prediction, if the user does not have permission to use Read-only licenses.
By the 5th user sign in attempt, neither Full nor Read-Only licenses will be available for FMEA and Reliability Prediction, so the user cannot be signed in.

For more details, see the Managing Concurrent User Licenses for Administrators or Managing Concurrent User Licenses for Users topics.

Controlling License Usage with Concurrent Licensing

There are several terms used when describing license management with concurrent licensing. Knowing these terms will be helpful in understanding how Relyence manages your concurrent licenses.

Consuming a license: When a user signs in to Relyence, they are granted a license, or consume a license. A consumed license decreases the available license count by one.
Relinquish a license: When a user signs out of Relyence, the license they were using is relinquished. A relinquished license increases the available license count by one.
License counts by Relyence Product: When concurrent user licenses are purchased, they can be set up with varied numbers of concurrent users by Relyence Product. For example, one Relyence concurrent user license configuration could include 2 Full concurrent users for FMEA and Reliability Prediction and 2 Read-only concurrent users for FMEA. If a user signs in having requested only FMEA, the license count for FMEA drops by one, but all other Full and Read-only licenses remain available.
Full license: Provides the user full access to the Relyence Product based on the user's Group permissions.
Read-only license: Provides the user access to the Relyence Product, but no editing can be completed. Data can be viewed only.
Idle user: A user who is signed in to Relyence but who is not actively using it. Inactivity is determined based on performing actions within the software. User activity can be viewed using the Manage User and Groups function, clicking the Active Users tab, and reviewing the Last Seen column.
Force sign out: Relyence includes a function to allow users to forcibly sign out other users who are consuming Relyence licenses. This function would only be necessary in the following situation: all Relyence licenses are consumed, an additional user needs to use Relyence and is unable to wait, and there are inactive users signed in to Relyence. In this case, inactive users could be forcibly signed out, or have their license deactivated. This function is only available on a permission basis and must be granted by your Relyence Administrator. When a user is forcibly signed out, the available license count increases by one, and any unsaved data by the user forcibly signed out are lost.

The simplest and most effective way to manage your concurrent licenses is to instruct all users to sign in to Relyence when needed with only the Relyence Products required and then promptly sign out when their work is complete. This will ensure that Relyence licenses are only being consumed when needed.

There are several important rules to remember when using concurrent user licensing:

If you do not sign out of Relyence by clicking Sign Out from the Account menu, your license will remain consumed.
If you forget to sign out of Relyence and an idle timeout is set, Relyence will ask at the end of the idle timeout period if you would like to sign out or continue working. If you choose to continue working, the idle timeout will reset. If you do not respond to the question within one minute, Relyence will sign you out. However, if you have unsaved data changes in your active Analysis, the idle timeout message will not appear, and you will not be signed out of Relyence.
If you do not have an idle timeout set, you will never be signed out of Relyence. For this reason, it is highly recommended to always have an idle timeout set when using concurrent user licensing.
If you have unsaved changes made to your active Analysis, you will never be signed out of Relyence. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you save your changes frequently, so that your license will not remain consumed when you are inactive.
A Relyence Administrator can forcibly sign out a user in order to reclaim a license. This should only be used with discretion, as it will cause any unsaved data changes to be lost.

More details about the Sign In process with concurrent user licensing can be found in the following topics:

Managing Concurrent User Licenses for Users - this topic is applicable for those Users not assigned to the Administrators group.
Managing Concurrent User Licenses for Administrators - this topic is applicable for those Users assigned to the Administrators group as Relyence Administrators.

What if there is a problem, such as a computer crash, and I am unable to sign out of Relyence?

Relyence periodically runs a check to make sure that licenses with an Idle Timeout set via the Settings are reclaimed in case an error situation arises.