The aim of this guide is to help you understand ChilliDB licensing, viewing your licensing entitlements, managing your usage and best practices for getting the most out of your ChilliDB licensing investment.
License Allocation and Locking
Named licenses
For Named licenses, each license is dedicated to the one user so no allocation of locking takes place.
Concurrent licenses
For Concurrent Licenses, ChilliDB holds onto those licenses for 240 minutes (4 hours) from the moment the user stops being active within ChilliDB (i.e. inactivity, so not actually using the software to create, edit or view records). This number is a balance based on analysis of usage patterns of many users over a long period of time and user feedback.
Consider if the timeout was small like 15 minutes. If your users were interrupted by a phone call while creating or editing records, they could lose their work in ChilliDB and this would cause frustration and concerns amongst your users. The result would be the data quality would be adversely affected and valuable information from your users about your clients will be lost as it is not being recorded.
In systems which operate near their license limit, this 4 hour timeout can cause those licenses to be held for longer periods of time and meets your users ChilliDB access patterns. The optimal setting for a user system is a trade-off and is subjective based on the way our users use ChilliDB. For example, it is important to realise that if your users use the Logout link in ChilliDB when they are finished using ChilliDB, then doing so will remove their license immediately returning it to the pool to be used by other users. Conversely, walking away from your PC or just closing your web browser, means those users will remain logged into ChilliDB until the timeout passes and it may impact on other users (depending on how many licenses you have).
Because we realise that not all clients utilise ChilliDB in the same way, this timeout is a configuration setting. We can re-configured your ChilliDB to some other timeout if you find you are having issues with users accessing your ChilliDB. The timeout can be set to any number of minutes.
How to Monitor and Manage your Licensing
ChilliDB has management screens which help you manage your licensing. They are available from the System menu > System Management > Manage.
From here you can select Display Licensing Details to display the Licensing Details screen
The Licensing Details screen shows how many user licenses are currently in use and how many you own. Depending on your entitlements, some columns may be 0, some may have actual numbers.
Clicking on the numbers in the Concurrent column can show you who exactly is logged in at that point in time
The License Limit Exception Reporting is available at the bottom of the Licensing Details screen. When clicked brings the License Limit Exception screen which shows you any situations where users attempted to login, and ChilliDB either blocked them completely from logging into ChilliDB due to licensing exceptions, or took an inactive license.
Using these screens will help you monitor your license usage and determine if you need additional licenses or not.
Best Practices
Use the Logout - It is good practice to have your users use the Logout links. If you have low numbers of ChilliDB licenses, this will immediately release a Concurrent license back into the license pool making it free for another user to utilise
Have sufficient licenses for your Organisations’ needs - Ensuring your system has sufficient licenses to meet your users’ demand ensures that your users have a license available to them when they need it most. Having too few licenses leads to information not being entered and updates being lost because a user is not able to login.
Do not share logins – remember, sharing of user logins (not licenses, the actual ChilliDB login and password) amongst your staff if against our User License Agreement. It also means that your record auditing is affected as you do not truly know who is creating or modifying your records. You can view the License Agreement from the Licensing Details screen which is shown earlier in this document.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is it possible to have both Named and Concurrent Licenses?
Yes, it is possible to have a mix of licenses in your system. This is common practice and recommended when you have some integration between your ChilliDB and services like when you connect your website which requires a license to be available whenever your website needs to retrieve information from ChilliDB.
2. Does the Outlook Plug-in Use Additional Licenses?
Our ChilliDB Plug-in shares licenses with the Web Application. In other words, a single user license is needed for each user to access ChilliDB through both the Web Application and Outlook Plug-in.
3. Does ChilliDB Web Controls Require a License? Yes, the ChilliDB Web Controls requires a license with sufficient permissions to access the sections of the ChilliDB system that you access through ChilliDB – e.g. Membership, Events, and Distribution Lists etc. It is recommend that you purchase a Named License to ensure that your ChilliDB Web Controls will always have access to your ChilliDB and your website visitors will not see errors related to no license being available.
4. How does Keep Me Logged In work with Licensing
When logging into ChilliDB, there is an option to keep yourself logged into ChilliDB for longer period of times. This is only giving your web browser the ability to store information in a cookie so you don’t need to enter your credentials when logging into ChilliDB. Browsers these days also include additional password management features, some built in and some through plug-ins. This setting does not impact on your licensing at all.
Further Help? If you require further help with your licensing or would like to request additional licenses, please read this article. ChilliDB Support is also accessible through our Help Desk which is available from here: https://helpdesk.chillidb.com. You will be asked to register and your login will then be approved. Once you have logged in you can lodge questions through the HelpDesk or by sending to helpdesk@chillidb.com and they will be picked up by HelpDesk and tickets created in there.