Question about dynamic license leasing - Qlik Community

stevelord · ‎2016-08-31

Hi, Quick question I hope. If I have:

-20 document cals assigned to a document

-dynamic CAL assignment checked on that document

-20 users logged in, but a few last logged in more than 24 hours ago

If user 21 attempts to login, will qlikview let them take one of the licenses that hasn't been used in 24 hours, or do I need to go delete the CAL assignment from those people to free up the CALs? (I know that if their Last Accessed date is more than 24 hours ago, the assignment can be ended and license handed off to someone else immediately, otherwise the quarantine is there.)

I ask because we have this one dashboard with 50 people on it, but 20 never use it, 20 use it infrequently, and I'd kind of like to take my chances cutting their licenses to 25 dynamically assigned CALs to give me breathing room elsewhere. (This particular team wants 100% of everyone with the same level of access 'just in case someone needs it'.) Based on usage I see, I seriously doubt 25 people will ever hit this dashboard within 24-48 hours of each other and half the people will go weeks between logins. Our other dashboards are much more tightly controlled and better utilized, so I don't see dynamic assignments being appropriate anywhere else.

swuehl · ‎2016-08-31

I believe you need to actively release the license to be able to assign the released license to another user (I mean, there is no built-in feature that does automatically free a named user license when it's unused for a certain period of time).

I remember vaguely some threads that were talking about some (scheduled) automatism using the API, so it might be worth to search the forum some more.

stevelord · ‎2016-09-01

Thanks, I am remembering a time when I was given access to a second remote desktop to use for testing purposes, and I setup qlikview and pulled my named license down to my instance of qlikview on that desktop. But then I couldn't access anything from my instance of qlikview on the local desktop because it was now present on 2 remote desktops and 2 machines was the limit for a named license. Consultant and I couldn't figure out how to release it from one of the remote desktops except maybe uninstall and he encouraged me to call QlikTech. Before I called QlikTech, I thought about the 24-hour quarantine on re-allocating licenses and wondered if there might be an invisible version of that within the license itself keeping me from re-allocating it back to another machine. So I let the weekend come and go and found I was able to pull the license back down to my local desktop. I figured out a test I can do to see if dynamic document cal assignments work like that.

It could be each time a cal is used, a 24-hour block on moving the cal is initiated or reset. And maybe that block simply expires after 24 hours and a different user can pull that CAL like how I was able to pull my named license back from the 2nd remote desktop to my local desktop.

I'm going to setup a test qvw with 1 dynamically assigned cal, and have a person without a named license sign on. Then have another person without a named license try signing on before and after 24 hours have elapsed to see how it goes.

Note: I believe we are honorbound to not juggle licenses excessively. I just have this one dashboard with 50 licenses on it and only 20 or so people using it, and most of them infrequently. Since I can't completely block the non-users, and I don't like having 30 cals collecting dust, I think 25 dynamically assigned cals would easily accommodate the kind of usage that dashboard has without excessive license juggling or blocking any end users. If my test proves the theory of a 24-hour block that expires and leaves a cal leaseable to others.

swuehl · ‎2016-09-01

If you are using EE QlikView server, maybe Usage CALs can be useful here.

stevelord · ‎2016-09-01

Nope, we're on the small business server and automating well enough to stay in the small business server for quite awhile I think. Just this underutilized dashboard nagging at my thoughts. (I have also reached out to that team to inquire if anything I can do to make it more useful or better experience etcetera, but half the team are old salt super-veterans content to keep doing things the way they always did them. It's newer hires and trainees and a couple of managers using the dashboard. And a governance thing that says the whole team gets access to exactly all the same things no matter what. )

Peter_Cammaert · ‎2016-09-01

If you are using an SBE, then we are talking about Named and Document CALs.

License leases may expire, and you can use an assigned license in the AP on different devices and locations whereby each new session kills/takes over from the previous session (no delays). But until now, QlikView CAL assignments never get released automatically, not by the QMC or anybody else. Once they are assigned - either manually by you or dynamically by the Server from a pool of available licenses - they will stay assigned. I think this stems from one of the original license agreements that stipulated - IIRC - that a Named CAL was not to be reassigned. That was a long time ago.

Luckily, times have changed and like Stefan already mentioned (and just like any sensible admin would expect this to work out in reality) there are a few simple and a few less simple techniques to release unused CALs after a predefined period of time (24hrs or more after last usage). they either use 1) a PowerTool (the simplest trick), 2) a CAL manager (most thorough and ready-to-use) or 3) the QMS API (the more complex approach)

See amongst others:

Remove Named CALs

Qlikview Server CAL Manager

QlikView Management API - #2 Export / Add / Delete Document CALs

QlikView Management API - #3 Export / Add / Delete Named CALs

Best,

Peter

stevelord · ‎2016-09-06

Thanks, I will take a look.

Also the bit about not reassigning CALs, I believe the term was to not reassign a named CAL unless the previous holder of the CAL left the company or changed to another position. So if someone left their position, you could recover the named license and hand it off to their replacement. But you couldn't, say, let Joe use the named license on Mondays and Tuesdays, then move it to Bob Wednesdays, and have Bob use the named license on Thursdays and Fridays and point back to Joe for use on Monday again. (Anyway, I'm not trying to do anything dynamic with named CALs, so no worries there. And the document cal situation is just me trying to leave some available for 'whoever shows up' in a particular group of users of an underutilized dashboard. )