Licensing overview: seats, features, and bundles

Managing how users access your company data is an important factor in information security. Users may be employees within your company, or they may be outside suppliers or contractors. Users gain authorized access to Teamcenter functionality through named user licensing. With named user licensing, each user has appropriate access to the system from any Teamcenter client, and purchase of licenses and keys can be minimized. When Teamcenter is installed, a Default Local License Server (DLLS) is defined. This DLLS is used as the default license server for the site, which in turn becomes the default license server for a user. If multiple license servers exist, an administrator can assign a different license server. When a user logs on through any Teamcenter interface, such as rich client and Active Workspace, NX and Solid Edge integrations, SOAs, and mobile applications, Teamcenter requests checkout of a seat license from the license server assigned to the user. As the user performs actions beyond foundation functionality, such as actions that are part of Change Manager and Requirements Manager features, Teamcenter requests checkout of corresponding feature keys from the license server. A named user on a site can be assigned only one license server at a time. A license server can serve licenses to more than one site. Seat level A seat license enables access to the system and foundation (base) Teamcenter functionality. By default, users are assigned an Author license seat level. An administrator can assign the user a different seat level, such as Consumer. Typically, license files include three license seat level options plus an internal seat type for administration: Seat level Primary focus Author Create and edit data. Consumer Query, view, print, and use basic viewer capabilities. Create/Edit item Yes No Create/Edit BOM Yes No Create/Edit change1 Yes No 2 Create/Edit dataset Yes Yes 3 Create/Edit folder Yes Yes Initiate workflow Yes Yes Review/Approve workflow Yes Yes 4 Occasional author Create and edit data as at the Author level, but only for a limited time per month. This level is intended to support two use cases: Access is required several days per month, but for short periods. Access is infrequently required, with long periods. Limited time is defined as the combination of the following: Maximum of twenty hours per month. Maximum of five unique calendar days when logged on for over an hour each day. Teamcenter counts a minimum of 1 hour use per logon, and a maximum of 7.5 hours per day. Admin A special system administration level assigned to the infodba and dcproxy user definitions provided for every site. The infodba and dcproxy users cannot be switched to another seat level, nor can other users be assigned the Admin seat license level. The infodba user must only be used for installation and upgrade, and dcproxy must be used only for the Dispatcher. The infodba and dcproxy users must not be used to perform any actions as regular Teamcenter users. Day-to-day administration activities (including scheduled cron jobs such as running the data_sync utility) must be performed by a named user who is a member of an administrator group. Members of an administrator group may have similar privileges and authorizations as infodba, but have greater accountability because their activities are logged with their identity. Feature keys Feature keys are licenses for optional Teamcenter modules, and are required to use certain Teamcenter solutions, such as Change Manager and Requirements Manager. Checkout of a key gives a user access to the module from all interfaces to Teamcenter. License bundles Companies can purchase license bundles as well as licenses for individual seats and features. Teamcenter license bundles typically include seat-level licenses for base (foundation) Teamcenter functionality and keys for a group of features. Bundles are created such that upon logon a user consumes a seat license and the entire group of features in the bundle, and users not assigned the bundle cannot independently leverage the features in the bundle. If the license server assigned to the user includes a license bundle in the license file, an administrator can assign the user a license bundle. Support for license bundles includes: Assigning license bundles to users using the rich client. Assigning license bundles to users using the make_user utility. Enforcing a user's seat license level based on the base seat license available in the assigned bundle. Ensuring that only as many active users are assigned a bundle as there are licenses for that bundle. Allowing check out of feature keys that are not part of the assigned bundle, but are available separately in the license file. Recording use of feature keys and license bundle in the FlexLM license logs. Related Topics Monitor seat license level violations 1 With appropriate Change Management license 2 Consumer can create a Problem Report (PR) or Issue Report. 3 Consumer can annotate and mark up PDFs, images, and snapshots, but cannot edit the sources directly. 4 Consumer cannot approve a workflow if approval would make updates to an object other than PR, ECR, or ECN.