Infralution Support

[nekobul]

Hello Guys,

First excuse me if this question has been answered before. I have already checked the forum how to handle subscriptions, but I was not able to find my particular scenario. I want to find out if what I'm trying to accomplish is possible. Here is a list of requirements:

1. A subscription user installs manually his license key by contacting the authentication service.
2. The authentication service returns license key with ProductInfo containing the subscription expiration date.
3. When subscription period expires, the licensed program automatically contacts the authentication service. This implies the program must be able to use the license key, which the user enters manually initially.
4. If the user renewed his subscription, the program retrieves the license key with the new expiration period and continues to run properly.
5. If the user didn't renew his subscription, the program doesn't function any more.

Is it possible to implement this scenario? What modules have to be purchased and customized?

Thank you for your feedback!

Regards,
Ivan

[Infralution]

The solution you propose would imply that the Authentication Web Service would have to track which subscriptions had been renewed (in its database). This would also mean the authentication database would need to contain information about the customer (which it doesn't currently).

It would be possible to change the database to include this information and have your purchasing system update the subscription information in the database when subscriptions are renewed. You would need to purchase the Authentication Server source code (in addition to an ILS license) to make these sort of changes. The Authentication Server can't change the ProductInfo included in the key (this is set when the key is generated) but you could modify the data returned when the key is authenticated to include a date.

The changes for the above would be fairly substantial. A better solution would probably be to set up a separate web service to handle subscription renewal that would interface directly with your payment system.

You would issue license keys with the expiry date in the ProductInfo. When the expiry date is reached the software would then contact your subscription renewal web service which would check whether the subscription had been renewed and could then issue a new license key (with a new expiry date). It could reuse the same serial number which would make associating renewed license keys to customers would be easy.

This solution has the advantage that you don't have to modify the Authentication Server or ILS software - so integrating future updates to this software doesn't become an issue.
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Infralution Support