Infralution Support

[HandyMac]

I hope that some honest feedback will be appreciated about my initial experience. The following comes from a newbie who has been struggling to get to grips with this licensing system.

I purchased the Infralution licensing system this morning. I hadn't bothered going thru the evaluation exercise, positive feedback from many people on these forums was very persuasive that I had found what I was looking for. And unlike some other popular alternatives the cost wasn't prohibitive. Besides which, as I was going to purchase anyway I saw no point installing then having to uninstall etc.

I have spent several hours today trying to piece together how to use this software. I'm getting there, but there's some way to go yet. Obviously if I run into problems I can ask questions here. I don't specifically have any questions to ask right now, though I'm not there yet.

However, from my initial experience my feeling is that there's something important missing from the product. There is no yellow brick road which you can use to create a licensed application (or in my case a DLL I intend to deploy on an ASP.NET web site). I appreciate that there are several decent example projects which give the information, but I've found it does take time to pick my way thru those. What I needed was a bullet point list of things I had to do to make this licensing scheme work.

I think a big improvement would be if there was a help topic or other document which stated in clear terms what was necessary to create an Infralution-enabled solution. Let me give examples of what I mean below.

Firstly, it wasn't really clear that I needed to add some class modules to my C# project (and I still don't know whether I've added all that I need). So point 1 would be to advise users that as a minimum they need to add classes A, B and C to their software project. The examples provided add a reference to Infralution.Licensing - they don't provide projects with the class modules already attached. I spent a little time (not very much) adding that same DLL reference to my project until it suddenly dawned on me that actually I needed to embed the classes which had been provided as a result of purchasing a license. Sounds dumb I know, but it's what happened.

Secondly, it was not much better having found that I needed to add these classes what I needed to do next to make everything tick. A nice simple example of setting up a licensed product, creating a working license key and showing which calls had to be made to make the product licensed would have helped me a lot. Just take the user through the process one time. I am still struggling with this now.

Thirdly, in the examples I've seen there is a reference to a constant named LICENSE_PARAMETERS, which is a humungous long string. I'm sort-of getting there with respect to getting this generated by the License Tracker application, but it isn't very intuitive. To generate that LICENSE_PARAMETERS string I have to go to the products tab of License Tracker, right-click on the product, that pops up another dialogue, and Captain Clueless here spent some time wandering around aimlessly until he realised that clicking on the 'Validation Parameters...' button on the bottom of that dialogue produced the necessary LICENSE_PARAMETERS string. I'm still clueless with what the 'Generate Keys at Point of Sale' does (that'll be in the online help somewhere no doubt). The File/New menu has an option marked 'Evaluation...', which when clicked presents another large dialogue - it might seem straightforward where this is going but right now I'm looking at something which isn't very intuitive. So I've generated a license key (after creating a customer, product and distributor), now I've got to select this key for evaluation and there's another piece of information it is asking for called 'Reference' - I'm missing something here.

Fourthly, and this is really a re-iteration of my second point, having got what looked like at least some of the data I needed I then lost the plot trying to understand what went where to get the EncryptedLicense and EncryptedLicenseProvider classes ticking. Presumably that LICENSE_PARAMETERS string gets burnt into the compiled executable, or does it? The instantiator for EncryptedLicense takes 3 parameters - a key, a serial number, and product info. Captain Clueless arrives on the scene again scratching his head about where these parameters come from. For example serial number - WTF did that come from? I haven't seen any reference to serial numbers on the various dialogues I've visited so far, so do I make this number up or have I missed something?

So bottom line is that I really do like what I'm seeing with this product. But it would be really helpful to have had some very simple documentation about setting up and enabling a software product to show how someone could go from first principles to enabled product. At the moment the online help (which is quite good) is slightly too high a level for my liking, what I really needed at this early stage was a very simple roadmap of how to get going - then if I need to enhance the arrangement I would have something simple to build on.

Sorry if this sounds like a bit of a moan - it certainly isn't intended to be, I just feel that Infralution could potentially be missing some customers by not providing a very simple roadmap of how to enable a software product. I know this is going to be the product I had hoped for, however I'm struggling to get off first base.

One thing which would have really helped me to get started today would have been if after purchasing a license the downloads which followed included a bog simple application which had the ability to be licensed. There is one called 'MyApp', but it has the reference to Infralution.Licensing rather than the classes added, and I would rather have seen an example with the classes implemented - that way I could have single-stepped thru the executable code (which I can't do with the DLL reference). Also, MyApp would be a whole lot better if it had a button on the main screen 'Click to enter license' - if you pass by the license dialogues on the way in you have to close the application and restart.

Andrew

[Infralution]

[HandyMac]

Thanks for that. I found the Getting Started section in the help after I had posted the initial message, and that did indeed answer some of my queries. Still slightly detailed as an introduction though, could do with starting with a bullet point list of things which have to be done to get the product implemented, then get into the nitty-gritty afterwards. If I've got the product nearly working I don't want to have to trawl thru reams of text figuring out which bit I've left out - that bullet list could instantly remind me "heck, I haven't done that yet!".

Perhaps one improvement that could be made would be if the help file had a contents section (most help files do), then right at the top could be a link to Getting Started. At present the only presentation is the searchable list of topics, which is okay if you know what you are looking for or need to get information about something specific.

Also, when you start the help it takes you to the Overview page which is orientated towards justifying why the product is necessary. No link to Getting Started on that page. Would be worth either adding a link to Getting Started at the top of that page, or perhaps start with the Getting Started page and put a link to Overview on that.

Or perhaps the best option of all might be a new welcome page showing a list of ordered important topics, with Getting Started and Overview at the top. The current arrangement leaves it to the user to wander around eventually finding what they need. When I've authored help files that welcome page has eased the user into navigating the help, whereas in this one your welcome page is trying to justify the need for the product - my guess is that anyone who has got as far as the help is most probably already on-side with respect to whether licensing is appropriate.

Andrew

[Infralution]

[HandyMac]