Your 'Must Know' Fundamentals of Zentitle

Get ahead of the game while waiting for your PoC request to be approved...

Select a role below

Here are some fundamental concepts which will make it easier for you to get up and running quickly.

The Activation Process

Zentitle's Cloud-Based Licensing makes it easy for your end-users to activate your software.
‍
Once the Application is activated, the Entitlements (what features an end-user can and can't use, under what circumstances, and for how long) are delivered from the Zentitle Cloud to your application, which can then be queried by your application to decide how it should behave.
‍
Offline Activation is also supported. Zentitle provides you with a portal for this which you can brand. Offline Activation is used when your end-users either have devices that aren't connected to the internet, or your application on their device isn't permitted to talk to the internet - both are scenarios where their application can't directly communicate with the Zentitle Cloud.

Zentitle also offers a LAN Daemon (Local License Server) for licensing within Dark-Site Networks, for business, industrial and secure locations.

License Check Interval

When the end-user's application is activated, the Zentitle Cloud tells it how long its License Check Interval is.

The License Check Interval (sometimes known as a Lease Period) is the time after which the end-user's application will need to perform a check with the Zentitle Cloud to determine whether its entitlements are continuing 'as is' or have changed.

This check, that happens at the end of the License Check Interval, is called a License Refresh.

NOTE: The License Check Interval should not be confused with the Subscription Period (which is something specific only to Subscription-Based Licenses).

Dynamic Entitlements

The License Check Interval (together with the resulting License Refresh) is the driving force behind what we call Dynamic Entitlements.

This means that a customer's entitlements are not set in stone forever, in fact you have the ability to change them at any time and these changes are delivered automatically upon any License Refresh, without the customer needing to do anything at all.

So, you can kill, add to, or change what parts of your software a customer can use. Automatic processes such as a Subscription License ending when a customer hasn't paid are taken care of. Dynamic Entitlements makes the automatic fulfilment to the customer of upgrades, downgrades, and up-selling and cross-selling possible.

When the lifecycle of an end-user's application is under your control in this way, including via e-commerce, CRM, customer support, and via your own backend systems connected to Zentitle using its API, running your business as a Software Vendor becomes much easier.

License Status

The License Status, which is accessed through the Zentitle SDK represents the current status of the License.

The License Status is key information you can use within your Application to implement whatever licensing policy you wish, along with other attributes you can query of the License locally. Our example applications will help get you started with this concept.

A quick tip to remember here is that a License Status has a numerical value: Any positive value means the client has been given permission to remain licensed by the Zentitle Cloud, but negative values mean the permission to remain licensed has been denied (each value has a meaning; examples for negative values may include Subscription Expired, Too Many Seats In Use, or License Has Been Deactivated).

It is important to implement a timer-based routine in your application, to periodically check the License Status and have your application behave appropriately to any changes.

A last couple of things...

If you are deploying on Windows you will need the C++ Runtime Library.

You will also have to download the Zentitle Library for each build platform you are using, Win x86/x64, Mac, Linux etc.

As soon as your Trial is Approved, you will have full access to our Support Site along with Documentation, Sample Code and Getting Started Guides to get to up and running quickly.