Welcome! This blog is covering our feature called “Start countdown upon activation in Cryptolens”, also referred to as “Trial Activation”. We will first go through when this feature is useful in theory, we will then cover a basic setup, followed by a more advanced use case for when you allow multiple machines to use the same license. Please read our documentation page for more information.
Please watch the video below if you would rather take in this information as a video:
In theory
Let’s suppose that we have a time-limited license issued today that should be valid for 30 days. Normally, the countdown will begin as soon as the license is created. However, this can be problematic if you want to create a list of licenses before they reach your customers, and you are unsure when your customers will activate their licenses.
Ideally, you want the license to be valid for 30 days after the customer has activated the license, and not 30 days after you created the licenses. That is where the feature we will cover today comes in handy.
Basic setup
For the basic setup, we will cover an example where you want to create a time-limited license limited to one machine only, and you want the countdown to begin upon activation.
Sign in to Cryptolens and create a license key as you normally do by pressing the blue “Create a new key” button for your desired product.
In the red bottom right card, you will see a checkbox called “Start countdown upon activation”. Please click this checkbox and click on Create.
Make sure you always click that checkbox for all of the licenses you create where you want the countdown to begin only when the customer activates their license.
Advanced use case
What if we want to start the countdown of a license upon activation for a license that is limited to more than one machine?
With the basic setup, each new activation will reset the countdown. Let’s say that you have set up a license that is limited to 30 days. If your customer activates the license on one machine and activates the license on another machine 7 days later, the license will be valid for another 30 days. This means it will be valid for 37 days in total.
If you allow for more than two machines, this phenomenon can then naturally happen more than once. The license might then be valid for even longer.
Using data objects, you can make sure that only the first machine will activate the countdown, and that the other machines will not affect or reset the countdown.
Go to the product you want to implement this feature on. Click on “Data Objects”.
Copy the following code and paste it into the “Name” field:
cryptolens_trialactivationCopy the following code and paste it into the “StringValue” field:
first_activationFor the chosen product, the countdown will now be activated the first time a customer activates the license on a machine, but new machines will not affect the behavior of the countdown at all.
Now you know how to start the countdown upon activation in Cryptolens. We are happy to answer any questions you might have! Send them either to our chat support or email the questions to [email protected].
Thank you for reading!