Blog on Software Licensing, Commercialization, and Revenue Optimization

See how POBS® uses SKM to bring productivity and time-saving features to PowerPoint users: https://serialkeymanager.com/app/case-study/POBS.

Activation Box

This week we’ve finished the “activation file box” that can be found on the product page. Here’s an overview:

The advantage of using it that you can easily add and remove new devices, as well as get an activation file that can be sent to users with no Internet access. The activation box consists of several ideas suggested by our users, so it feels great to add support for it!

Where we are moving

Many of us have experienced that since the last year, the core interface has remained unchanged. However, under the hood, many new functionalities have been added. Our primary focus has always been on the new Web API 3, which, in contrast to Web API 2, gives you more power and customization. Now that we have the foundation up and running, the new changes to the interface are going to occur much faster. Here, our aim is to move to a single-page design that allows you to stay on the same page without having to refresh the page. The goal is to increase productivity by reducing page loading time.

Another point worth mentioning is that we are going to expand the capabilities of the SKM.dll (aka SKGL Extension). Many of us use KeyInformation objects to store license information. However, many things have changed since it was first introduced, and keeping adding new things to it won’t be good from both a design perspective and a usability perspective.Therefore, we plan to add an entirely new class of representing license key information, with fields for customer information, data objects (aka additional variables), etc. Unfortunately, this will require some migration for those of us would like to adapt the new way. But, we will do our best to make it as simple as possible.

This is really exciting and I hope to be able to share some updates with you in the coming weeks! 🙂 You are always able to see the progress here.

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Are you going to be in Stockholm on Thursday next week (10th of March)? Please come by the Entrepreneurial Days 2016 Fair in Nymble (Drottning Kristinas väg 15-19)! 🙂  http://www.ed.thsnaringsliv.se/

Automation of software licensing and distribution greatly reduces the time needed to process orders, and thus allows you to focus on building great products. SKM Payment Forms allow you to easily achieve that automation.

Here are some of the improvements we’ve made in the last couple of weeks:

• Tutorial: Designed a new, comprehensive tutorial about Payment Forms.
• Receipts: Enabled support for sending receipts on a successful transaction.
• Email: Add a requirement to enter an email during for each transaction.This was done to make it easier for you to identify the customers for each transaction, which is good in case something went wrong.
• PayPal: Allow the IPN to be used with multiple payment forms. Now, you only need to specify one IPN address, i.e. https://serialkeymanager.com/Form/IPN/.

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One of the requested features is the ability to update licenses (see previous post about extending licenses). Today, we’ve released two new methods that make it easier to update the state of any given feature. The methods are:

• Add Feature – set a certain feature to true.
• Remove Feature – set a certain feature to false.

In addition to that, there is now an option to create Access Tokens that have a feature lock. That is, not only is it possible to restrict the scope of the access token to a product or a key, but also to features.

Both of these are now a part of the new version of the client API (SKGL Extension).

Offline Activation

As many of you might know, when SKGL Extension does not have access to the Internet, the TimeLeft field will not be updated.Therefore, please always use DaysLeft method in those cases.

Feedback

Web API 3 is constantly being improved. Please let us know how we can make it even better!

• Questionnaire

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A new version of the client API for Serial Key Manager is now available. You can get it from GitHub or NuGet (in Visual Studio):

• GitHub
• NuGet

Here are some of the new capabilities:

* Allow the username (current logged in user) to be included in the getMachineCode method.
* Ability to save and load key information data in JSON format.
* Add ExtendLicense method.
* Add general interface to communicate with Web API 3.

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Today, we’ve released two main things that will simplify many of the tasks that are faced primarily by those that want to set up a subscription based licensing model. These are the Extend License method and the introduction of Web API 3.

Extend License method

The Extend License method offers a simple way of extending a license either before the subscription has expired or afterwards. It’s actually as simple as to simply specify the number of days you want the license to be extended with and it will do the rest. Another great thing about it is that it is encapsulated into the Web API 3 framework, which means that you have greater possibility to adjust the scope/permissions (more about that below).

Introduction of Web API 3

Several months ago, we discontinued the old Web API, and moved most of the methods into Web API 2. The introduction of Web API 3 is a bit different, though. There is no intention of trying to discontinue the 2nd version. Instead, the 3rd version is simply an extension of the 2nd, with features that are desired by our users. Here are some of the examples:

• The 3rd version keeps all information about scopes of permissions in Access Tokens. You can specify the methods that an access token has access to as well as the products and keys it should be able to interact with. Note, IsPublic will not affect the access to a product; it’s all managed using access tokens. Moreover, you are able to revoke access at any time by removing the token from here.
• Versioning has improved quite a lot in the 3rd version of the Web API. Now, you can explicitly specify the method version that you want access to, by adding it to the query string. It’s not required, but once we introduce new features, it will be quite simple to upgrade.

Feedback and suggesting new methods

The 3rd version of the Web API is still quite new, so if you have any problem in mind or a suggestion of a concrete method, please submit your idea here! 🙂

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There are two words that summarize what’s going to be said below: simplicity and productivity. Shortly, we’ve simplified the most difficult operations in the .NET API and added the ability to find/sort your licenses. The aim of all of these changes is to save your time as much as possible.

Simplicity in the .NET client

If you have the recent version of the .NET client SKGL Extension, you might have noticed the extension methods that we’ve added to the Key Information class. The great thing about them is that you can use SKGL Extension as a fluent API (learn more). So, say you would like to set up offline key activation, how would you take an advantage of these methods? Here’s is an example:

Productivity with Search Function

The small search field available on the product page becomes really handy when searching for specific licenses. For instance, you can search based on the creation date, features, notes as well as customer related data (if a key is assigned to a certain customer). Here’s an example of a simple query:

Other things

In addition, here are some of the other changes:

• If you use SKM15, the key will no longer update during trial activation.
• The Web API 2 is now entirely compatible with SKM15.
• The Web API has a new page. Please take a look!
• Customers can now be created in all subscription types.
• Everyone can create a payment form as well as activation form (with or without a subscription). In some cases, a small link will be displayed.

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The Key Generation method has, from now on, support for our new key generation algorithm SKM15 and the ability to assign a key to a customer.

• See the Web API Docs

In addition, we’ve started working on a new documentation page for the Web API, where, in future, all information (for all versions) will be located. One of the greatest things is the ability to get personalized values for some parameters.

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Our licensing suite Software Protector (based on SKGL) is mentioned as an example of a licensing framework in Licensing .NET Applications by Fabian Deitelhoff at Pluralsight http://www.pluralsight.com/co…/licensing-dotnet-applications.

See the story behind SKGL in the InfoQ Interview:http://www.infoq.com/news/2014/12/SKGL

SKGL – Serial Key Generating Library is an offline based key validation system where license information is stored directly inside the key. It’s used by individual developers as well as companies. Designed by Artem in 2010-2011.

Interested in different kinds of key generation algorithms? Check out http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/764610/Licensing-systems-in-NET.

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