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Two great features are now implemented and accessible by all users of Serial Key Manager (SKM): External key generation and passive key validation.

External key generation

From now on, you can generate new keys with a simple web request without exposing neither the password of a product nor the log in details to your account. Everything is handled by a private key that you can change at any time. This feature can be activated/deactivated at any time also.

This is particularly good if you want to automatize the entire software distribution cycle (app downloaded, evaluated, purchased, activated).

For more information, please read the following article or see the video embedded in the end of this post.

Passive key validation

One of the greatest advantages of SKM is that you can control all apps that are connected to SKM servers. That is, all your changes on the server will instantly reach the client app.

In some cases, however, there is no need to validate keys each time the application starts. You might, for instance, want to validate a key only once or possibly once in a month (or any other interval of time), and, at the same time,  be sure that the key information has not been altered.

For more information on how this can be accomplished, please read the following article.

Minor changes

• A new version SKGL Extension can be downloaded
• SKGL Extension API documentation

Conclusion

Both of these features were suggested by users of SKM. As I’ve mentioned in the previous posts, all your suggestions are very important to make SKM a great product. In contrast to the early version of SKM, there are now so many new functionality available in SKM. Because of this, all users that registered before the 11th of August have received an extended trial period.

I hope everyone enjoys using SKM. If you would have any questions, please feel free to ask me in English, Swedish or Russian!

The video

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Serial Key Manager is now entirely platform independent! Not only can validation and activation occur on any platform, but even the additional data like set time, features, can be retrieved using a simple web request. This means that no password has to be stored in the application, which drastically improves the security.

• Additional information about a key without SKGL (JSON)

If you would still like to allow offline validations, please consider using activation where you restrict the number of machines that can use the same key.

• Key Activation through a client application

Several weeks ago, trial activation feature was added, which will ensure that the time restriction starts at the moment of activation.

As you can see, many features have been added to Serial Key Manager. Because of this, 3 days premium subscription can now be activated again, to allow you to test the newly added features.

You are always welcome to ask any questions! Contact us here.

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Yesterday, Serial Key Manager was updated with a new feature specifically for trial keys.

Ability to create trial keys – Trial activation allows you to create trial keys and/or time limited keys that are activated only when the user first uses the key. This means that you can generate keys several months before you start distributing them and they will still work the amount of time you specified originally.

Since this feature uses the machine code activation module, you can ensure that only a specific number of users can start the trial.

In addition, because the server tracks each activation, you do not need to store anything on the client computer except for the key itself.

If keys were generated sometime before the time of activation, a new key will replace the old key and is going to be sent back to the user. This can only occur once unless  ou have configured the key otherwise.

This feature was suggested by a user of Serial Key Manager some days ago. I encourage all users and visitors of Serial Key Manager to ask questions and suggest new things directly by contacting us. Remember that you can phrase your question in either English, Swedish or Russian. You can use German too but it might take a bit longer for me to process it.

I hope all of you enjoy using Serial Key Manager!

/Artem

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Two main changes were implemented into Serial Key Manager this week. The first one allows you to change the key features and edit its notes, while the second one allows you to adjust machine code locking settings. Both features are platform independent.

The machine code locking feature in Serial Key Manager was taken a step further. Instead of locking a key to a specific machine, you are now able to generate keys that are not bound to any machine from the beginning. However, once a client starts the activation process, you have the ability to either allow automatic activation, which means that the program will send details to the server and return a value, or manually add your client’s machine code to the database. For corporate environments where some computers do not have access to the internet, you can instead create an online interface for clients to activate their license on any computer that has access to the internet (the computer will have to access internet once, but it does not have to activate itself on its own).

Instead of forcing Serial Key Manager users to use a specific hash algorithm, it allows you to pick any function and set up your own method for collecting information that is to be hashed. For .NET users, there is already an open source library that does this in several lines of code (see here), however, since these methods analyse web server requests, serial key validation and activation can occur on any platform and operating system.

At this point, there are two tutorials that cover this topic. The first one is in the form of an article (see here) while the second one is a video tutorial (see here).

Please note that feedback is important to develop Serial Key Manager according to your needs. This feature in particular was suggested by Travis (here). I am very thankful to all users of Serial Key Manager, Software Protector and SKGL for their questions and suggestions. Thanks to all messages, I can shape these individual products to contribute to a more effective serial key management!

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Feedback is important for us, because it will allow us to shape Serial Key Manager according to your wants/needs and thus improve your user experience. Please take your time fill in this form!

• The form

All Serial Key Manager Premium users will receive a refund at any time during the subscription period. Read more here.

The video library with new tutorials keeps being extended. This week, two videos were published, describing the way it’s possible to validate a key using Serial Key Manager (external server) together with a .NET project.

• The library of videos is found here

The latest video discusses (it’s part 2) how additional information can be retrieved using SKGL API once a key is found to be valid.

More information can be found here: http://blog.artemlos.net/posts/skgl-2-0-5-3/