License managers may sometimes label licenses as occupied, when in fact they are idle and wasting limited company resources. System administrators can utilize the OpenLM EasyAdmin web interface to identify such conditions and retrieve idle licenses either manually or automatically.
This document describes how to monitor application idle time and harvest idle licenses manually. For information on retrieving licenses automatically – please refer to this document:
Application Note 2005: Configuring OpenLM to close idle Licenses, OpenLM v1.8
User Idle
If the user has not been actively using the license, the idle time period would be shown in the “User Idle” column. This information is sampled by the OpenLM Agent module on each client workstation, and sent to the OpenLM server. The sample period is set by the Agent policy’s “Agent report” period, as in the example below (set to 60 sec).
The “Currently Consumed Licenses” Window:
Open the OpenLM Easyadmin tool and press ‘Start’ → ‘Operational’ → “Currently Consumed Licenses”. The “Currently Consumed Licenses” window opens:
This window lists all currently active sessions. With this window, administrators can monitor individual workstations that run licensed applications. They can detect idle applications, and shut them down with a mouse click. In order to do so, an OpenLM Agent module must be installed on each client workstation.
OpenLM Extension
Some functionality of the “Currently Consumed Licenses” window is “Extension dedicated”, i.e.: only available for applications and installations that incorporate the OpenLM extension. At the time of writing this revision (Rev 1.0) these applications include Autodesk, ArcGIS and Matlab. For more information on this – please refer to the Automatic license retrieval document:
Application Note 2005: Configuring OpenLM to close idle Licenses, OpenLM v1.8
Workstation Idle Time:
The end user’s workstation’s idle time is recorded and presented in the “Workstation Idle time” column. This report requires an active agent to be installed on the workstation.
Recent APP. Idle Period:
Records the recent idle time of a specific application. This activity requires an Agent installation on the end user’s workstation, and is “Extension Dedicated”.
View Idle Times:
Click the crescent moon icon for a graphic view of idle and active time as well as a list of idle periods. This report requires an active agent and is “Extension Dedicated” .
Removing licenses
Administrators have the option to manually remove a license from a specified workstation. This is done by highlighting the user row on the Active Products window and clicking the “Remove License” icon . There are several constraints that are specific to this feature:
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The end user must have been inactive for a minimum period of time in order for this license to be retrieved. This value is set by default to 5 minutes in compliance with FLEXlm license manager’s limitations.
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If the license is not really associated with any real product activity on the specified workstation (as happens when a license gets artificially “frozen” on a computer), then the license will be freed and will be returned to the pool of available licenses.
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If the worker is actually using the product, then re-obtaining a license would be automatically attempted. If this happens the license for that product and workstation will reappear on the active products screen, with a new handle number.
Closing applications
In order to manually close an application on the workstation, an administrator should highlight the relevant row, and click the Close Application icon .
This operation will retrieve the license back to the license pool, save the open project, and the application itself will be shut down.
There are some constraints that are specific to this feature:
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It requires a proper installation of the OpenLM Agent module.
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It works only on extension enabled applications. At the time of writing this revision (Rev 1.0), these include Matlab, ArcGIS and AutoCAD.
Common Constraints
There are several constraints that are common to both the License Removal and Application Closure features.These are as follows:
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At the time of writing this revision (Rev 1.0), These features are only applicable to the FLEXlm license manager.
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An OpenLM Agent module must be properly installed on each Client workstation.
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Borrowed licenses (AKA “Linger licenses”) can not be retrieved via the EasyAdmin application.
