Who is this article for?

Users who want to learn more about licensing.

No elevated permissions are required.

This article provides valuable insights into the licensing system employed by Please Review. It delineates the two distinct types of licensing and elucidates their operational mechanisms within the software suite.

1. Reports

Please Review includes a summary report detailing what licenses have been allocated, consumed and what licences are available. This report also identifies if licences are "Named" or "Active" licences.

This report can be accessed by Workgroup admins and SYSADMIN users via the Administration module under license report. 

The active license report corresponds to an active license being applied and the configured user report corresponds to a named license being applied. Note that only one of these will actually apply to what you are currently using but you could use the report to compare how many you would be consuming with that other license type.

Note: If you require more details on usage in the reviews, you can also review to the Admin > usage report.

2. Named licensing

• Users consume one license if they hold roles such as reviewer, contributor, author, or similar titles across any workgroup, regardless of active review participation.
• Roles with contributor or author designation consume a Power license, while a reviewer role consumes a Standard license.
• The license type consumed by a user (either Standard or Power) is based on their highest role across all workgroups, regardless of specific workgroup assignments.
• License reports will show users that have their highest role as a Contributor role, displaying as using an Enhanced license. Whilst these roles can be manually assigned on sub licenses, we no longer sell these so these will also show as also automatically consuming a Power license for any license that doesn't have an enhanced role assigned, on the license reports.

3. Active licensing

• A user consumes one license if they are in one or more reviews that are not completed or deleted, regardless of the roles assigned to the workgroup.
• The role assigned to the workgroup acts as the highest role they can be assigned to a review in that workgroup, similar to named licensing.
• The user starts using a license based on the role they are assigned to in reviews.
• The same ranking of author, contributor, and reviewer determines whether they use a power or standard license.
• When a user consumes a license, it is consumed in the workgroup labeled as their Home Workgroup. For example, a user in a review in Workgroup A with a Home Workgroup of "B" would consume their license from Workgroup B.

4. Special cases

• A Please Review user will only ever consume one license at a time.
• If someone has been added to Please Review with two different email addresses, resulting in two separate Please Review users, each user could be consuming a license.
• Users with just Admin roles will not consume a license; however, Admin privileges can be combined with other roles (e.g., Admin-Author).
• In setups with sub-licenses for different departments or contract entities, the consumed license is based on the user's Home Workgroup assignment.
• If a user with a reviewer role is given managerial delegation, they will consume a power license for those specific reviews.

Active example: If a user participates in two reviews, serving as both an author and a reviewer, they will require a power license. Conversely, if they are designated as an author within the workgroup but solely act as a reviewer in any reviews, they will utilise a standard license.

Important: These reviews could belong to different workgroups.

Named example: If a user holds a role above Reviewer in any workgroup, they will use a Power license, regardless of their current review status. Users designated solely as Reviewers will use a Standard license. However, if a user is a Reviewer in one workgroup and holds a higher role in another, they will require a Power license.

5. When new licenses are needed

New licenses are required when:

• Adding more users. Your account manager will coordinate with Sales, who will instruct Support (for on-premise) or Implementation Team (for hosted) to issue the license.
• Enabling/disabling license-controlled features, like Flight Mode. Support can assist if you provide your existing license (on-premise).
• Activating the Archive feature. Contact your account manager to request this through Sales and Support.
• Removing users. Your account manager and Sales will arrange for Support or Implementation Team to update the license.
• Moving servers on-premise. If under an active Support contract, provide your existing license and reason for Support to issue a new one.
• The upgrade expiry date has passed. With an active Support contract, Support can issue a new license.
• The license’s actual expiry date is reached. Temporary licenses may require extension approval via your account manager and Support.
• Upgrading Please Review where the first or second digit of the version changes. For example, upgrades from v8.0 to v8.1 need a new license, but patch updates like v7.7.0 to v7.7.1 do not. A new license is required for any version change in the second digit.
• Incorrect license allocation where the wrong numbers are showing as being allocated, such as if you have purchased different numbers for different periods. In the rare situation that your license is showing the wrong the role counts having been allocated, and these are not being consumed by a sub license, then contact Support and they can follow this up accordingly.

Note: New licenses are generally only issued while you have a valid Support contract.