Over the past few years, there has been some considerable confusion on how Sage Intelligence Reporting licensing is applied between companies, over networks and on single workstations. It has forced many customers’ to make considerable and unnecessary adjustments to the way they run their software and do business as a whole. This tip explains Intelligence Reporting licensing in detail.
The Sage Intelligence Reporting license manager shows:
- The number of Report Manager licenses
- A Connector license (if any)
- What users are assigned licenses
- What workstations are currently holding on to the licenses (as illustrated in the image below)
Bearing that in mind, we have 4 scenario’s below:
Scenario 1:
We’ll use the example of a 5 machine network (6 if you include the server) with one Intelligence Reporting license.
Myth: Each license is tied to a specific machine. So a user on computer A cannot use Sage intelligence Reporting on computer B without purchasing another license.
Answer: False – the number of licenses simply determines how many users can use Intelligence Reporting simultaneously across the network. Essentially, if user B wants to use Intelligence Reporting on another machine, they can simply have user A close out of Sage Intelligence and then delete the license that is tied up on user A’s machine.
Scenario 2:
Let’s use the example of just one machine (standalone - not on a network) with one Sage Intelligence Reporting license.
Myth: Different users on the same machine can use Intelligence Reporting
Answer: True – the license manager not only shows what users are currently assigned licenses but gives this information down to the exact workstation and lets you know if the user is a windows user (the “Win” notation) or a Sage user (the “PT” notation). Just remember to delete the license that is being used by the old user before the new user runs Intelligence Reporting (by clicking on the old user’s name and hitting the delete button – image below).
Scenario 3:
This scenario illustrates a network setup with 10 machines and 5 licenses
Myth: The number of users using Sage Intelligence Reporting across a network cannot exceed the number of licenses
Answer: False – concurrent usage applies across the network regardless of the number of Sage software, Microsoft windows and Intelligence Reporting users. So, for example, since we have 10 machines with only 5 licenses:
- If we need a sixth user to use Intelligence Reporting, we just free up one of the 5 licenses (provided they are all used up) by clicking one of the user’s profiles in the License Manager and hit the delete button. This will work regardless of machine and can be done from any machine on the network. Then the 6th user just needs to load Intelligence Reporting and be assigned a license. This still has the effect of 5 users assigned licenses.
- In summation: ANY combination of 5 users can use Intelligence Reporting on the network at the same time
- However, if 6 users must use Intelligence Reporting simultaneously, an additional license will be required
Scenario 4:
Myth: Sage intelligence takes up a Sage 50 license when installed on the server
Answer: False – there has been much confusion around this also. Even though it is indeed installed on the server, any licenses issued are user based and not machine based like the core Sage software product. So, a 5 user version of Sage 50 plus a single user version of Sage Intelligence Reporting is not equal to a 6 user version of Sage 50.
What have we learned here today?
- Sage intelligence licensing is controlled through the License Manager
- Licenses are not machine specific and can be moved around at will across a network and across sage 50 companies
- Licenses are not user-specific and can be assigned and reassigned at will by simply deleting the users holding them up
- The server does not tie up a license
- “Number of licenses” means “number of concurrent users in Sage Intelligence Reporting only (not in Sage 50 as a whole)
- So, the next time you get an error message related to licensing (“this user is not licensed to use Intelligence Reporting,” for example) try deleting the assigned licenses first and trying again.