FINtastic Tip: Using Edge2Cloud to Manage FIN Licenses

As a new FIN user, did you know that FIN Edge2Cloud provides not only secure and remote access to your site, but also some additional management tools that make it easy to enjoy the benefits of FIN updates and enhancements by staying current with your maintenance?

Today's FINtastic Tip will walk you through the steps for determining what a project's license includes, such as maintenance expiration date and what parts can be ordered to extend it using Edge2Cloud view license feature.

Viewing the license

First, you'll need an account on Edge2Cloud. Simply contact your FIN reseller or FIN Distribution Parter to setup your organization and request a user account. Now, simply log into your Edge2Cloud account and on the left menu you'll select "Licenses," and a list of all of your project licenses will show up on the right. Find the project you'd like to analyze and click on the ID to get more details. 

To see what parts comprise the license

On the details screen, click on the view button, and a license file contents will pop up. The important property to look for is J2 products, which displays the original part(s) that were ordered. 

Depending on whether the license is used in a server or embedded device, the actual part number you order would be taken from the corresponding price list (server or embedded).

To see when the maintenance expired

There is also a property called maintDue, which is the maintenance due date. This is the date when the license maintenance expires. For servers, this is one year; for embedded, this is two years from the original purchase date. Fun fact: J2 Innovations syncs your due date with the first day of the next month. So if you purchased a license on January 15, your due date would be February 1 (rounding up to the next month). 

How to order maintenance

It's simple to extend the maintenance on a license by placing an order that matches the parts that made up the original license. For example, a finCaps2000 order for a service license would become the same part number from the server price list but with -maint added to the end.

* Note for embedded licenses: use the same concept, but those parts would have an additional -EMB on the end (ex. FIN-0002K-MAINT-EMB). 

Downloading a new license

 After contacting your FIN reseller or FIN Distribution Partner and placing an order for the maintenance, you will receive a confirmation and the license file in Edge2Cloud will automatically update. You can use the site above to view the license (and note the FIN maintenance date has been extended). Click the download button and save the updated license file. 

Installing the license to your project

Using your browser-based instance of FIN, log into the home screen (as an example, it would be http://localhost/home) and select licenses on the left hand side, and you will see the install button appear on the bottom. For more instructions, check out our docs here.

Check out this blog post for additional Edge2Cloud tips and tricks.