SLASCONE is a licensing and analytics platform for software vendors. It helps you manage products, editions, licenses, customers, and usage data in one central system.
This article explains the main SLASCONE concepts before you continue with the practical setup steps: creating a product, creating an edition, and creating a license.
CORE CONCEPT
SLASCONE follows a modern, API-first licensing approach. Instead of generating and distributing a new license key whenever license parameters change, the client application activates the license once and then periodically refreshes the current license state from SLASCONE.
This means that changes such as a renewed subscription, an enabled feature, or an updated limitation can be managed centrally in SLASCONE without issuing a new license key to the end customer.
LICENSING LIFECYCLE
A typical SLASCONE setup follows a simple lifecycle:
Create a product to define the reusable licensing structure, such as features, limitations, variables, software releases, and expiration types.
Create one or more editions to define how the product is offered commercially and technically.
Create licenses for customers based on an edition.
Let the client application activate the license and refresh the license state through heartbeats.
PORTALS
SLASCONE provides three web-based portals with modern authentication and optional multi-factor authentication:
Vendor Portal: used by the software vendor to manage products, editions, licenses, customers, analytics, and system configuration
Reseller Portal: used by resellers or partners to manage assigned customers and licenses
Licensee Portal: used by end customers to access and manage their license information
LICENSING AND ANALYTICS
SLASCONE supports named and floating licensing models for users and devices. These models allow you to implement common licensing scenarios such as named user licensing, named device licensing, floating user licensing, and floating device licensing.
For more information, see the Licensing Models section.
In addition to licensing, SLASCONE provides analytics to help product managers and commercial teams understand product usage. Licensing and analytics can be used together, but they are independent modules. You can use SLASCONE analytics even if you do not use SLASCONE for license enforcement.
CONNECTIVITY AND HEARTBEATS
After activation, the client application communicates with SLASCONE through heartbeats. A heartbeat refreshes the current license state, including relevant license parameters such as validity, features, limitations, and version compliance.
Heartbeats can be triggered periodically by the software or manually by the end user, for example through a “Refresh License” action in the application.
As a minimum recommendation, the client application should trigger a heartbeat whenever a new software version or hotfix is installed. It is also useful to give end users the option to manually refresh their licensing data.
OFFLINE SCENARIOS
SLASCONE is designed as an online licensing and analytics platform, but it can also support scenarios with temporary or limited connectivity. In such cases, the client application can rely on locally cached license information for a defined period.
For more information, see the dedicated article on Offline Scenarios.
NEXT STEPS
To continue with the setup process, follow these articles in order:
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