QEST Platform 5.7 Documentation
Applies to QESTField Tests, QESTField Forms, QESTField Concrete, QESTField Scheduler

This article describes how to access information related to the use of licenses for QESTField products for your organisation.

Overview

End users may report seeing one of the licensing warning messages detailed in the QESTField License Warnings article while using a QESTField product requiring a concurrent user license. These products include:

QESTField Tests
QESTField Forms
QESTField Concrete
QESTField Scheduler

There are a number of tools available within the QEST Platform to review and monitor license usage.

Extra licenses can be made available by:

Having other users occupying the licenses log out of the QESTField mobile application or the QESTField web application, or
Waiting for inactive users of these applications to time out of their session
Purchasing additional licenses from Spectra QEST

QEST Administrator Console

Available Licenses

When a QESTField product has been licensed, the QEST Administrator Console (QAC) provides users with the System Administator general right the ability to review license information, as well as real time use of product licenses.

Clicking on the Lab → Configuration → License node after logging into the QAC, shows how many concurrent user licenses exist for each product that is licensed and, if the license is set to expire, when that expiry date is.

Active Licenses

Clicking on the product of interest under Lab → Configuration → Connections node will show a real-time snapshot of the licenses currently in use. For QESTField products, summary text indicating the number of licenses currently allocated, e.g. "Total: 15 out of 20 licenses used (75%)" is shown in the status bar in the bottom right corner and will appear in bold if the proportion of licenses allocated to users is 90% or greater of the total licensed amount.

In the concurrent user license model each separate device (or separate web browser or private/incognito browser session) used by each user login will use a separate license. Each of the licenses that a user has leased will show a separate row on this screen. The User Agent column will show a description of the devices used to access the QEST Platform with that license. For web browser clients (including the web browser within the QESTField App's Work Orders & Tests page) this will include which web-server application served them (e.g. QESTField or QESTField Scheduler). The exact content of this column depends upon the specific web browsers and devices used to access the QEST Platform.

Because the exact information shown is dependent on what the devices and browsers expose, it may not be immediately clear exactly what type of device a user has used, but this can usually be discerned by a simple internet search.

The following example shows license usage for QESTField Forms, indicating:

Annie Apple is using QESTField Forms on an Apple iPad 6th Gen (Wi-Fi) running iOS 13.6, both within the QESTField App's "Work Orders and Tests" screen that connects to QESTField Web and within the "Forms" screen that does not use QESTField Web. All of this use within the app uses the same user license.
Christopher Chrome is using QESTField forms in QESTField Web accessed with Google Chrome running on Windows 8.1
Spectra QEST Account is using QESTField Forms in the QESTField App ("Work Orders and Tests", and "Forms") on a Samsung Galaxy J2 Prime running Android 6.0.1
Spectra QEST Account is also using QESTField Forms in QESTField Web accessed with Firefox running on Windows 8.1. This uses up another license in addition to the same user using the QESTField App.

Revoking Licenses

A user can manually log off in QESTField to release all of their allocated licenses. This should be done if an individual user is using more licenses than expected.

Administrators can also manually revoke licenses under the Lab → Configuration → Connections interface. Right-click on a row and click Revoke Licenses. This will revoke all licenses for that user for the type of connection you are viewing.

For example, a user has an open QESTField Scheduler connection, and 2 QESTField Tests connections, shown below.

Revoking a QESTField Tests connection will revoke both of the QESTField Tests licenses, but leave the scheduler license active.

Licensing Log

Licensing events, such as obtaining and releasing a license, are logged to the a separate licensing log file by the QESTNet service. This logging must first be configured as part of the QESTNet installation and configuration. The following license related events are logged:

Event	Included in Summary Email?
When a user license is requested	No
When a user license is renewed	No
When a user license is allocated	No
When a user license is revoked	No
When a user license expires	No
A message is included if, upon allocating a license: There are only 2 licenses remaining and the total license count is between 10 and 20 There are only 10% of the total license remaining and the total number of licenses is greater than 20	Yes
When the number of allocated licenses for the product has reached the number the organization is licensed for	Yes
When the current date is 15 days before license expiry	Yes
When the current date is within the expiry grace period (15 days post expiry)	Yes
When the license has expired and not within the grace period	Yes
When the user requests a license for an unlicensed product	Yes

This log file is saved to a server machine that the QESTNet service has access to. It is unlikely that super users and QEST Platform administrators will have direct access to the log file. Additionally, the log of all the individual events is not in a format that is readily able to be analysed by hand. The logged messages, therefore, are periodically processed, consolidated and used in email notifications, this process is described below.

Email Warnings

Functionality is available for the licensing log files to be periodically automatically processed and any warnings extracted into a summary email. The events indicated in the table above as being included in the summary email will be counted for the period being considered and this information emailed to the recipients defined in the QESTNet configuration. It is recommended that the QEST Platform administrators are configured to receive the warning email. By default, the process to generate and send the email runs nightly.

Condition	Example Text in Email
A message is included if, upon allocating a license: There are only 2 licenses remaining and the total license count is between 10 and 20 There are only 10% of the total license remaining and the total number of licenses is greater than 20	Only 5 of the licensed 10 user licenses for QESTField Tests remains.
When the number of allocated licenses for the product has reached the total number of licenses. This warning will only be issued if the number of allocated licenses is 5 or more.	All 10 user licenses for QESTField Tests were allocated.
When users are refused licenses due to capacity being reached	3 user(s) were refused licenses because the limit for QESTField Tests was allocated.
Starting from 15 days before license expiry	The product license for QESTField Tests will expire on Monday, 1 January 2018 (10 day(s) left).
After license expiry, but within the grace period	The product license for QESTField Tests expired on Monday, 1 January 2018. The 15 day grace period will end at the beginning of Tuesday, 16 January 2018 (10 day(s) left).
When the license has expired and not within the grace period	4 user(s) were refused licenses because the product license for QESTField Tests expired on Monday, 1 January 2018 and the 15 day grace period ended on Tuesday, 16 January 2018.
When the user requests a license for an unlicensed product	2 user(s) were refused licenses because a product license is required to use QESTField Tests.

To configure the email notification, the following must be present in the QESTNet configuration:

SMTP details
An integrator to consolidate and archive the log files as well as construct and send the email with appropriate recipients defined
An integrator to schedule the process

This configuration is described in the QESTNet Installation Guide.

Products described on these pages, including but not limited to QESTLab®, QESTNet, QESTField, QEST Web App, Construction Hive, and associated products are Trademarks (™) of Spectra QEST Australia Pty Ltd and/or related companies.

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