Seat Licensing

Owned by Paul Hitchcock
Last updated: Dec 08, 2021
4 min read

Crows Nest licensing is per device and is managed by qty of “seats”. Opening the main desktop client on a Windows PC requires one seat. Seats can be either Registered or Floating. You can view your current seat usage at any time to manage which devices are using your seats.

Connections to the license server are to https://license.crowsnestsoftware.com

If you have a network firewall that is filtering/blocking outbound traffic, ensure traffic to that site is not blocked when you need to connect.

To avoid interruption for users in the event of an internet outage, use Registered seats

You can use a combination of Registered and Floating seats. Key users who need access frequently without delays should use a Registered seats. For multiple machines that use Crows Nest infrequently they can share Floating seats.

Registered Seats

A Registered seat is retained by a device until it’s manually removed. Registering a seat requires an internet connection only when registering or removing a license. When a seat is registered, it stores a key locally on the machine and does not require a connection to our license server (via internet) each time you open the app after registering a seat.

Floating Seats

A Floating seat is used only while the app is logged in. When a user logs out the app will attempt to release the seat, making it immediately available for another device (closing the app will log out first so you do not need to log out before closing). Each time a user logs in or out, it requires a connection to our license server (via internet) to take/release the seat.

To View Seats in Use

You can connect to our licensing server and view your current seat usage before or after logging in.

View Seat Usage Before to Logging In

  1. Open Crows Nest to the Login window (If the app automatically logs in, click the Logout button on the toolbar to return to the Login window)

  2. Click the Connections button to expand the window

  3. Click the View License Seats Used button to open the License Seats in Use window

 

View Seat Usage After Logging In

  1. From the drop-down menu, click View-->License Seats Used

Fixing Incorrect Seat Usage

In the event that a license seat does not get released on our server correctly, you have some options to fix this yourself, see steps below. Alternatively you can email support@crowsnestsoftware.com for help.

  1. Open the License Seats in Use window using the steps above

  2. Highlight one or more seats and right-click, then click one of the following functions

    1. Logoff Device(s) - Use this only on ‘floating’ seats for devices that currently have the app open to force that machine to log itself out to release its seat. This adds the name of the device to a record in the _Logoff table in the database. Each device checks this table regularly to see if it should log out. When the device logs out it will attempt to release its seat and remove it’s name from the table. This can take up to 10 seconds. If a devices name is in the _Logoff table prior to logging it, it will block that machine from logging in until its name is manually removed from the table.

    2. Release Seat(s) - Use this only when our server shows that a seat is in use, but that device no longer exists, or is using a floating seat and you’re sure that the device is logged out. For example a machine has been recycled or renamed but wasn’t unregistered first. If the device is available, then Login and Logout on that device to release a Floating seat, or click on the ‘Remove Machine License’ button on the Login window to release a Registered seat.