About User-Based
Licensing
This product has
Host-based Licensing. It requires that you purchase a license for each user
that intends to host meetings. It is important to understand the following terms:
- Participant--An individual that attends meetings, but does not schedule or host meetings, and does not have control over the host features, such as presenting content unless the participant is designated by a host to be the presenter.
- Meeting Host--Schedules meetings, attends meetings in the capacity of a host, and is allowed control over selected features, such as identifying a presenter or muting another participant.
- Alternate Host--Identified when the meeting is scheduled as someone who can assume the host role in the absence of the meeting host. If the meeting host who scheduled the meeting does not attend, the alternate host is given control over most of the same features as the meeting host. If both the individual identified as an alternate host and the meeting host attend the meeting, the status of the alternate host from a licensing perspective is participant.
- Join Before Host (JBH)--Allows participants to join a meeting before the arrival of the host or an alternate host.
- Overlapping Meetings--Two or more meetings that are scheduled during the same time of day by the same host. When a meeting host or an alternate host starts overlapping meetings, additional licenses might be consumed. An individual can schedule overlapping meetings, but the individual cannot host more than one meeting at a time. An overlapping meeting occurs when the host of one meeting leaves that meeting to start another meeting, and the first meeting continues under the direction of a different individual acting as host.
- Grace Period--A 15-minute overlap period. The grace period only applies when JBH is enabled and a meeting is started by an attendee who is not the host.
The license usage
calculation occurs once per month, for example, once from January 1 through 31,
once from February 1 through 28, and so forth.
Licenses are counted as follows:
- Licenses are never consumed by scheduling meetings. When scheduling a meeting, the meeting host can identify alternative hosts. Identifying alternative hosts or scheduling a meeting on behalf of others does not consume licenses. When attending a meeting, the individual scheduling a meeting is identified as the meeting host by default.
- Licenses are never consumed by participants. If an individual has attended meetings during the month always as a participant and never acted as a host, zero licenses are consumed by that individual.
- One license is consumed and associated to an individual the first time they start a meeting in a given month and are identified as the host of that meeting. If an individual starts any more non-overlapping meetings during the month, no additional licenses are consumed. If during the next month the same individual does not attend any meetings as a host, zero licenses are consumed by that individual for that month. That individual can attend meetings as a participant without consuming a license.
- One additional license is consumed and associated to an individual for every overlapping meeting attended by that individual as the host of those meetings. The total number of licenses consumed by a single individual is determined by the highest number of overlapping meetings hosted by that individual. An individual who attends two meetings in the capacity of host in the same time period consumes and is associated to two licenses for the month. If that individual starts three meetings that overlap the same time period, three licenses are consumed. And so forth. If the same individual attends a meeting as the host, leaves the first meeting before that meeting ends and attends another meeting in the capacity of a host, two licenses are required for that individual.
- No additional licenses are consumed when an individual identified as an alternate host that has not yet consumed a license that month, starts a meeting and the meeting host joins the meeting.
- One license is consumed and associated with an alternate host when an alternate host that has not yet consumed a license that month attends a meeting in the capacity of the host and the meeting host who scheduled the meeting fails to join that meeting.
If you perform a
major upgrade or disaster recovery procedure on your system, you must configure new
virtual machines and re-host the licenses.
(See Re-hosting Licenses
after a Software Upgrade or System Expansion.)
The system counts license use for each user each month, as the example scenarios show in
the table.
The scenarios in the table assume that in every example, it is the first time that a user has hosted a meeting in that month.
Scenario
|
Meeting Date
|
Meeting Time
|
Licenses Consumed |
User A schedules a meeting, but the meeting is never started.
|
January 1
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
0
|
User B starts a meeting.
|
January 2
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
1
|
User C hosts two or more meetings that do not overlap.
|
January 3
January 3
January 4
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. 2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
10:00 a.m.
to 11:00 a.m.
|
1
|
User D attends two meetings that overlap the same date and time.
|
January 6
January 6
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
2
|
User E starts two meetings that overlap the same date and time. The host that started both meetings and an alternate host hosts the second meeting.
|
January 6
January 6
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
3 One license consumed by the host that started each meeting and one license is consumed by the alternate host.
|
User F starts two meetings on the same date and leaves both meetings. The meetings are each hosted by an alternate host.
|
January 7
January 7
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
2 One for each for the original host and one for the alternate hosts that continued one of the meetings.
|
User G starts a meeting and passes host rights to another
participant during the meeting. The host of the first meeting then starts a second meeting that runs
simultaneously with the first meeting.
|
January 8
January 8
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
2 One for each for the original host and one for the alternate hosts that continued one of the meetings.
|
User H starts a meeting that has
Join
Before Host enabled. A host joins the meeting. The first user then schedules a second meeting that
runs simultaneously with the first meeting, but all of the second meeting
participants join the teleconference only (not the web portion) option selected.
|
January 11
January 11
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
2
|
User J schedules a meeting. Join
Before Host is enabled. Participants join, but neither the meeting host nor an alternate host attends the meeting and all participants leave the meeting. |
January 11
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. |
1 |
User K starts a meeting with Join
Before Host enabled. The JBH attendee starts a second meeting on behalf of the host. Before the grace period expires the host leaves and ends the first meeting. |
January 12 January 12
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:10 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
1
|
User L starts three
Personal Conferences (not the web portion) with account 1, account 2 and
account 3 at the same date but different times.
|
January 12 January 12
January12
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
|
1
|
User M starts three
Personal Conferences (not the web portion) with account 1, account 2 and
account 3 at the same date and time.
|
January 14 |
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
3
|
User N starts a meeting with Join
Before Host enabled and a Personal Conference (not the web portion) at the same date but at different times.
|
January 14 January 14
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
|
1 |
User P starts a meeting
with Join
Before Host enabled and a Personal Conference (not the web portion) at the same date and time.
|
January 15 January 15
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
|
2 |
User Q starts a Personal
Conference (not the web portion) and shortly thereafter launches the overlapping web portion.
|
January 16
January 16
|
9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
(Personal Conference) 9:15 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.
(Web Meeting launched in conjunction with the Personal Conference)
|
1
|
From the
Reports page, you can request a report that provides
the total number of licenses consumed during the month. In addition, we
recommend that you view the PDF Summary Report that shows month-by-month
license consumption trends. By viewing the overall license trend, you can plan
for future license purchases more effectively, to match the growing adoption of
this system within your company.
Caution |
Your system
allows license consumption to exceed the number of licenses installed on your
system. Administrators receive
licenses
exceeded emails and dashboard notices informing them that they must either
reduce license consumption or purchase more licenses within six months. During
this six-month period, your system continues to function normally for your
users. If you have not reduced license consumption or purchased more licenses
after six months, the system shuts down for all users until an administrator
installs more licenses.
When the system
is shut down, users cannot schedule, host, or attend meetings, or access
meeting recordings. Users see a
Site under
maintenance message on the WebEx site. The Administration site
functions normally, so an administrator can sign in and add licenses to address
the licenses exceeded condition. Once additional licenses have been installed,
users are able to access the WebEx site, host meetings, end meetings, and access
recordings.
|
Six-Month
Free-Trial Period
After you sign in
to this product for the first time and complete the first-time-experience
wizard, your six-month free-trial begins. During the free trial, administrators
can configure the system and your users can schedule, host, and attend
meetings. A banner appears at the top of the Administration site indicating how
many months remain in your free trial. One month before your free trial ends,
you receive an email that informs you that you must purchase and install
licenses or your system will be disabled.
At the end of your
free trial, your system is disabled. You can sign in to your system but you
cannot use any other features until you add licenses. Refer to the Managing Licenses section of the
Cisco WebEx
Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information on managing your
licenses.
Re-hosting Licenses
After CWMS software
has been upgraded or an existing system has been
expanded, re-hosting
the licenses allows older, valid licenses to be used on a upgraded or expanded system.
See Re-hosting Licenses
after a Software Upgrade in the Cisco WebEx
Meetings Server Administration Guide.
Obtaining
Licenses
Contact your Cisco
sales representative to order licenses for your system. When you contact your
sales representative, you will need to specify how many licenses you want. You
will need one license for each employee in your organization who will be
hosting meetings.
There are several
ways you can determine how many licenses you will need. You can use your
dashboard to view usage, resource history, and meeting trends to determine how
many users are hosting and attending meetings on your system. After you have
been using the product for a few months, you can use your monthly summary
reports and customized details reports to help you determine how many licenses
you need. Your monthly summary reports display statistics on service adoption
and user license usage. Service adoption statistics show you the rate at which
new users are adopting your system by displaying the rate of adoption for the
previous three months and predicting the growth rate over the next three
months. User license statistics display license usage over the previous three
months and expected growth over the next three months.
Licenses can be obtained by using the embedded Cisco Enterprise License
Manager, eFulfilment, or by contacting TAC.Refer to the
Managing Licenses section of Cisco WebEx
Meetings Server Administration Guide for more information on managing your
licenses.
Exceeding Your
Licenses
Once you have
purchased and configured licenses on your system, you must make sure you have
enough licenses to accommodate all active hosts on your system. Your system
checks every month to determine if there are enough licenses for each active
host. The license count is reset each calendar month. If the number of active
hosts on your system exceeds the number of licenses, an email is sent to the
administrator notifying him that he has exceeded his licenses. You are given a
six-month grace period to reduce your license usage or increase the number of
licenses on your system so that it meets or exceeds the number of active hosts.
If you do not reduce your license usage or purchase enough licenses to meet
usage before the end of the six-month period, your system will be disabled. The
email message informs the administrator of the date when this will occur.
The system checks
and adjusts the license numbers displayed on the administration site. The audit
manager runs once per day (at 2:00 a.m.) to adjust the number of licenses used
as necessary. At the end of each month the system checks license usage. If the
number of hosts has dropped below the number of licenses, the licenses exceeded
condition ends. If the number of active hosts still exceeds the number of
licenses, a new email is sent to your administrator each month that notifies
him that the licenses exceeded condition still exists and the date when the
system will be disabled.
If you still have
a licenses exceeded condition for straight six months, your system is disabled
and the administrator receives an email notifying him what has occurred. After
your system is disabled your users will be unable to schedule, host, or attend
meetings, or access recordings on your system. The Administration site will
function normally so an administrator can sign in and add licenses. Once an
administrator has added licenses to the system, users will regain the ability
to schedule, host, and attend meetings, and access recordings.
Temporary
Licenses
If you have
temporary licenses configured on your system, your temporary license status
appears on a banner on each page of the Administration site. The banner informs
you of how many temporary licenses you have configured and when those temporary
licenses expire. When temporary licenses expire your system returns to its
previous license status.
Out-of-Date
Licenses
If you upgrade
your system, you must also update your licenses. Once you have upgraded your
system, an email is sent to your administrator notifying him that he has been
given a six-month grace period to update the licenses. If you do not update
your licenses before the end of the six-month period, your system will be
disabled. The email message informs the administrator of the date when this
will occur.
The system checks
and adjusts the license numbers displayed on the administration site. The audit
manager runs once per day (at 2:00 a.m.) to adjust the out-of-date licenses
number as necessary. At the end of each month, the system checks to see if the
licenses have been updated from the previous period. If the licenses have been
updated, the out-of-date license condition ends. If the licenses have not been
updated yet, a new email is sent to your administrator each month that notifies
him that the out-of-date license condition still exists and the date when the
system will be disabled.
If you still have
an out-of-date license condition after six months, your system is disabled and
the administrator receives an email notifying him what has occurred. After your
system is disabled your users will be unable to schedule, host, or attend
meetings, or access recordings on your system. The Administration site will
function normally so an administrator can sign in and update licenses. Once an
administrator has updated the licenses, users will regain the ability to
schedule, host, and attend meetings, and access recordings.
Prime License
Manager (PLM) Connection Lost
When you purchase
licenses, you use an embedded PLM tool to enter your PAK and register your
licenses. PLM performs synchronization every 12 hours to update the license
status and last compliance time. If two days pass with no connection to PLM, an
email is sent to your administrator to inform him that PLM is unable to
synchronize with your system. You are given a six-month grace period to
reconnect to PLM. If your system does not reconnect with PLM before the end of
the six-month period, your system is disabled. The email message informs the
administrator of the date when this will occur.
A new email is
sent to your administrator at the end of each month that the system is unable
to connect with PLM informing the administrator of the date when the system
will be disabled. If your system reconnects with PLM before the six-month grace
period passes, this condition ends.
If your system is
still unable to connect to PLM after six months, your system is disabled and
the administrator receives an email notification of what has occurred. When
your system is disabled, users are not able to schedule, host, or attend
meetings, or access recordings on the system. The Administration site functions
normally, so an administrator can sign in to the system but the system must
reconnect with PLM to end this condition and restore the ability for users to
schedule, host, and attend meetings, and access recordings.
Actions that
Require New Licenses
The following
system-altering actions require that you install new licenses: