New License Manager Behavior

Chris Kelleher

Chris Kelleher

Administrator
Staff member
I recently installed SyteLine 3.5b03 to correct some bugs that were really
hurting us in 3.5b02a. This version did correct the bugs we had in 3.5b02a,
but there was a change made to the License Manager that is giving me more
grief than all of the bugs we had combined.

In version 3.5b02a and earlier when a license token expired it
automatically became available for another user. If your token had expired
and you went to use SL again you were issued a new one. With 3.5b03 if your
token expires you are prompted "Would you like to refresh your license
token ?", No logs you out, yes lets you continue. To get these messages to
disappear you need to set your "Max. Idle Time" higher, but then you are
more likely to get the "All licenses for Symix are in use" message,
requiring you to refresh all tokens.

These messages do no harm, but they are annoying. I believe the intent is
to annoy you to the point that you purchase more licenses to make the
messages go away. I know a financially secure SYMIX benefits us as users,
but I don't appreciate this type "feature" being added to a release
intended to correct bugs. The last big licensing change I remember was when
Progress discontinued the unlimited Enterprise license, but there was
plenty of warning given then.

SL 3.5b03 is still not openly available and I'm not sure what version of SL
4.0 and 4.5 this functionality was added to, so I imagine very few users
have had to deal with this yet.

How does the rest of the user community feel about this change ?

Bill Miller
MIS Administrator
Chromalloy Connecticut
 
We are getting ready to convert to sl35b02a. What specific bugs were really
hurting you. I hadn't heard if 3.5b03 was released yet. Is it?
 
I just spoke to Tom Welsh at Symix (one hour ago) and he indicated that
b03 will be available to the general public soon, maybe as soon as this
Friday. The token issue is very interesting however. We are getting
this bug fix because of record locking issues.

Mike Thomas
MIS manager
The Penn Companies
Phila Pa
 
My understanding is that 3.5b03 is only available to customers affected by
documented bugs that have been fixed in 3.5b03.

The biggest problem we had was that we were unable to apply discounts to AP
payments. Many of the Financial screens would also freeze up if during an
update you used the Enter key on the last field to be updated instead of
F2. We also couldn't sort the AR Aging report by customer name.
 
I can appreciate your frustration and I'm grateful that we just recently
upgraded from Symix 3.0 to Syteline 3.5b02a. So far we haven't encountered
any bugs (knock on wood).

The technician who performed our upgrade did mention that there is a
new lisencing model being developed for Syteline 4.? He said it was his
understanding that they were considering doing away with the concurrent
user model and going with a specific per user lisence. He said Symix is
fairly unique, in manufacturing system software, using the concurrent user
scheme.

I was wondering if anyone knows more about it. If true, it would have a
profound
impact on the cost. Granted it's only a rumour but considering the source, it's

worrisome.
 
I will be upgrading to Syteline 3.502a also.
I was hoping for a smooth transition, perhaps not.
If anyone knows of a list of bugs, I would appreciate it?

Thanks

Randy

Randy Brazeau
Data Processing Coordinator
Enduro-Niagara Ltd
rbrazeau@enduroniagara.com
 
We are on SyteLine 4.00.02. The token manager works as it always has.

Are you saying that Symix is changing the way they handle tokens? There is
a BIG difference between the number of users actually doing something in
the system and the number of users logged into SyteLine. It would also be
a MAJOR inconvenience to have to log out and in every time you don't use
the system for 5-10 minutes. Most of our users have their "default"
screens automatically open when they log in; and this can take a minute or
two. Having to re-do this several times a day would result in a lot of
lost time.

Does anyone have "official" information about this?
 
I asked our Symix sales rep what information he had concerning this license
question. Below is the response that was received from Tom Welch at Symix.

Hope this helps.

Barb Roels
US Filter/JWI


A license manager bug (Fix number 20438) was recently completed, which is
causing this message.
Any release that contains this fix (The read me file with each product
covers the list of bugs included) will have this new behavior.
There is NO attempt to change the concurrent user concept. The bug fix
simply closes a hole that allowed the number of concurrent users to exceed
the licensed amount purchased. Tokens are still freed after the time out
value is reached, like before. If the user has this message displayed and
they do not need to use the system, they should leave the message displayed
until they need to use the system, or simply log off. When they need to use
the system they simply reply yes, and a new token is obtained and they
continue.
The system will no longer allow more people to be 'active' (that is consume
a token) than the maximum number of tokens licensed.
Hope this helps.
PS. I believe marketing is preparing material to help you address this
issue.
Thomas R. Welch
Director, Product Support and Quality Assurance Symix Systems, Inc.
 
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