License Pools and Assignment

When you buy licenses of a product, your purchase is a pool of licenses of that product on your own Varigence account. Each product you buy, by subscription or as a perpetual license, has one pool on your account. The pool belongs to your account. No organization is created or inferred from an email domain, and nobody joins one. If you buy a single license, it is assigned to you. Every other license is assigned to a person by invitation.

Who manages a pool

As the owner of the account, you manage its pools. You can also add administrators. An administrator manages every pool of your account and can invite a person, withdraw a pending invitation, unassign a license and see each pool, just as you can. Only you, the owner, can add or remove an administrator and transfer ownership of the account.

In the Varigence Customer Portal, the owner and each administrator can see each product's pool: its quantity, whether it is a subscription or a perpetual license, the people assigned a license, the pending invitations and when each expires, the licenses inside a reassignment window and the day each window ends, and the administrators. An administrator also sees the accounts they administer.

Assigning a license by invitation

You assign a license by inviting a person to a product's pool by their email address in the Varigence Customer Portal. One mail goes to that address alone, with the subject "A {product} license has been assigned to you", where {product} is the name of the product, and a link to accept the license. The mail does not name who sent it. If the mail cannot be delivered, the invitation still stands.

The invitation expires 14 days after it is sent. Until then, you can withdraw a pending invitation.

The holders of a pool are the people assigned its licenses together with its pending invitations. An expired invitation does not count among them. If an invitation would put the holders over the pool's quantity, it is refused, and the refusal states how many more licenses the pool needs to admit it.

Inviting an address that already has a pending invitation sends nothing and changes nothing. To send a new mail, withdraw the pending invitation and invite the address once more. The new mail carries a new link.

What happens when a person accepts

The invited person accepts by signing in to the Varigence Customer Portal with the invited email address and opening the link within the 14 days. The license is assigned to them at that moment, and their product picks it up at its next sign-in or license check. A pending invitation gives no license until it is accepted. A person who already holds a license of the pool keeps it, and the invitation is used up.

For the invited person's side, see Accepting a License Invitation.

Unassigning a license

When you unassign a person, their license is freed at once for the pool's next assignment. That person's product stops using the license at its next license check, and no offline grace period runs on from it. The person keeps any trial of their own. As the owner, you can also unassign your own license.

The 30 day reassignment window

A license that passes from one person to a new person starts a 30 day reassignment window on that license. During the window, the license cannot be assigned to yet another person, though it can still be unassigned. A license assigned to a person for the first time starts no window. A person who takes back the license they left starts no window and can take it back even while its window runs. Unassigning a license does not stop a window that is already running.

For example, one person holds a license and you unassign them. A new person accepts an invitation and takes that license, which starts its 30 day window. For those 30 days, the license cannot pass to a third person. You can still unassign the new person during that time.

When every free license of a pool is inside its window, an acceptance is refused until the earliest window ends, and the invitation stays pending.

Changing the quantity

The Varigence Customer Portal shows the minimum quantity of each pool, which is the number of people assigned a license plus the number of pending invitations. The quantity of a pool cannot be reduced below that minimum. To reduce it further, first unassign licenses or withdraw pending invitations until the minimum is at or below the quantity you want.

Licenses from more than one buyer

A person can hold licenses from more than one buyer. They keep every one of those licenses, each billed to its own buyer, and their product signs them in with everything those licenses confer together.

Transferring ownership

Only the owner can transfer ownership of an account. The account moves whole to the new owner: every product's pool with its billing, the assignments, the pending invitations, the reassignment windows and the administrators. The transfer is refused, and nothing changes, when the new owner's own account already holds any purchase, license, invitation, reassignment window, administrator or billing of its own. The previous owner is not made an administrator.

Enterprise and invoiced purchases

If your enterprise purchase is billed by invoice, Varigence staff create its pool on your own Varigence account. When that pool holds a single license, it is assigned to you. When it holds more than one, you assign each license by invitation.

Need help?

If you have questions about your license pools or your account, contact Varigence Support at [email protected].