RE: User count -- SYSTEM21

Here is a response from Ian Evans on the issue of User Counts. Ian is the
development manager responsible for System Manager along with other
products. Ian's offer to engage in one on one conversations with any
interested parties needs to be moderated a little.

If anyone wants to further discuss this with Ian one on one please forward
me your additional questions and I will, with Ian, construct a distribution
group. If the list prefers we can attempt to address the questions through
the list with Ian providing responses and my forwarding them.

I am interested in exploring further the concept of providing access to
developers to the members of this list. I feel this could be an excellent
opportunity to develop some communications for you directly with the
authors of the package. Could members please post whether or not they want
me to act as an intermediary in this regard? Or please comment on whether
or not having the development managers on this list would be beneficial.

I am conscious of the need to keep the list a user controlled environment.
However, sitting between your questions and the software authors I feel
there is a real opportunity to enhance our collective communications. And
for you to get answers straight from the developers. One of the development
managers biggest complaints while I was running that organization was a
lack of customer contact. I think this list or a similar device could solve
that problem.

If this is not an appropriate list I can very quickly set up a developers
contact list that Geac could sponsor.

A lot of different thoughts there, but please read and respond. Despite
what you might think to the contrary the efforts and thoughts you are
putting forward are seen and heard in the Geac community.

Bruce McIntyre
VP Product Strategy


>From Ian Evans:

Bruce,

I have seen a similar situation occur, but in fact it does not cause any
problems within the licence checking logic. Whenever a user requests a
licence, the system will perform a recount and makes the decision on the
"exact" number of users. The data held on file is not intended for
customers to view and at any given time is not an "exact" number. The
mechanism for allocating and deallocating licences is somewhat complex, a
user simply looking at the data will not get a true reflection even after
they have run a CLNUSRALC. Whilst the number of users appears to exceed the
limit, this is not actually the case and the situation is reviewed when
another user seeks access. Our view on this has been that the handling of
the licences (21/V3 & XA/V3) is fairly convoluted and not exposed to the
user, the licence handling at the point of reaching the "exact" user limit
functions correctly, therefore we should not change a "working" solution.

I was surprised that this was logged on Studley in September 1999, I have
checked Problem Recording and can find no reference to such a problem being
logged. A similar sounding situation has been logged on the Q&A database
(3rd. July, 2000); to which I have requested they raise it through the
support desk because we require further details to establish if it is the
situation I have seen.

With the availability of Named Function User Licensing in the @EF August
2000 release, we have provided a Licence Enquiry which does show the
current licence usage in a controlled way with the facility to view a list
of the users consuming this licence. This facility is only available to
customers who purchase authorisation and user licences within the Named
User Function Licence (21/NF) framework, it will not be available to those
who continue to run the 21/V3 & XA/V3 licences. Customers can simply
migrate from the previous licence models to the new Named Function User
model, however the contractual and commercial details would need to be
agreed and the appropriate set of authorisation/licence codes issued.

I would suggest that users who are encountering the problem are invited to
send me details so that we can check whether there is a problem.

Regards,
Ian.





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