Under Community Review

Free a stuck license from within our own online control panel without having to contact tech support

It would be useful for us to be able to free up our own license when the license gets "stuck" i.e it is showing as being in use when in fact it is not in use. The only way to free our license up when it is in the stuck state is to send a support ticket. All the time we are locked out of our own software and cannot do our project work - this is for software we have paid for. I have lost 1 day's project work because our license was stuck in the system with no way to free it. Eventually I just had to call support to get it freed up. However if this occurs at the weekend or in the evenings we have to wait until we can get support.

We should be able to free our license from our own online SDL account.  

In addition if we can free our own license then it would also reduce the amount of time your support is being used up just to free licenses.

What caused this issue in our case?

It would be helpful to have the correct Licensing activation screen is displayed for the software we have downloaded from our SDL account instead of the incorrect license activation.

We have SDL professional Network license and downloaded this from our SDL network license account however when we installed the software the Freelance Activation is displayed instead. If we then enter our license into the freelance license box it will lock our network license from being used and we have to then contact Tech support to free the license. There is no way currently for us to free that locked license.

I realise that the Freelance and Professional Network software are in fact the same software and that the features we get (pro or freelance) are unlocked depending on which license we have however SDL can still maintain the same software code base but simply set the correct activation screen for the license we have is simple enough for Trados to do. If we download from our Professional account we expect to see ONLY the professional activation procedure - not a freelance activation procedure. 

If you can't provide the correct License activation screen the very least then would be to provide an error message stating that the license is not correct for the activation procedure we are attempting to use and not allow activation. The present an error message stating the correct activation procedure.

All of this is pretty simply and straight forward to implement and would save users of Trados software being unnecessarily inconvenienced by having their software locked with no means to deal with the issues without tech support.

John Bolton
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    " I'm explaining here that this issue is not due to a bug in their software rather in the rationale on how they handle the licenses."

    I got a license stuck after a crash in the activation box: on my computer, the license was deactivated, online it was still assigned to a user. I had to get support to deactivate it online.

    So clearly, it is to some extent related to faulty coding, even if it is not exactly your problem.

    "I can understand why Trados have used legacy code and why they have now re-written the entire code base because we also are involved with code writing.  "

    No need to be involved in code writing to understand this has a cost. But to reuse your comparison, Windows is progressively replacing legacy code with new code, even if it does keep a lot of legacy code. Anyway, I am going off topic here…

    "This feature request was getting upvotes however the votes stopped after these follow up posts presumably because users may think there is either there is a already a solution (when there is not) or that the issue is due to buggy software (which also it is not in this case)"

    It has nothing to do with the follow up posts or people thinking that your problem is solved or due to buggy software…

    It is just related to the fact that your topic is not visible because it is at page 4 or 5 in the Ideas section.

    And people don't usually dig up old topics, they just pick the most recent ones.

    Besides, and probably most importantly, what you are asking for is already implemented and working for most users.

    Why would people vote for a feature that already exists and is working for them?

    In other words, don't expect a lot of votes here, because the title of your idea is not precise enough.

    You should name your idea something like: "New license management system".

    For example, the only reason why I responded to your topic is because I experienced similar problems.

    But again, you're asking "Free a stuck license from within our own online control panel without having to contact tech support" --> Most users have access to this feature, therefore they won't even bother to open your thread even if they go through all the pages of the Ideas section.

    I'm not trying to be aggressive, I'm just trying to demonstrate why your topic is not having the  success you're hoping for.

    That being said, good luck with your request ;)

  • Hello, thank you for your response - I will clarify a little more on this. This issue is not due to a "bug" as such or faulty coding in this particular case. It is to do with how the current license management logical process is setup.  If a certain set of conditions arise - which we documented in our ticket the license can get stuck.   It is not down to the software being irratic due to a bug.    Therefore  it is not so much an issue of faulty coding as much as faulty procedure for handling the license.   Faulty coding can be very difficult (if at all) to resolve if a program is using legacy code (as is the case from Trados studio as far as I am aware)   I agree that the software is still notoriously buggy however according to support this is not a bug based on the code but an issue in the logic of how the software handle the license.

    If Trados change the way the the licenses are handled then the license  can always be freed up.  

    This feature request was getting upvotes however the votes stopped after these follow up posts presumably because users may think there is either there is a already a solution (when there is not) or that the issue is due to buggy software (which also it is not in this case) The issue in this case is down to the logical license handling procedure which needs to be modified so that the license can always be freed up no matter what.  

    I can understand why Trados have used legacy code and why they have now re-written the entire code base because we also are involved with code writing.  There needs to be an undersanding of how much time and money it takes to re-write all legacy code. It is a massive undertaking that financially may not even be feasible.  Microsoft themselves also use legacy code because the cost to reporgram from scratch everything is monumental.   I am not intending to defend Trados on bugs in their software. I'm explaining here that this issue is not due to a bug in their software rather in the rationale on how they handle the licenses. They just need to modify the procedure on how the licenses are handled.

    In conclusion:  Please vote for this proposal if you want to be able to free up your software license any time under all circumstances so that Trados modify the procedure on how the licenses are handled.

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    As I said, I wasn't trying to provide a solution at all.

    You wrote: " Then you too will also need to put you work on hold  until support are able to deal with the issue on your behalf."

    It actually happened several times to me, so I know exactly how frustrating it is.

    And I wasn't suggesting to move to Studio 2017 either, I was just highlighting the fact that these problems are frequent with Studio and that it is totally random.

    I've been asking for a faster and more stable build of Studio for ages. All we get is updates on top of an old program… No wonder why there are so many bugs.

    "We should always have access to the licenses we have paid for and we should never be put in a position to have our work on hold to wait for support to free up a stuck license under any circumstances." --> I totally agree and most of these bugs are totally unacceptable for a professional program.

    To sum it up, I was just saying you're not alone, unfortunately, it looks like you're still going to be stuck in this situation for a long time.

    Another example of how stable is Studio: the program crashed while I was writing this message in Firefox…

    All I can do is wish you good luck…

  • I am responding to both Matthieu and Alison:  We have  SDL Studio 2017  and we still could not return the license, even with the so called "force return" option - this option also did not work. Even with the latest version of the software (2017). I contacted support and asked them why we could not return the license  even with version 2017 they stated that the license was stuck on THEIR  side.      Therefore the  "force license return " does not work under all circumstances. What I am requesting is that it should be setup to work under all circumstances.  We had a ticket on this and support investigated the issue and they stated that the license could not be force returned by us. It could only be returned by Trados support under this particular circumstance.

    I appreciate your contributions on this issue as I hope now this makes this request clearer and more specific. Even with 2017 the new forced return does not work under certain circumstances and therefore I am requesting that it always be returnable under all circumstances.

    Now I have clarified this issue further I hope  this feature request will not be overlooked by other because they are thinking that there is a way to retrieve a stuck license using the "forced return" feature in 2017 if you have the same issue as we had you also will not be able to return the license using that method.    

    One day this same issue we experienced could also happen to you and you could find that the return stuck license option also does not work with Studio 2017.  Then you too will also need to put you work on hold  until support are able to deal with the issue on your behalf. I am suggesting that this should never be the case. We should always have access to the licenses we have paid for and we should never be put in a position to have our work on hold to wait for support to free up a stuck license under any circumstances.

  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Hi John,

    I'm just sharing my experience, not providing a solution unfortunately.

    I had a similar issue with my Studio 2015 license. The force return option had disappeared…

    For more than a year I was compelled to contact the support every time I needed to remotely free a license.

    I was explained "The problem is related to the change in licensing as we moved to SafeNet when we went to 2015. "

    Turns out it is now available again with my Studio 2017 license…