Volume License Agreement Community Documents
Previous versions of NI VLM connected users or computers and individual licenses to give permissions to the software. In NI VLM 3.0 permissions may be managed through groups. A group is a collection of licenses and licensees (users or computers). Every licensee has permission for every license in the group. Figure 1 shows the dialog to set up a group in NI VLM. As you can see Brenda, Brian, Jeff, and John all have permissions to LabVIEW Real-Time Module and LabVIEW Professional Development System.
Figure 1. Group Setup Dialog
Groups should contain common sets of software. If 5 people are using LabVIEW Full Development System and LabVIEW Real-Time Module, 10 people are using Developer Suite Core, and 15 people are using LabVIEW Professional Development System, LabVIEW Real-Time Module, and LabVIEW FPGA Module, it makes sense to have 3 groups with those software licenses. A group is not limited to one media set; it can include permissions for software from different media. If some people commonly use LabVIEW and TestStand, they can be in the same group even though the software is located on separate media sets. If someone does not fit within a group or groups, you still have the ability to assign an explicit license to the user.
Items within a group are not unique to only that group, they can overlap. Multiple groups can have the same license type. For example, LabVIEW FDS might commonly be used in the VLA so LabVIEW FDS named-user licenses would spread among several groups. This method is not the same as licenses shared among a pool of users in a concurrent license; each license will be assigned to one user in one of the groups. Also one person can belong to multiple groups. If someone needs LabVIEW Real-Time Module and LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module and the licenses are in 2 groups, the person can belong to both groups. NI VLM is smart enough to not check out two licenses for one person if the groups share software license types. See Figure 2 for an example.
Figure 2. User and license in multiple groups
You set up and maintain groups in NI VLM (see Figure 1), not when you create volume license installers. You set up groups once and call them when setting up volume license installers. Unlike license sets in previous versions of NI VLM, groups do not need to be created each time a new volume license installer is created. This saves time when updating volume license installers. Also, if you receive a new software license for the VLA, you can add it to the applicable groups without updating any volume license installers. When you add it to a group, all users or computers in that group will have permission to use the software.
