The Bentley Desktop License client is the component that handles licensing for all Bentley Desktop products. It handles all of the communication needed to license a product including connection with the Bentley Subscription Entitlement Services (SES) and with CONNECTION Client which is used for user authentication.
The user interface for the Bentley License client is the Bentley Licensing Tool. Please see Bentley Licensing Tool for more information.
The Bentley Desktop License client has two main functions for licensing: 1) Activations and 2) Product Usage Logging.
The Bentley Desktop License client determines if the current user is allowed to run a Bentley product. It does this by maintaining a local policy file that contains the Entitlement settings for products that the user has run. The Entitlement settings are based on the list of Entitlements that the user's organization has in the user's country and on any settings that the organization's License administrator has configured in Entitlement Management.
The local policy file is valid for 7 days, but is updated at the following times as long as the user is signed in to CONNECTION Client:
The update of the policy file requires that the user be signed in to CONNECTION Client and be able to reach Bentley's Subscription Entitlement Services.
It is important to note that changes to a user's Entitlement settings in Entitlement Management will only take effect for that user once the local policy is updated. Entitlement setting changes are not automatically pushed out to every machine running Bentley software.
While Bentley Desktop products are running, the Desktop License client is recording usage of that product. If the user is signed in to CONNECTION Client and the machine is able to connect to the Bentley Logging service, the usage will be recorded in real-time every minute. If the user is not signed in to CONNECTION Client or the machine is otherwise unable to connect to the Logging service, usage will be recorded offline and sent at a later time when the connection is available.
The Log Viewer, available in the Tools menu of the Bentley Licensing Tool, gives a good view of recorded usage.
For more information about what information is recorded by the Desktop License client, please see Usage information reported to Subscription Entitlement Service.