Trial, how to restrict usage to online?

Hi Adnan,
We would like to use trial activation, but would like to restrict the usage to online only. I suspect that wr have to call ActivateTrial at each start of the application, whatever the result of IsTrialGenuine to make sure that a ping will be done with your servers, but how can we make sure that once the application started, he can not use the product, let say for more than one hour offline?
I’m thinking at getting a similar behavior to the license with the grace period and server sync.
Pat

Hi Pat,

but how can we make sure that once the application started, he can not use the product, let say for more than one hour offline?

You are correct when you say ActivateTrial() can allow data to sync with our servers and since it sends a network request you can confirm if the user is online or not. But after activation users can go offline for as long as they do not close your application.

But you can create licenses for trial purposes as well. You can create a license key with the validity of say 15 days, doing so can let you add those restrictions by “grace period” and “server sync”.

In case you only need to confirm if the user is online or not you can use send any network request using a language-specific network module in a separate thread at a specific rate.

Regards,
Ahmad.

Thanks Ahmad,
I agree that creating a specific license would do the trick but we don’t want to go that path (number of activation will be an issue soon, and we don’t want to change of plan for this as the number of trial is not linked to the revenue).
One more question: for enabling Trial, my understanding is that we just need to create a Trial policy. But can we have more than one policy for a given product? I don’t see any field specific to the product (i.e. productId) when creating a trial policy with the webapi. Am I missing something?
Pat

Your understanding regarding the trial activation is correct, but you can only link one trial policy with the product at a time.

I don’t see any field specific to the product (i.e. productId) when creating a trial policy with the webapi.

It is the product to which the trial policy is linked, so your product will have a TrialPolicyId property.