Autodesk Subscription Customers: Sign In Activation Rollout for Single User seats has commenced.
Autodesk is making some necessary changes to the Autodesk Account Portal and access to some licences. There is a lot of information to digest so we’ve attempted to break it down into bite sized chunks.
What’s happening here?
There are 2 major changes. The first will affect the way you are accessing some of your software:
Autodesk is changing the way that some users will get access to their software. Under specific circumstances, installed software that was activated on your computers via a serial number may now ask the user to sign in using their Autodesk credentials. We’ll discuss the steps needed to take later (skip to the bottom of this article if you want to get to that part).
Secondly, there are changes to the software management roles within the Autodesk Account Portal:
This change will affect everyone who has Single User Subscription licences. The new system now refers to the Contract Manager as a “Primary Admin” and the role of Software Coordinator will cease and may be replaced by the new “Secondary Admin” position.
This was a necessary change and it is more than a mere swap-out of names. The new setup allows for much more flexibility for you as a customer to manage your software. Secondary Admins are not limited by serial numbers so they now have the ability to manage all of the software in your contracts. You are also able to nominate more than one Secondary Admin if required.
Setting up the roles of Primary and Secondary Administrator are managed at a customer level within the Autodesk Account Portal.
New roles in the Autodesk Account Portal link
What software will this affect?
All Single User Subscription licences will be moved to this new Sign In activation method.
If you are an Autodesk Subscription customer who purchased a licence and activated it via a Serial Number your Contract Manager/Primary Administrator will receive an email from Autodesk notifying you about a change to the way your software is activated.
What software won’t be affected?
If you still have a perpetual licence (on active Maintenance or not) you will not be affected. If you have licences that are Network or Multi-user deployment they will also be unaffected.
NOTE: Remember that you may have several types of licences in your company. It’s possible that no software is affected, only some is affected or all is affected depending on the mix that you own.
When will this happen?
This is a staggered rollout that will be completed worldwide; we are told by December 31st 2019.
What do we need to do?
Any software that was purchased and assigned with the Serial Number activation will need to be reassigned to your users with the Sign In method. Now that the licence has switched to a Sign In activation method, when you login you’ll see it listed in the Autodesk Account Portal and will be able to assign it using the New View. If you have purchased Subscription software in the recent past you will be familiar with the process and can assign the software as before.
For those of you who have not gone through the process of assigning software up to this point, here is a breakdown of the process:
The Primary or Secondary Administrator logs in using their credentials:
You may need to add a user into your Autodesk Account Portal User list. You can do this as a bulk action or one at a time:
Once all of your users are set up, you can assign the licences to the user/s. Note that by default, new Subscription licences are assigned to the Primary Administrator so the updated licences will need to be unassigned from you before assigning them to your user/s.
You can either assign software by selecting it in the list of Software and then picking a User or you can list all the Users and pick one of them and assign available software.
The user will get a notification email with a link. The link takes them to the Autodesk Account Sign-in page. They can sign-in using their credentials and they will see all the assigned software. This means that they can access their downloads to the installers and they’ll see any available updates and enhancements.
They can now start the software and log in using their credentials:
Note that they may get a dialogue like the one below. Please make sure they pick the Left-hand option – Sign in!
Here is a fairly short video that has an overview of the improvements that have been made to the Autodesk Account:
