Creative Cloud for education: Device licensing
Creative Cloud for education device licenses provide the ability to license software to a specific machine instead of a named user or with a serial number. Users never have to sign in or enter a serial number to use the software. Licenses are tied to machine deployment pools, which are created automatically when you order products.
Creative Cloud for education customers must place a VIP order with an Adobe Authorized Education Reseller for device licenses. Adobe then creates a deployment pool for the products ordered. For example, if you purchase 100 Creative Cloud Complete licenses and 50 Photoshop licenses, two deployment pools are created.
Device licenses are an online offering. After installation, the package will attempt to activate online. If activation is not possible at deployment time either due to no Internet connectivity or proxy configuration, the packaged apps will continue to run. Apps attempt silent activation for seven days before they cease to function. After initial activation, the computers need to connect to Adobe servers once every 99 days. For information about the ports and sites accessed, see Port information.
Use Creative Cloud Packager to create licensed packages to deploy apps. Sign in to the Admin Console and download Creative Cloud Packager from the Deployment Tools section.
For more information on using Creative Cloud Packager, see the following:
Start Creative Cloud Packager and choose Creative Cloud for education, and then sign in with the Adobe ID associated with the VIP membership.
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Click Create Package to create a new package.
In the Package Details dialog, enter the information as described below:
Package name
Enter the name of the package that will be created.
Save to
Enter the location to which you want to save the package you create. You can click the Browse icon to locate the destination folder, or enter the absolute path.
Select Organization
Select the name of your organization.
32-bit/64-bit
In Windows, choose 32-bit or 64-bit processor support. You must make
separate packages for 32-bit and 64-bit installations. A 32-bit package will not run on a
64-bit machine.
This option is only available if you are using a Windows OS.
License type
Select Device License. If you don't see Device License as an option, sign out and back in with a Creative Cloud for education account. It creates a package with a valid license. Use this workflow to deploy a product or group of products containing updates to client machines in a licensed state. No further validation is required on the client machine.
Package configurations
The settings for package configuration include options such as whether to ignore conflicting processes during installation. To review or change the package configuration settings, see Modify package configuration.
Creative Cloud Desktop Application
Adobe Creative Cloud for desktop is the central hub for Creative Cloud activity and allows the users to view applications and updates.
Do not enable this option. Adobe recommends that you keep this option disabled for Device License packages.
There is a known issue with specific types of account which can cause the license to get removed from the system when the user logs out of Creative Cloud Desktop. It is not a requirement, but there may be unexpected results if users log in and log out again.
Show Applications and Updates via the Apps panel
This option is applicable only when Creative Cloud Desktop Application is enabled. When disabled, this option hides the apps panel in Creative Cloud desktop application for end-users.
Selecting or deselecting this option results in the following changes to the options in the Advanced Update Manager Behavior section of the Advanced configurations dialog:
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User selection |
Admin users update via Adobe Update Manager |
Adobe Update Manager is disabled (IT manages update distribution) |
Enable Adobe Update Manager |
Disable Adobe Update Manager |
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Select Show Applications and Updates via the Apps panel |
Enabled |
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Deselect Show Applications and Updates via the Apps panel |
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Enabled |
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Select Show Applications and Updates via the Apps panel and Use internal update server |
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Enabled |
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Deselect Show Applications and Updates via the Apps panel and Use internal update server |
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Enabled |
Selecting or deselecting this option overrides the updater behavior that you may have changed in the package configurations.. It is recommended that you verify the package configuration updates before proceeding.
Elevated Privileges
This option allows users to manage applications and updates even when they do not have Administrator privileges. To allow your users without Administrator credentials to manage applications and updates, select this option.
Once you have deployed a package with elevated privileges, to revoke the elevated privileges later, you need to create a Creative Cloud desktop app-only package with Elevated Privileges deselected and deploy it. Similarly, to grant elevated privileges to existing users, you need to create a Creative Cloud desktop app only package with Elevated Privileges selected and deploy it.
The Elevated Privileges option is available only when you have selected Show Applications And Updates Via The Apps Panel.
You need to relaunch the Creative Cloud desktop Application for this change to take effect.
Click Select to open the Select a Deployment Pool screen. Click a Deployment Pool and click Select.
A deployment pool is simply each individual product ordered grouped by quantity. For example, if you purchase 100 Creative Cloud Complete licenses and 50 Photoshop licenses, one deployment pool is created for Creative Cloud Complete and one for Photoshop.
The Deployed to field in Creative Cloud Packager will display the number of licenses deployed. In the Package Details screen, click Next.
The Applications and Updates screen displays the list of applications associated with the Deployment pool. Select the apps and updates, and click Build.
When you package an update for the latest version of some of the applications, you can apply the package to a system that does not already have the base version of the application installed. You can identify such apps with the icon (
). For a list of such applications, see Applications that can be deployed without their base versions.
For example, the update of Photoshop CC 2015.0.1 could be installed on a client machine that already had base version of Photoshop CC 2015 installed. The latest version of Photoshop update can be installed on a machine that may not have the Photoshop base version. So while creating a package, you can choose to package only the update version for the apps that can be deployed without their base versions.
You can package archived versions of software as well. Select the Show archived versions check box to display the list of supported previous versions, if any. If the product or update that you selected has already been downloaded to your machine, a Down Arrow appears next to its name.
The summary screen displays when package is built.
For more information, see Create packages.
After you've created the package, you'll need to deploy the package. For information, see Deploy packages.
Caution: Conventional uninstall does not release the license back to the deployment pool.
If you use the conventional uninstall process to uninstall an individual Creative Cloud app, such as Photoshop or Illustrator, from a client machine, it does not release the uninstalled license back to the deployment pool. The number of available licenses in the deployment pool does not increase.
To release the uninstalled device licenses back to the deployment pool, do the following:
If you have existing Adobe software deployed and are migrating to device licenses, use the Create License Package workflow to migrate previously deployed named user or trial packages to device licenses. You can deploy a license package to apply a license to already deployed apps, without needing to repackage the apps. See the applicable section below:
If you have an existing deployment of Creative Cloud, use the following workflow to use device licenses instead of named users:
Step 1
Create a license package for device licenses. For more information, see Create license pacakge.
Step 2
End users must sign out from Creative Cloud to unlicense existing software. Users can sign out from Creative Cloud app or any other installed product.
> Preferences > Account, and then click Sign out from Creative Cloud.Step 3
Deploy the license package to the end-user machines, and execute the AdobeSerialization executable file with administrator privileges. This file is created when you create a license package.
Existing Enterprise Education Agreement (EEA) deployments use serial number-based licensing. To migrate to a device licenses, use the following workflow:
Step 1
Create a License file for device licenses. For more information, see Create license file.
Step 2
To unlicense the currently installed applications, run the RemoveVolumeSerial executable file with admin privileges, on the end-user machine. This file is created when you create a license package.
Step 3
Execute the AdobeSerialization executable file, created in step 1, with administrator privileges. Users can then launch and use Adobe apps without signing in.
