Shared Device Licensing | What's new

Migrate to Shared Device Licensing during renewal

Education customers must place a renewal order, with SDL SKUs at the end of their license term, to migrate from legacy Device-Based Licenses (DBL) to Shared Device Licenses (SDL).

The option to self-migrate during the term from within the Admin Console is discontinued from October 2022.

Increase in offline timeout

The timeout period for a shared device license to be offline has now been increased. A user on a shared device, will now get a warning message after 11 hours of usage, but can continue to stay offline for another hour. This means that users can remain offline for a total of 12 hours in a single session.

New features | January 2020

Package ID field removed from Activated device report

The Package ID field is now removed from the report of the devices in your institution that are currently activated with shared device licenses. The report now contains the following fields:

• Licensed on: Date on which the device was licensed.
• Activation Status: SUCCESSFUL: Device activation was successful. UNSUCCESSFUL: Device activation failed. On activation, the device is associated with the default product profile. AUTO_ACTIVATED: An older version of shared device license packages is installed on the device. On activation, the device is associated with the default product profile.
• Machine DNS Name: DNS name of the machine
• IP Address: IP address of the machine
• Package Name: Name of shared device license package installed on the machine.
  
• Active Directory OU: Name of organizational unit that the machine belongs to, if any.
• Egress IP Address: Egress IP address of the network that the machine belongs to.

New features | October 2019

Indicating shared devices at Sign-in

When end users go to sign in on a device activated with shared device licenses, the following banner is displayed:

Enable self-service install

Now, when creating Shared Device Licensing packages on the Admin Console, you can allow users on shared devices to install and update Adobe apps using the Creative Cloud desktop app.

To create a shared device license package, log in to the Admin Console, navigate to the Packages > Packages, and click Create a Package.

For more details on how to create shared device license packages, see this article.

Support for Adobe Dimension

Shared Device Licensing now supports Adobe Dimension. So, you can now include Adobe Dimension when you a create shared device license package on the Admin Console, and then deploy this package to your end user machines.

To create a shared device license package:

1. Log into the Admin Console. 
2. Navigate to Packages > Packages. 
3. Click Create a package.

For details see this document.

New features | September 2019

Additional fields in Activated device report

The report of the devices in your institution that are currently activated with shared device licenses, now contains the following fields:

• Licensed on: Date on which the device was licensed.
• Activation Status: SUCCESSFUL: Device activation was successful. UNSUCCESSFUL: Device activation failed. On activation, the device is associated with the default product profile. AUTO_ACTIVATED: An older version of shared device license packages is installed on the device. On activation, the device is associated with the default product profile.
• Machine DNS Name: DNS name of the machine
• IP Address: IP address of the machine
• Package ID: ID of shared device license package installed on the machine.
• Package Name: Name of shared device license package installed on the machine.
• Active Directory OU: Name of organizational unit that the machine belongs to, if any.
• Egress IP Address: Egress IP address of the network that the machine belongs to.

New features | August 2019

Account Confirmation dialog now removed

The Account Confirmation that popped up every 90 minutes is no longer displayed.

New features | May 2019

Deploy licenses to multiple labs

Now, you can deploy shared device licenses to multiple labs in your institution. Follow the steps below:

Delegate administrative tasks to other admins

Assign specialized admin roles and delegate tasks to other admins in your institution:

• Product admins to create additional product profiles and configure labs in your organization.
• Product Profile admins to manage product profiles

See how to manage admin roles on the Admin Console.

Add products and licenses

If you are a VIP (Value Incentive Plan) customer, you can purchase products or additional shared device licenses from the Admin console directly.

In the upper-right corner of the Overview page of the Admin Console, click Buy More.

In the Add Products screen, add products or add licenses to your existing products.

Recover unused licenses

If you've installed shared device licenses on machines that are no longer in use, quickly recover the licenses and reuse them on other machines. For example, if you plan to retire an old machine or if you want to repurpose a machine and reuse it outside a lab or a classroom. You can even recover licenses from machines that are completely inoperable.

See Recover shared device licenses.

How to upgrade your shared device licenses

To use the latest features of Shared Device Licensing on end-user machines, you can either choose to:

• Re-deploy the packages
• Or activate licenses

Re-deploy packages

Activate licenses

Perform the following procedure on each machine on which you plan to upgrade the licenses: