on Jun 12, 2017Nobody likes to talk about it, but sometimes computers can crash. Yup, the entire thing just fails and nothing at all can be recovered (if you haven’t backed up your data, go do it now!) Or what if your laptop is stolen, or you flipped your kayak and your machine sank to the bottom of Lake Superior? You just don’t have it anymore and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get it back. When these types of things happen, any Esri licenses that were authorized on the machine may be lost, too.
In the past, an authorized maintenance contact had to call Esri Technical Support to submit a license appeal and recover the lost licenses. Now, this functionality is built in to My Esri, empowering your organization with self-service functionality and enabling you to get back up and running quickly.
I wanted to make sure that our customers are aware of this great new functionality and walk through how you’d go about getting your licenses back in the event of a catastrophic failure or loss as described above – though I really hope that never happens.
To perform the following steps, you will either need “Esri Admin” permission or the “Take Licensing Actions” permission. Sensitive information such as machine IDs, license numbers, and other personal information have been replaced with asterisks in the following screenshots.
Please note that I’m demonstrating the steps in a QA environment and that your experience won’t include the green QA…
This will bring up the Licensing Overview page and if you have the correct permissions, you should see the Recover Lost Licenses option both in the Licensing panel as well as a card.
The Recover Lost Licenses screen explains that this is a process to retrieve licenses from a machine that is no longer accessible due to system failure, system loss, or destruction. The License Recovery process requires the signature of the organization’s License Administrator in a Certificate of Destruction. This process is irreversible and should only be used as the absolute last option when all other solutions to rectify the problem have failed.
An example of when you would not use the Recover Lost Licenses option is if you can still access the machine and deauthorize the licenses normally. The instructions provided describe how to perform standard license deauthorization:
Once you’ve determined that it really isn’t feasible to scuba dive to the bottom of Lake Superior to recover your machine (and hence, its licenses), follow the steps outlined below to complete the recovery.
To proceed with license recovery, select how you would like to find the machine. There is an option to search by products on the machine or use the machine’s UMN IDs if you know those.
Search for the machine by populating the dropdown boxes.
Click Search.
We see that the search for ArcGIS Desktop Advanced Concurrent Use licenses for this organization returns five machines.
Selecting the machine from which the licenses need to be recovered will take you to Step 3.
Enter the UMN for the machine and click Search. Since the UMN by definition is associated with a single machine, you should get only one result in this case, as opposed to searching for a machine by product.
Click Select to take you to Step 3.
This step will show you a list of products our records show were activated for the selected machine.
After reviewing the selected machine, you have the option to go back if this is not the correct machine or proceed with the license recovery process.
Review and agree to the terms and conditions, and click Next.
This step gives you another opportunity to fully review the selected licenses to return. If the selection is correct, click the “Process Return” button near the bottom of the page.
You’ll receive a confirmation screen showing the status of each license return.
And that’s it. You are now able to authorize these licenses on a new, dry machine!
In the event that not all licenses are returned successfully, you will be presented with a summary of which licenses were returned and which were not. These should be exceptions; not the norm. In these cases, please work with Esri Customer Service or your local distributor to finalize the recovery process.
Kory K. - Customer Advocacy Lead
In the past, an authorized maintenance contact had to call Esri Technical Support to submit a license appeal and recover the lost licenses. Now, this functionality is built in to My Esri, empowering your organization with self-service functionality and enabling you to get back up and running quickly.
I wanted to make sure that our customers are aware of this great new functionality and walk through how you’d go about getting your licenses back in the event of a catastrophic failure or loss as described above – though I really hope that never happens.
To perform the following steps, you will either need “Esri Admin” permission or the “Take Licensing Actions” permission. Sensitive information such as machine IDs, license numbers, and other personal information have been replaced with asterisks in the following screenshots.
First, log in to My Esri and click the My Organizations tab.
Please note that I’m demonstrating the steps in a QA environment and that your experience won’t include the green QA…
Click the Licensing tab.
This will bring up the Licensing Overview page and if you have the correct permissions, you should see the Recover Lost Licenses option both in the Licensing panel as well as a card.
Next, click Recover Lost Licenses.
The Recover Lost Licenses screen explains that this is a process to retrieve licenses from a machine that is no longer accessible due to system failure, system loss, or destruction. The License Recovery process requires the signature of the organization’s License Administrator in a Certificate of Destruction. This process is irreversible and should only be used as the absolute last option when all other solutions to rectify the problem have failed.
An example of when you would not use the Recover Lost Licenses option is if you can still access the machine and deauthorize the licenses normally. The instructions provided describe how to perform standard license deauthorization:
- Online deauthorization of licenses for ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Engine
- Offline deauthorization of licenses for ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Engine
Once you’ve determined that it really isn’t feasible to scuba dive to the bottom of Lake Superior to recover your machine (and hence, its licenses), follow the steps outlined below to complete the recovery.
Step 1: Find Your Machine
To proceed with license recovery, select how you would like to find the machine. There is an option to search by products on the machine or use the machine’s UMN IDs if you know those.
Step 2
Option A: Search for machine by product
Search for the machine by populating the dropdown boxes.
Click Search.
We see that the search for ArcGIS Desktop Advanced Concurrent Use licenses for this organization returns five machines.
Selecting the machine from which the licenses need to be recovered will take you to Step 3.
Option B: Select Machine using the UMN
Enter the UMN for the machine and click Search. Since the UMN by definition is associated with a single machine, you should get only one result in this case, as opposed to searching for a machine by product.
Click Select to take you to Step 3.
Step 3: Review Selected Machine
This step will show you a list of products our records show were activated for the selected machine.
After reviewing the selected machine, you have the option to go back if this is not the correct machine or proceed with the license recovery process.
Step 4: Accept Terms and Conditions
Review and agree to the terms and conditions, and click Next.
Step 5: Summary to process License Return
This step gives you another opportunity to fully review the selected licenses to return. If the selection is correct, click the “Process Return” button near the bottom of the page.
You’ll receive a confirmation screen showing the status of each license return.
And that’s it. You are now able to authorize these licenses on a new, dry machine!
In the event that not all licenses are returned successfully, you will be presented with a summary of which licenses were returned and which were not. These should be exceptions; not the norm. In these cases, please work with Esri Customer Service or your local distributor to finalize the recovery process.
Kory K. - Customer Advocacy Lead
Is this been rolled out gradually or by request?, because i can't seem to locate it my Esri for my organisation
Baba
Do you have the “Esri Admin” permission or the “Take Licensing Actions” permission?
Apparently this is only available to US customers. We have to raise a ticket with our distributor to recover a lost licence.
Hi Kory,
Sorry to dredge this up from the past. This is a helpful article, but I'm stumped by Step 2 of the process you describe. How do I select a machine, if I don't know the UMN ID?
I understand that the UMN ID is a Unique Machine Number. But I don't know how to relate that number to the physical machines in my office.
For instance, lets say I have 5 workstations running ArcGIS 10.5. One of those machines ends up at the bottom of a lake. I have no idea what it's UMN ID was. How do I determine the UMN ID of my remaining 4 machines, so that I can figure out, by process of elimination, which UMN to recover the license from?
Thanks
Brad
Brad, open ArcGIS Administrator and click the Machine IDs... button. That will give you the UMN(s) for the machine.
So how do you get the UMD for the laptop at the bottom of Lake Superior?
Tom, Kory Kramer 's tip will work if you only have one or a few machines. If only a few machines, you can look at all the UMD and do a process of elimination. If hundreds (or whatever is too much), I would contact you customer service rep.
BTW - I always make sure to set a (not too long) timeout value for any borrowed and offline licenses. At least that will auto return eventually.
Q: maybe for Kory - I know when you can give an an alias to a Pro machine vs the default name. Can this be found anywhere
The machine's alias can be seen by the organization administrator when the license is taken offline.
Hover over the red bar:
Or click on the Last Used link under the user in Manage Licenses:
NO UK Access to License Return
Can confirm that there is NO access for UK users looking to recover license files at:
https://my.esri.com/#/license-return
Kory Kramer's Blog is informative but irrelevant to UK users.
Hi Philip. You're correct that this functionality is controlled by individual distributors. Please reach out to Esri UK for assistance.