ArcGIS Portal as a License Server - PROBLEM

[GrzegorzJendrzej_IMGW]

As of June 20, 2025, our company has active licenses (supported/maintained) for

Enterprise Advance 1 pc

Image Server 1 pc

ArcGIS PRO 84 pcs ( named user)

We also have unsupported ArcGIS PRO licenses 21 pcs ( named user) licenses that have no supported/maintained.

Currently, we maintain

ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 with Image Server 11.4 and 105 ArcGIS Pro 3.4 licenses (named user)

We want to upgrade Enterprise with Image Server to version 11.5.

And use our licenses for PRO in version 3.4

Unfortunately, from what I can see, the version for PRO is available in My ESRI for Enterprise 11.5 there are only 84 pcs. Access to lack of support for 21 units.105 – 21 = 84

Do ESRI cause the resolution of this problem? Which is related to the association of Enterprise licensing with PRO desktop software.

Currently, ArcGIS Enterprise is also a licensing portal for desktop solutions and it should be possible for a company to have, for example, continuous development / upgrade of Enterprise while maintaining current PRO licenses.

For example, it is 2026. The company is actively investing in the development of Enterprise and server solutions because it provides services based on this software and in 2026 it already has version Enterprise 12.1 - however, it leaves the desktop solutions at the level of 2024, i.e. ArcGIS PRO 3.4

All you need to do is add a simple functionality to the administration panel. 

Where the administrator can assign the user their desktop software version. Look attached picture.

However, for PRO versions older than e.g. two versions, the user role can be set to a maximum of Viewer or Editor. For example, for Enterprise version 11.5, PRO users in version 3.3 and less can have roles of a maximum of View or Editor.

Such a solution means that companies can actively manage their versions and freely update license packages, gradually moving to larger licenses. This is currently not possible, and all licenses must be updated at the same time, i.e. for Enterprise, Servers and user licenses and extension licenses.

Which in many cases is a high cost and such a purchase can be postponed.

 

 

[JoshuaBixby]

I am not sure if this is a question or request/comment.  What you are seeing is expected behavior in terms of licensing, at least on the desktop side.  Software maintenance is what allows one to upgrade to new versions when they come out, so not paying maintenance any longer on some of the licenses will leave them at their current version.  That said, it does seem wrong that Esri would restrict the role associated with that license since it is a valid license just for an earlier version.

I would reach out to your account representative or distributor.  I can't say I have ever seen documentation that states the behavior you are seeing, so your representative or distributor might be able to make some kind of accomodation.

[HarryPlendl]

The first thing is to contact your Esri Account manager to get a clarification of what your licensing is. With Enterprise GIS you are able to create and do analysis in Portal, and your upgrade timeline will require some downtime even if it's just going from 11.4 to 11.5. 

You also can do some organizational analysis of who is using the licenses. Many might be using licenses beyond their necessity.  Your description of the licenses is not using the language of someone very familiar with the ArcGIS Pro license levels. The named user types are a fixed number and it sounds like you may have installed ArcGIS Pro on more PCs/machines than you have named users at the ArcGIS Professional Level. Review the level types in the link provided and discuss with the employees to discover who needs what. 

Steps to take:

Convert licenses to concurrent use so the named users can access the licenses only as needed. 

See if some of the users can be switched to viewer roles and get by with ArcGIS Pro Basic or using an Experience Builder application. 

[GrzegorzJendrzej_IMGW]

HarryPlendl 

You wrote: Your license description is not written in the language of someone who knows ArcGIS Pro license levels well. Named user types are a fixed number and it looks like you have installed ArcGIS Pro on more computers/machines than you have named users at the ArcGIS Professional level.

I do not know English very well so I used a translator, which does not mean I do not know ArcGIS PRO license levels.

In fact, as a company we have

105 Professional Plus licenses - named users

56 Creator licenses - named users

of which are allocated

80 Professional Plus licenses/accounts - for users and
15 Creator licenses/accounts - for users

so as you can see we still have a lot of free licenses. Which does not mean that free licenses will not be used in the future

however, the main problem is that when migrating to Enterprise 11.5 from the current version 11.4 My Esri shows that we only have 84 Professional Plus licenses.

As a company, we do not want to "lose" these licenses just because we want to have a newer version of Enterprise.

[HarryPlendl]

No disrespect intended, I cannot keep up with the license levels myself. Best wishes getting a proper solution!

[GrzegorzJendrzej_IMGW]

BTW thanks for reply, I will contact with my account representative.