ArcGIS Pro License Error Handling

[ToddAGrissom]

Gentlemen,

I know Esri in their infinite wisdom wants to move as far away from concurrent licensing as possible, but for many of us this is still a reality that has to be managed.  Let's not make our management more difficult by inciting a riot among the users.

ArcGIS Desktop did not handle FlexLM errors elegantly, but at least they passed the License Manager error to the end-user. "Checkout exceeds MAX specified in options file", "User/host not on INCLUDE list for feature", and "Licensed number of users already reached" and others can be frequently seen at ArcGIS Desktop initialization.

ArcGIS Pro's handling of these errors is abysmal.  License Server can't be reached, MAX checkout exceeded, etc; all have Pro launch to the licensing options window without the benefit of the end user knowing why.  To which they either re-enter the correct parameters over and over until they are frustrated beyond all belief, or worse they go down the rabbit hole of changing everything they can change over and over until they are frustrated beyond all belief.

Please introduce a pop-up that informs the user why Pro can't obtain a license and provide them the option to "Modify License Configuration?" or to exit altogether.  It would be great if there were to be an option to "Contact your license Administrator" with information populated from a reg_key at install.

Thanks for listening & here is to hoping!

Todd G.

[KoryKramer]

Hi @ToddAGrissom and others who have voted for this idea. In reviewing it, some questions have come up.

When there is a problem with licensing in Pro, an error does pop up describing what the problem is. This is an example of an error when the license server cannot be reached:

"A valid ArcGIS License Manager could not be found on the specified host.  Please contact your organization's License Administrator to ensure that your ArcGIS License Manager is running and accessible."  

Maybe that wasn't true at the time the idea was submitted, or maybe there is a specific scenario that isn't handled with an error? Can you please provide more information with details, screenshots if possible, showing a situation where you are not getting an informative error message? We can then look at that specifically to improve the experience.

Thanks!

[ToddAGrissom]

@KoryKramer - apologies for not monitoring this closer.  

The issue is rarely one of not being able to reach/connect to a valid license server.

In our enterprise environment, we make great use of the FlexLM options file to create groups containing users and then assign access to those groups to various license levels and extensions.  Numbers of licenses are also capped by group.

Any situation where the errors above would have resulted in "Checkout exceeds MAX specified in options file", "User/host not on INCLUDE list for feature", and "Licensed number of users already reached" results in ArcGIS Pro looping back to licensing pane without informing the user as to why it did so.

In some business units where license contention is higher, these errors routinely present themselves to users.  Users get frustrated when their expensive GIS software doesn't work.  Frustrated users with zero feedback from the software call our support center.  Our support center (or our users) can't be bothered to look at the license manager log files to see what the real issue is (even though we present the log file and the lmstatus output as a web page for all to see), so that causes an assumption on both the support staff and the end-user that they have a bum install and that re-installing is the fix.  Reinstalls do not correct the issue (but sometimes licenses have become available in the down time).  So we either get in the feedback loop of "Look, the reinstall fixed it" or "Hmm, the reinstall didn't fix it, lets reinstall again" (lather, rinse, repeat)

So in short - passing the brief error description, even if it is in the curt and sometimes obtuse language of the license manager is far better than having Pro say to itself (and only itself) "Self, I don't seem to be able to obtain the designated license level and type from the license server. But I am able to connect to the licenses server. What should we do? How about we just present the licensing pane to the end-user? They're smart, they'll know what to do? Yea, let's do that"

[ToddAGrissom]

@KoryKramer Additionally - the way internal funding works here, routine "Checkout exceeds MAX specified in options file" and "Licensed number of users already reached" errors typically prompted business unit GIS managers (after a time) to allocate additional funds to procure additional licenses.  Lack of these errors however results in frustration and the assumption that IT is failing to manage software installs correctly.

[KoryKramer]

The additional explanation and details are valuable, @ToddAGrissom thank you for those. We have this re-opened now with this better understanding.

[ToddAGrissom]

@KoryKramer  - If you ever need copies of our options file, logs, or lmstatus output  let me know - happy to get them to you.

[KoryKramer]

OK, thank you, Todd.