Renewing licenses

License renewal extends the duration of product licenses assigned to a client. You can renew licenses before they expire (manually) or automatically. Below is an explanation of both renewal methods.

Early (manual) renewal of annual licenses

If a client has multiple license contracts for the same product, each with a different expiration date, you must group the licenses before starting the renewal process. See Grouping licenses.

When you learn that a client’s licenses are about to expire, you can begin the early renewal process to make sure that no computers are left unprotected.

Early renewal can be applied only to products with less than one year remaining on the license.

To renew a license contract before it expires (early renewal):

  • From the top menu, select Status. In the Monitoring section, click the name of the client. The Client details page opens.

  • Click the icon. From the context menu, select Change licenses. A dialog box opens where you can see the products whose licenses you want to renew

  • In the Renew for field, choose the duration of the licenses that you want to assign to the product when it expires. Click Change.

After the process is complete, the license contract updates with the new expiration date and the corresponding number of licenses is subtracted from the license pool.

Automatic renewal of licenses

You cannot automatically renew security product licenses assigned to clients you are migrating to WatchGuard Cloud.

Partner Center allows the automatic renewal of product and module licenses assigned to clients. This helps simplify management tasks because you do not have to continually monitor which clients have products with licenses close to expiring to start a manual/early renewal process.

When setting up the process, you can choose to automatically renew only the main product. When the renewal date arrives, the product is renewed, and if there are additional services or modules, they are automatically renewed as well.

You can automatically renew these products and modules:

  • Panda Endpoint Protection

  • Panda Endpoint Protection Plus

  • Panda Endpoint Protection for OS X

  • Panda Email Protection

  • Panda Systems Management

  • Panda Adaptive Defense

  • Panda Adaptive Defense 360

  • Panda Fusion

  • Panda Fusion 360

  • Panda Patch Management

  • Advanced Reporting Tool

  • Panda Data Control

  • Panda Full Encryption

Configuring automatic renewal of licenses

From the top menu, select Clients. Select Automatic renewal of licenses. The Automatic renewal page opens. This page is divided into a search area and a client list:

Search area

Find clients for which you want to configure automatic renewal. To show the search options, click Options > Show filter. If you select multiple search criteria, the logical operator ‘AND’ is applied.

Field Description

Find client

Filters the list by client name. It allows partial searches and is not case sensitive.

Group

Filters the list by client groups. It allows partial searches and is not case sensitive.

Search options in the automatic renewal list
Client list

This section shows a list of clients, specifying whether or not they support automatic renewal. If they support this feature, you can enable it. This information appears:

Field Description

Client

Shows the client name and a link to the Client details page. For more information, see Client details.

Under the client name, this information appears: product name, number of contracted licenses, and expiration date for the licenses that are closest to expiring. Point to the product name or the number of licenses for additional information.

Group

Shows the group to which the client belongs.

Product

A drop-down menu where you can select the automatic renewal action:

  • Not available: The product does not support automatic renewal.

  • Do not automatically renew: The client’s licenses are renewed early/manually.

  • 1-year licenses: When the client’s licenses expire, they are automatically renewed for 1 year.

  • 2-year licenses: When the client’s licenses expire, they are automatically renewed for 2 years.

  • 3-year licenses: When the client’s licenses expire, they are automatically renewed for 3 years.

  • 1-month licenses (MSSP Command): When the client’s licenses expire on the first of the month, they are automatically renewed for one more month.

Options in the automatic renewal list

Automatic renewal of one-month licenses (MSSP Command)

With these licenses, you enable the automatic renewal process in the same way as with other licenses. See Configuring automatic renewal of licenses. The differences in the renewal process with respect to one-, two-, and three-year licenses are:

  • When you assign one-month licenses (MSSP Command) to a product, Partner Center automatically configures the renewal process.

  • The automatic renewal process runs every day to detect clients that require renewals for not having enough licenses.

Email alerts about licenses about to expire

To eliminate the need to constantly check the web console for clients with licenses that are about to expire, Partner Center sends an email alert to you. This message is sent on the first day of every month, and contains a list of clients whose licenses have expired or are about to expire, along with the number of licenses. This information is also available in the My clients’ licenses panel in the Licenses section of the Status page.

This email message does not contain information about one-month licenses (MSSP Command).

The email message includes a spreadsheet with this data:

  • Additional licenses needed for renewals (if there is enough stock to renew all clients’ licenses).

  • Clients with licenses that are about to expire.

To enable the sending of this email message, follow these steps:

  • From the Other options menu, select Preferences. The Preferences page opens.

  • In the Email notifications section, select the Send an email message with the licenses that will expire within the next 60 days option. Complete these fields:

    • Message subject

    • Email address: To send the message to multiple recipients, use the “;” character.