Temporary offline usage of network license always shows eval water mark in LV2020?

[Mads]

Using a volume/network license on a laptop I could pre-2020 use it for 14 days without access to the volume server - without having an evaluation water mark all over all VIs....Now it automatically reverts to evaluation mode and has the annoying water mark. Occasional offline usage should be possible without such interference. Have I overlooked something?

[aeastet]

I'm using 2017 and 2019 from home and they do the same thing. It must be the way NI want it to work.

[RTSLVU]

Have your VLM administrator create a "Disconnected Licence" for your laptop.

Disconnected licences do not need to contact the licence sever to be fully functional without watermarks.

[Mads]

The disconnected license is a solution yes, thanks.

To be honest I was mostly interested in knowing if the 14 day temporary license / grace period has been removed in 2020 or not though (required no actions on the license server so much more convenient) - does anyone know? The 14 day temporary license is mentioned in the header of the manual for disconnected licenses:

"The client machine will be disconnected from the network for less than 14 days, you do not need to create a disconnected license file. For more information, refer to Using Temporary Network Licenses."

[RTSLVU]

Yeah I don't know the answer to that. But back when NI first started requiring activation I posed teh question to our NI rep. Basically asking how I was supposed to troubleshoot a system on the assembly line that does not have internet so it's unable to activate LabVIEW.

Their answer was to install LabVIEW in evaluation mode. But back then they did not limit the number of times you could extend the "evaluation" like they do now.

But I am guessing they changed evaluation mode for 2020 because the "Community Edition" is available. Trying to force companies to buy another licence instead of ruining in evaluation mode indefinitely.

[Mads]

The problem using a disconnected license is that it will consume a seat permanently.

In our case we use LabVIEW on our desktop machines most of the time, but then we bring our personal laptops in the field and need to use the license seat from those, typically offline. The 14 day temporary license would then allow this (returning to the hotel at night for example we could always renew the 14-day period), which is sensible.

Requiring a doubling the number of seats just to be able to work from an offline laptop without water marks everywhere is not OK  (forcing everyone to use one and the same laptop in the field is not either...).☹️

[RTSLVU]

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@Mads wrote:

The problem using a disconnected license is that it will consume a seat permanently.

Does it? We have more than on disconnected licence and have not ran out of seats on our licence server.

You can also activate it with the serial number it came with just like a stand alone installation. I don't know how many times or different computers you can do that. But honestly that is what I did for my personal computer I use to work from home. I am pretty sure at least one of my colleges has done the same with the same serial number.