Licensing

If you like to charge customers for your app, you need to implement some kind of software licensing mechanism and sell the licenses. This article describes the different options that you have.

If you distribute your app on the innovaphone App Store, you need to specify which option your app uses.

Content

innovaphone licensing model

Paid apps that use the same per-user licenses as the innovaphone apps. The licenses are sold by innovaphone.

Your own licensing model

Paid apps using your own licenses.

Free apps

Free apps that do not require a license.

innovaphone licensing model

Overview

• The licenses are created by innovaphone on your behalf. We add the license to our official price list and market it over our established sales channel. We pay you the revenue reduced by the margin of innovaphone and the sales channel.
• Customers can buy or rent the licenses.
• The licenses are always per-user.
• The PBX does the license check and provides the information to your app as part of the user login.

Naming scheme

A license refers to a single app. If your app service provides multiple apps, they are licensed individually.

The license name contains the name of the HTML file of the app without the extension. So your HTML file name must be unique and follow the scheme manufacturer-appname.htm.

Example: Switchbard by innovaphone

Example: Calculator by ACME

Checking the license

The actual license check is done by the PBX when a user requests a login for your app. The following conditions must be met that the PBX marks the login as licensed:

• The license must be assigned to the user. This can be done at the user object or at templates.
• The number of users that have the license assigned, must not exceed the number of installed licenses on the PBX.

The information if the user got a license is then transmitted to the app as part of the login. This is done using the unlicensed attribute in the info object of the AppLogin message. The structure is protected by the login digest.

In the JavaScript code of your app, you can check the license like that:

var app = new innovaphone.appwebsocket.Connection(start.url, start.name);
app.onconnected = app_connected;

function app_connected(domain, user, dn, appdomain) {
    if (app.logindata.info.unlicensed) {
        // unlicensed mode
    }
    else {
        // licensed mode
    }
}

In the C++ code of an app service, you can do the same check on incoming websocket connections. Note that you might need to distinguish between the connections from different apps.

bool NewApp1Session::AppWebsocketConnectComplete(class json_io & msg, word info)
{
    bool unlicensed = msg.get_bool(info, "unlicensed");

    if (app && !strcmp(app, "manufacturer-newapp1")) {
        if (unlicensed) {
            // unlicensed mode
        }
        else {
            // licensed mode
        }
    }
    else if (app && !strcmp(app, "manufacturer-newapp1admin") {
        // no license needed
    }
    
    
    return true;
}

Unlicensed mode

It's up to you, what your app does without a license. Some ideas:

• Disable all functionality if there is no license.
• Activate a demo mode if there is no license.
• The app works without a license. But the license unlocks some premium functionality.

Your own licensing model

If you don't want to use the innovaphone licensing model, you can use your own one. In that case you need to sell and check the licenses yourself.

Note: Your app must ignore the unlicensed attribute in the info object of the AppLogin message. It will always be true, as the PBX does not find an innovaphone app license for the user.

Free apps

If your app is for free, you don't need to do something special.

Note: Your app must ignore the unlicensed attribute in the info object of the AppLogin message. It will always be true, as the PBX does not find an innovaphone app license for the user.