Pre-sale question Hikaserial

Hi,

that's my scenario:

We need to sell an Excel spreasheet with a licence of use renovable year by year. In this Excel file some cells take values connecting to a DB and we would let it connect till the license of use is active.

Can we do this with hikaserial?

Example. With hikaserial and hikashop we sell the Excel spreadsheet and the licence code. User must insert the licence code somewhere into the Excel spreadsheet and it do a check somewhere on the DB to check if the licence code is valid or not. If valid user can use the Excel file otherway not (sure this is not an hikaserial feature, we do it with a macro or something else...)

What I want to know is this. Hikashop and Hikaserial can manage always the same licence code for the same user? I mean this. User buy Excel file and licence for the first year. After one year user need to renew the order. What happens in this case? Still the same licence key or another one licence key?

Any idea or solution about how we could use Hikaserial in the better way to do this?

Thanks in advice.

Hi,

It is really a complicated question.
I am not a specialist of dynamic excel spreadsheet generation. We have a spreadsheet generator in HikaShop but it does not handle advanced features like the macro. You can also create a simple file, with text and number cells.

HikaSerial can generate the serial you want. You can easily create your own generator and having a serial which will feet to your requirements.
One serial should be unique, so if a customer buy two times a product, he will receive two different serials. Currently, all HikaSerial generator follow this simple rule (the "series" generator provide a unique serial per pack, so you can have two times the same serial but in different packs).

The most difficult part in your requirement is the excel part. I really don't know how you can put some restriction on a spreadsheet using a macro and no more how to limit it for one single year.
You might use an encryption with private/public keys ; storing the end date directly in the serial data (encrypted) so nobody except you (with the private) key can generate a serial and provide a valid end date.

Kind regards,

I don't know exactly how data are stored into DB, so at moment I did only an hypotesis, tell me if I'm wrong or right about that.

I suppose that HikaSerial generates a "product key" associated to user order, and this value is stored into MySql DB, right?
I suppose that into another DB colum another flag value, a "key status", tells me if this "product key" is yet valid or not (suppose that this key is valid only for one year, then user must renew again, and as you told me before user will have a new key when renew)

This way we could build some script to do something like that: those 2 columns (4 maybe with the user ID and user Order) from MySql DB into a MS Access DB (this to avoid final user to connect to MYSql DB and connect to MS Access DB)

Now my excel file could do some check into MS Access to restrict access or not according to key value and "key status".

Is that possible? I mean what data will I find into MySql DB about HikaSerial?

Hi,

A serial have a "serial data" for the key, a "serial status" and it has also some links with the user, order and the "order product".
HikaSerial have some web service features to let you query the serial database without having to connect to the MySQL server.
www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/138-consume-featureshtml

Regards,

Hi Jerome

If I use Akeeba Subscription to limit the product to 1 year and this product have also attached a serial key, what will happen to that key after Subscription expired? Will the key still active or will expire with subscription?

Hi,

Nothing will happen to the key.
There is no "expiration" for the serials. A serial is attached to an order. You can see the serial if the order is in a valid status.
After that, you can "consume" a serial with the HikaSerial consume feature but it is something quite different than a expiration system.

Regards,

Oh ok, thanks Jerome.

Now I'm sure I cannot use HikaSerial for my purpose. Anyway it would be a nice feature add an option to choose if serial can expire after a certain period.

Thanks so much anyway!