Allocation
When a license purchase is registered, you specify the legal organization owning the license. Also, you have the option to enable automatic allocation, or to manually allocate licenses to non-legal organizations.
For optimal utilization of the license ownership, it is recommended to use the automatic allocation feature instead of manual allocation. Automatic allocation is enabled when registering a license, see Add license purchase.
Automatic allocation
With the automatic allocation functionality enabled, purchased licenses are automatically distributed to nodes in the organization hierarchy, based on the licensing requirements for each node. Licenses that are purchased on a central level of the organization will then automatically be distributed to underlying organization units based on actual installations. All licenses with automatic allocation enabled will be re-allocated each time compliance is calculated.
Automatic allocation is especially important to take into account for licenses with downgrade rights enabled. When both automatic allocation and downgrade rights are activated, licenses are compared to installations of the same and the specified prior versions of an application, on all sub-levels of the legal organization owning the license.
If automatic allocation is deactivated and no manual allocation has been made, the licenses for the specific purchase will only be compared to installations on the same organization level as the purchase is registered at. If downgrade is activated, installations of prior versions on the same organization level will be taken into account.
Manual allocation
It is also possible to manually specify how licenses should be allocated. Manually allocated licenses will not be included in the automated allocation. When compliance is calculated, manually allocated licenses will only be used to cover applications within the organization node that these licenses have been allocated to.