How it works

License Optimizer adds and removes users from the group providing application access based on their activity in Jira. If users are not actively using the app, they are removed from the group and once they get active again are added to it.

More details:

• Confluence will treat users as licensed users and provide access to them when they are members of the configured groups that are added to the “Licensed users” Global Permission in Confluence administrator settings with “can use” permission. This is the most basic permission that allows users to log in to this Confluence site. Users with this permission contribute to your licensed users count, so it can contain only as many users as there are in your applied license tier.

• Usually, if you reach the purchased user tier limit with members in this group, that’s it, you have to purchase an upgrade to your license tier. This is true even if these users are not necessarily working in the Confluence at the same time or on a permanent basis. However, this is where License Optimizer can help you give access to more users than your current license tier by dynamically modifying this group’s members based on active user sessions.

• For License Optimizer to work, two groups must be defined:

  • One that contains the users to whom you want to grant access to the system. This “Login group” that can be larger than your license tier, will be the base for the app: the pool where it can retrieve users from, and this is how the app will know who can be given access to.

  • Another one that the LO will manipulate. This “Access group” that must match in size your license tier will be associated with “can use” permission in the Global Settings. This Access group will be modified by the app, meaning users will be moved back and forth from the “Login group” into the Access group.

• Administrators should configure these groups in License Optimizer “Group mapping” option.

• When LO is started, the access group is empty. LO adds users to the access group until it reaches the user limit with the purchased and applied Confluence license tier or the configured access limit. Until the group is full, LO will not remove any users and they can log in and work without interruption. As long as there is still free space in the license tier, we do not want to restrict user access.

• As soon as the access group is full, meaning it has reached the maximum number of users allowed by the license tier, LO will do its magic. As soon as a new user tries to log in to the Confluence, LO frees up space for them in the access group by removing the most inactive user (if there is any) from the group.

• The LO will keep the session of the most inactive user alive for as long as the user is not removed from the login group. In other words, a new user who tries to log in when the group is full with active users will have to wait as long as another user becomes inactive. A user can become inactive if the user’s last action happens later than the threshold specified in the“General Settings”. You can set this time based on your usual user activity. If you want to give access faster for users, you can set it lower, but if you want to prevent LO from deactivating a user who is not active at that time window when the other wants to log in, but is otherwise active, you can set it higher.

• As described above, LO ensures that the license tier is used to the maximum and that accesses are allocated dynamically only when necessary, so it does not interfere with the work/access of existing users.