this BETA release is also about continuing in new licensing backend development with several changes done also on client’s side. Therefore, we would like to give you more details about it in order to help you with its understanding as well as helping you to provide more specific feedback to it. As we are talking about licensing and subscription, possible issues may impact mainly the product edition, its expiration day and installed components.
The original licensing backend system we call „Legacy“ and the new one is „Alpha“. In order to know against which of those backends is the client running, please look at the „C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\setup\config.def“ and find the „[Alpha]” string by following parameter “Enabled” followed by value[0,1](0 means disabled, 1 means enabled, missing marameter means disabled). Please note that any manual changes to this file will be invalidated by not matching the content with its signature and the new one will be downloaded.
You mas also find the difference in look of the Subscription page in the Settings of the product (see the screenshots).
Now, our goal for this BETA regading licensing is to enable the Alpha backend against clients with Free and Trial editions. The Paid one are already running against Alpha for a while. Enabling the alpha for those remaining will be done gradually so it may happen you will not run against the Alpha from the first day of releasing this BETA – we will inform you when the whole BETA channel will be switched once we are confident enough it works. This applies to already installed clients as well as new installations.
Scenarios that somehow trigger communication with license backend are the following:
Installing Free or Trial edition
Registering Free edition
Trial or Paid expiration
Downgrading to Free (from Trial or Paid)
Activating Free by Trial (e.g. from banner)
Activating by existing Paid (activation code or license file)
Purchasing Antivirus or other products (such as Passwords, SecureLine or Cleanup) directly from the application
Please note that there are more variants and combinations, but those are the basic ones. Also note that migration of existing one without any manual change of the client subscription will be done gradually from our side as mentioned above.
Known issues in licensing against Alpha:
After accepting offer for higher edition you might be switched back to previous edition
If you have one license for more products, then all are visible in Settings -> Subscription page even if they are not installed
There is no possibility to choose specific license when inserting old license file which contains more licences for the same product (e.g. two licenses for Antivirus Internet Security)
Conversion to Free edition does not work for blacklisted/refunded licenses
In some cases you might end up with multiple Free licenses instead of just one
Some redundant calls from client to new backend (with no visible impact to you)
In case of any issue we would appreciate problem report with the following files for further debugging:
What type of specific feedback are you looking for? I just updated to .2290 BETA from .2289 BETA. I checked config.def file and it shows Enabled=1 under [Alpha]. I’m using Avast free on Win 7.
What type of specific feedback are you looking for? I just updated to .2290 BETA from .2289 BETA. I checked config.def file and it shows Enabled=1 under [Alpha]. I'm using Avast free on Win 7.
Hi Lano, we are looking for feedback regarding your subscriptions. You can find detailed information about your subscription in the Avast UI → Settings → Subscription. If there is anything strange to you please get back to us with more information so we can follow up on that.
Some of the scenarios are mentioned in the post above - it depends on what subscription you have right now and what eventually would you like to do with them (e.g. start trial, purchase some, renew, etc.). Thank you!
Thank you, Petr. It looks like I'm also in good shape, then. :)
Hi Lano, thank you for your feedback too. It would be great if you will get back to this post and let us know what happened in time of the Free “expiration” (1st of May). This is one of the interesting scenario when something may go wrong.
Any plans to add a “prolong” option? For eg. my current license for Premier is valid for 400 days and I have a code for 365 days more. But I can’t use it because it is not summing up - I will just add a new licence file into my account.
I don’t know about the others but I would like to have an option to extend my current license in any time. The great example is Office 365 subscription. I can buy and add new code any time I want and the subscription time is summing up. The only limitation I think total subscription can’t be longer than 5 years, not sure about that.
What I have in mind: I like to buy a new licence and prolong the current one in any time, not only when it is expiring, because at that moment I have no free money left for eg.
Prolonging of licenses should already be possible in two ways:
using our in-app cart - for example if you click on “buy now” button then separate dialog appears, if you finish the purchase in this dialog and you buy same edition as you currently have, your license should be prolonged. (You can do this anytime, does not matter if only 1 day or 360 days are remaining in the license)
using our cart on web, but only when you are redirected from the application itself to the web (but again only purchase of same edition, if you purchase different edition it will be considered as upgrade and new license will be generated)
You can also buy license directly on our web, but that will not prolong your license
Well I can’t find either option 1 or option 2 here in any place. The only option I find inside the whole application is “Add activation code” No buttons or offers to “Buy now” on avast Premier with 400 days of subscription left. So I can’t confirm your theory in practice
My main suggestion was if I use “Add activation code” inside the antivirus dialog and that code belongs to the same edition of avast I am using now, it prolonged the current subscription, not added the additional licence.
I looked more into your issue and found out from my colleague, that some options in in-app cart were removed as they were too complicated and our users were not using them anyway.
Most users tend to click on targeted offers (toasters, banners and stuff) and buy the stuff we offer to them.
Also users with autorenewal enabled, buy the product and don’t want to think about other purchases and stuff, so they leave it on “automatic”
Unfortunately in your case, if you wanted the license prolonged, you would need to contact our support and they could merge your licenses together
I will ask the product manager about your idea and we will see whether he likes it or not:)
