ABOUT TEAM LICENSING
Our new team licensing system allows our business customers to purchase multiple licenses in one transaction and then manage those licenses, all from one account.
Even if you want only 1 license at present, if it's possible that you may purchase more for your employees/colleagues in the future, it is essential that you still request for us to make you a Team Owner before purchasing. Requesting to be made a Team Owner doesn’t cost money, but it will ensure that you have the option to purchase multiple licenses and manage them all from one account in the future.
The person managing the account is known as the Team Owner, they have Team Members using the plugins as part of that team. The Team Owner can purchase, allocate, revoke and reallocate the licenses as they wish.
The Team Owner also has the additional option to make one of those Team Members a Team Leader.
A Team Leader can also revoke and reallocate licenses in the team however, they cannot make purchases or manage multiple teams.
The Team Owner can demote someone from Team Leader back to Team Member at any time.
Team Licensing permissions:
Team Owner (Manager of the account) – Purchasing and managing multiple teams • Naming their teams and allocating licenses by inviting team members • Revoking licenses e.g. when someone leaves the company • Reallocating licenses • Renewing/Extending teams • Adding additional seats to a Team Pro rata • Making someone a Team Leader • Revoking Team Leader Status • Making themselves a Team Member so that they also have a license on that team.
Team Member - Use of allocated license.
Team Leader - Use of allocated license • Allocating licenses by inviting new team members • Revoking licenses e.g. when someone leaves the company • Reallocating licenses.
Important
Our Software is SaaS software. The user needs to sign into their astutegraphics.com account via the Astute Manager software which is installed locally (Windows and/or macOS). The plugin(s) are installed on request via the Astute Manager along with associated licensing information. You'll need to have direct internet access (not behind a proxy), and establish a secure connection with https://account.astutegraphics.com/ to download, activate, update and regularly maintain activation status. It is not possible to operate the Astute Graphics plugins without direct internet access.
BECOMING A TEAM OWNER
If you would like to be a Team Owner, you will need to sign up for the Free Trial with an email address that isn’t already using an active (paid for) subscription. If you already have an account but no active purchased subscription this will not be required.
If you wish to have an active subscription license for yourself as part of the Team, you can add yourself to that team once payment has been made.
It may be the case that as Team Owner, you are only going to be managing the teams and you won’t actually be using the software yourself, or as previously mentioned you may already have a license on another account. In both of these cases, you won’t need to add yourself to the team as a member at all.
So, to become a Team Owner please do the following:
Sign up for the Free Trial with an email address that isn’t already subscribed to an active (paid for) subscription.
Once signed up to the Free Trial, contact us with the account email address.
We will give this account Team Owner permissions and reply with confirmation.
You are then ready to purchase your team licenses.
USING THE TEAM LICENSING SYSTEM AS A TEAM OWNER
When you are granted Team Owner status, your dashboard view will change from this…
To this…
As a newly appointed Team Owner, you will need to purchase a number of licenses before you can invite Team Members.
To purchase Team licenses, go to the Teams section of your account dashboard and click Buy licenses.
Use the + key to select the number of licenses that you wish to purchase...
PLEASE NOTE: All licenses purchased in one transaction will expire on the same day, this purchase constitutes a team. If you wish to purchase more licenses later, you can either add additional licenses to the existing team at a pro rata rate (see "Adding additional seats to an existing team as the Team Owner" further along in this article) or you can create an entirely new Team. As a Team Owner, it’s possible to have as many teams as you wish on one account.
Now enter the address details and continue to payment. PLEASE NOTE: For companies with a VAT number, it would be necessary to add the VAT number at this stage to avoid being charged local VAT/sales tax (please see - Do I have to pay VAT? ).
Next, you will be prompted to enter your card details before clicking to pay.
We accept major debit and credit cards from customers in every country, these include:
MasterCard
Visa
American Express
PayPal is also available as a payment option at checkout. A PayPal account isn't necessary to pay in this way.
After paying you will receive confirmation that your payment was accepted.
You can then click Manage Team to begin inviting people.
When going to the Teams page and selecting Manage Team, you will now see the following options:
Clicking on Invoice will download a PDF of the invoice for the purchase.
Clicking Add yourself to the team will add you as a Team Member and issue a license to you. Reminder that you should not do this if you don’t want a license, or if you already have a license on another account and don’t want an additional one.
The Send Invite option allows you to invite a Team Member by entering their email address.
To send an invite, click in the Email address field, enter the email address of the invitee and click Send Invite.
An account is now created for the invitee (unless they have already created one through a Free Trial) and you will see notification that the invitee has been sent an invite email.
ACCEPTING AN INVITE TO JOIN A TEAM AND BECOME A TEAM MEMBER
After you have sent your invite, the invitee will receive an email that looks like this…
The invitee should click on Accept Invite.
If the invited Team Member is not logged in, they’ll be prompted to login to the website.
If the invited Team Member is already logged in, they’ll be taken straight to their dashboard where they will see the invite.
Once logged into their account, the invitee should click on Accept Invite (circled in green) to be added to the Team and issued with their license. In the event that this person was invited by mistake, they can click on Decline Invite (circled in red).
The invitee is now a Team Member and will see the following message on their dashboard.
The Team Member should now go to the Downloads page where they can Download the installer. To get started they can follow the guide to Installing and activating your plugins.
We allow installation and activation on up to two computers used exclusively by the same person. For example: If that person has a machine only they work on in the office, and their own machine at home, they can install and activate on both machines (this applies to both Windows and/or Mac OS computers, be they desktop, laptop, tablet, etc).
MANAGING TEAM MEMBERS AS A TEAM OWNER
As Team Owner, you may wish to name the Team. This is advisable, particularly if it’s possible that there may be more than one team on the account in the future.
To name a team, click on the pencil symbol next to Team Name > Type the chosen team name into the field below > then click on the file symbol to save it.
The given name will now show in the Team Name field at the top of the page (circled below in green). This name can be edited at any time.
Here (under Allocation) you will also see how many of the licenses have been allocated (circled below in red).
Under Updates Until (circled below in blue) you will see the expiry date of the licenses. When you reach that date, the subscription will require renewing to continue using the plugins.
On the example shown here, at this point the Team Owner has only invited 1 Team Member but has purchased 5 licenses. All licenses (no matter what date they are allocated) will expire on the date given under Updates until and so it’s advisable to invite the other members as soon as possible.
Additional Team Members are invited in the same way, by going to the Invite Team Member field and entering the email address of the invitee.
Invitees who haven’t yet accepted the invitation will show as Pending.
Once invitees have accepted the invite you will see their status has changed to Member.
In this example, the Team Owner is going to add themselves to the Team. Doing this will mean that they have allocated a license for themselves, so they will then be both Team Owner and Team Member.
PLEASE NOTE: As Team Owner, this should only be done if you want an active subscription license. It may be the case that you are only going to be managing the team and won’t be using the software yourself. In this case, you should not add yourself to the team.
If you do want to add yourself to the team and allocate a license for yourself, you should click on the Add yourself to the team button.
In this scenario, you are now not just the Owner of the team but a Member also. This means that (like the other Team Members) you now have a license and can go to the Downloads page to Download the installer, then follow the guide to Installing and activating your plugins.
If you so wish, you can also make another member a Team Leader.
When this option is selected, you will be prompted before confirming that you definitely want to make the member a Team Leader.
A Team Leader has some of the functionality of the Team Owner, but with restrictions.
The Team Owner can demote the Team Leader back to just a Team Member at any time.
TEAM LEADER ACCOUNT
When a Team Leader logs into their account they will see the following dashboard.
They have some Team Management permissions with the option (like the Team Owner) to allocate, revoke and reallocate licenses if they so wish.
They cannot however, enable or revoke a Team Leader status, manage multiple teams or purchase licenses.
REVOKING AND REALLOCATING LICENSES AS TEAM OWNER
As Team Owner, if you wish to revoke a Team Member license (for example if that member is leaving the company) this can be done quite easily.
Just log into your account > go to Teams > then select Manage Team.
Now click on the bin symbol next to the Team Member.
You will be asked if you’re sure that you wish to remove the user from the team and revoke the license.
After confirming, a message will show that the member has been removed and you will see that there is now one less license allocated. You are now able to send a Team Invite for that license to someone else.
Meanwhile, if the Demoted Team Member logs into their account, they will see that their volume license has been removed and their dashboard will now show the option to Pay Now if they wish to start using the Astute Graphics tools again. This account is no longer linked to the team in any way.
BUYING ADDITIONAL LICENSES & CREATING NEW TEAMS AS TEAM OWNER
You may at some point wish to buy additional subscription licenses for new employees. If you want to, you can purchase more licenses on an existing team at a pro rata rate (see "adding additional seats to an existing team as the Team Owner" further along in this article) or you can purchase will become part of an entirely new team.
In this example, the Team Owner is purchasing an entirely new team for someone working in a different department, they wish to purchase just one license.
On the Teams page, you should select Buy Licenses .
The address details are already there from the previous purchase so next, you should click Continue to Payment(remembering to check that you have added your VAT number if you have one).
You will be asked to add your card details again, before clicking the Pay button.
You can now click Manage Team to invite the new member to this new team.
You will now see that you have another team under your management (due to these licenses being purchased at different times).
In this new team, you can now name the team and manage it in just the same way as the other one.
What you can’t do as Team Owner with this new Team, is add yourself as a Team Member if you are already a Team Member in another team.
PLEASE NOTE: If you are already a Team Member of another team, then you already have your license as part of that team. It is however, possible to revoke your membership in one team and add yourself as member to another team if absolutely necessary.
Again, it may be the case that you are only going to be managing teams and won’t be using the software at all yourself, or you may already have a license on another account. In both of these cases, you will not need to add yourself to any of the teams at all.
As Team Owner you have as many teams as you wish. There is no limit to the number of members that you have on one team, as long as that team is purchased in one single transaction.
The Teams can be given any name at all and these names can be edited at any time.
ADDING ADDITIONAL PRO RATA SEATS TO AN EXISTING TEAM AS THE TEAM OWNER
Team Owners also have the option to add additional seats pro rata at any time. This option will disappear from a team 30 days before the expiry when a team is approaching its renewal date. After this time, if you wish to add more seats you will need to wait 14 days for the “Extend” option to appear next to your team.
To add seats:
Select Teams from the dashboard (you will see the option to “Add seats”)
Click “Add seats"
(Please note, for any expired teams or those approaching expiry you may also see an “Extend license” option - if you see this for the team that you wish to add seats to, please select “Extend license” instead and then add an additional seat as part of that process ).
For however many additional licenses you add, you will be charged the cost of that license only for the remaining days before the entire team expires (at which point you’ll be invited to renew)
In the screenshot below for example, the customer has added 1 additional team member, and because there are only 134 days remaining for the active team, this 1 license will cost less than the usual price.
You can add as many additional licenses as you wish
Next, when you are sure that you have selected the correct number of additional seats, select “Continue to payment”
You will then be prompted to enter your card details and click the “Pay” button
RENEWING/EXTENDING TEAMS AS THE TEAM OWNER
2 weeks before a team is due to expire, you will see the option to “Extend license” next to the team.
To find this, log in to your customer account and select Teams from the dashboard, you won’t find a billing portal however, any expired teams or those approaching expiry within 14 days will have an “Extend license” option next to them.
You have 2 months after the team expiry date to “Extend" the team license for another 12 months. 2 months after its expiry date, the team will disappear and it will be necessary to start again by buying a new one.
Clicking on Extend license will take you through to an address confirmation page. Here you can also add your VAT number if necessary. At this point you will also have the option to add or remove seats if you wish using the plus or minus button.
If all address details are correct, please click “Continue to payment” to complete payment.
Please see How do I extend a Business Team License for a further 12 months? for further advice.