Software Manager

[TimStVCS]

Hello, I am in the beginning stages of learning FLEXnet Connect and how to integrate it with an application that my company sells. I am a little confused regarding the Software Manager. It appears to me that in order to issue an API call to FLEXnet Connect and utilize the ShowNotifications method that you must set the "Include Software Manager" setting in the Update Notifications View in InstallShield to Yes. However, this creates a shortcut titled "Software Updates" on the client machine and can be launched independently of the API call in our application.

What I want to do is restrict the usage of FLEXnet Connect to strictly API invoked functions within our application. This is because we are utilizing a model where software updates/patches/hot fixes and the like are provided to system administrators at our customer sites and not to each installed user. It is up to the system administrator to test and determine if our update/patch/hot fix should be rolled out to the installed customers at their site.

As such, I have isolated one portion of our application that I know will only ever run on a system administrator's computer and wanted to bundle FLEXnet Connect into that application using only API calls.

I am having a hard time figuring out how to do this. Any help would be appreciated!

Tim

[#2]

The Software Manager is a separate component from the other Agent components, and should not be necessary to make calls to ShowNotifications. I assume you're encountering errors, could you give a bit of detail about the type of installation ( per-user or per-machine ), technology ( Msi or otherwise ), and any error codes you are receiving while instantiating either the USAgent or calling the ShowNotifications call?

[TimStVCS]

Thanks for the response Bryan, upon removing the Software Manager from my client workstation, when I launch the application where I have a call to the ShowNotifications API a "Software Manager" dialog box is displayed which has the following message "The Software Manager does not recognize this product. Please contact your software vendor for updates to this product. Error 13000: Product Not Registered with the Software Manager.

Thanks in advance!

Tim

[#4]

That probably means the registration custom action of the light merge module didn't run properly.

Could you attach an MSI log of an installation that reproduces this behavior? We should be able to sort this out.

[TimStVCS]

Thanks Bryan, I have attached the requested log file. I should also note that running the installation seems to install the Software Manager regardless of the settings that I set in InstallShield. In the .ism file in the Update Notifications View I have "Enable FLEXnet Connect" set to "Yes - FLEXnet Connect without Software Manager 11.01" and for the "Include Software Manager" setting I have "No".

Tim

[TimStVCS]

Bryan, I have recorded an issue for this problem with Acresso support. This is the second bug that I have found in InstallShield 2009 Premier Edition relating to the Update Notifications View that is resolved in the beta release of InstallShield 2010. Hopefully, I can get a patch or hotfix that resolves these two critical issues and not have to wait to roll out FLEXnet Connect integration with my companies application until InstallShield 2010 is officially released.

Best regards,

Tim

[#7]

TimStVCS wrote:
Bryan, I have recorded an issue for this problem with Acresso support. This is the second bug that I have found in InstallShield 2009 Premier Edition relating to the Update Notifications View that is resolved in the beta release of InstallShield 2010. Hopefully, I can get a patch or hotfix that resolves these two critical issues and not have to wait to roll out FLEXnet Connect integration with my companies application until InstallShield 2010 is officially released.

Best regards,

Tim

Thank you for the update. Since you're getting help from the support team, I'll let them run with this one - especially since I haven't had a lot of time to get on the communities over the last two days.

Sorry for the inconvenience this issue has caused.