Assigning a BIM 360 Docs License

[tjones1410]

How do I assign a BIM 360 Docs (not a BIM 360 Design) license?  I have an existing BIM 360 Design project.  We purchased an additional 5 BIM 360 Docs licenses.  I see the contract in my Autodesk Account, however there doesn't appear to be anyway to assign the Docs only licenses as they don't show up as an assignable asset when I go to User Management.

I want to be able to assign Docs only licenses to project team members who do not need to edit and modify the Revit models.  They only need access to the document management side of the collaboration site.

[bogdan_ciobanu]

Hi @tjones1410

Thank you for your post. My name is Bogdan and I am with Autodesk Technical Support. 

BIM 360 Document Management seats are assigned from your BIM 360 account, not from the Autodesk account.

A seat will be consumed from your available pool of seats when you invite people your BIM 360 Document Management project. So, if you have 5 seats for BIM 360 Docs, after creating a project and activating BIM 360 Docs by adding a project admin, you will have 4 seats left. After the project admin adds another project member, you will have 3 seats left, and so on.

Click here to see how to manage project members and module access.

Hope this was helpful. Don't forget to click on Accept Solution if my post answered to you question, so that other community members can find it and benefit from it easily. 

Best regards,

Bogdan

[tjones1410]

We have an existing BIM 360 Design cloud project. Most participants are using a BIM 360 Design license to access the site as they will be working directly with the various Revit models. How do I know when a BIM 360 Doc license is consumed after inviting a member without a BIM 360 Design license?
What if I have multiple BIM 360 Design projects? How is my BIM 360 Docs license pool distributed? How do I know whom the Docs licenses are assigned to?
For example I invited the primary project architect who will not be working directly in the Revit models to the project and assigned services as follows:
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When I invite someone to the project who doesn't have a BIM 360 Design license does it automatically assign them a Docs license? Is the only way to relinquish the Docs license to make that person inactive?
What happens when I invite someone and there aren't any BIM 360 Docs licenses left?

[bogdan_ciobanu · Accepted solution]

Hi @tjones1410,

You can always check the seat consumption on your BIM 360 Account admin page, under Analytics. It will tell you how many members you have activated, it will also give you a distribution by services (e.g. BIM 360 Docs - 2 users, BIM 360 Design Collaboration - 2 users) and it will tell you how many available seats you have left.

The seats are taken from all the seats available at your account level, it does not matter how many projects you have. Say you have 5 seats and two projects. If in one project you add 2 BIM 360 Docs users and in the other one 3 BIM 360 Docs users, if you create another project and try to invite another user you won't be able to do that because there are no seats available left.

BIM 360 Design seats are different and that's the service that enables you to open and publish models from Revit. BIM 360 Docs and BIM 360 Design Collaboration seats are not automatically assigned if you assign a BIM 360 Design seat.

To be able to fully work in BIM 360 Design a user needs:  1 BIM 360 Design seat (assigned from the Autodesk account - to be able to open cloud models from Revit, publish models or initiate collaboration), 1 BIM 360 Docs seat (assigned from the BIM 360 account - that gives access to the project, to the space where everything is published) and 1 BIM 360 Design Collaboration seat (assigned from the BIM 360 account - that gives access to the Design Collaboration interface, team space, packages and all that comes with it). 

You cannot add a new project member for BIM 360 Docs (or for any other BIM 360 service, for that matter) if you ran out of seats.

I hope this was helpful.

Best regards,

Bogdan

[robert]

Dear Bogdan,

As a user we are grappling with the complexities of this lisenceing arrangement.

BIM360Design is straightforward to assign.

This concept of auto-assignment of BIM360Docs for instance is a nightmare for  us.

On a separate thread we have established that a with a BIM360Design licence, you BYO (bring your own) licence to a project.

So as head consultant on a project we can invite our consultants - all going well they have their own licence and so it works fine. However (for example), taking your advice, if they don’t have correct licensing in place they can consume a DOCS licence of ours! Also we have some consultants for whom a DOCS licence is sufficient - they don’t need the full DESIGN one. If we ask them to by one how can they bring it to our project?

At present the only solution I can see is that we build a excel spreadsheet of all we invite to a project, contact each as to licence they have, and on that basis invite them (or not) to the project! We cannot even generate a report to show them they are using one of our licences - if for example - their licence expires. You can imagine the headache of managing this!

So, can I suggest a method whereby the portal discloses peoples licences - at the least? That way we can monitor whether they are part of the project or we reject them. I believe without this sort of arrangement it is unfair to ask the ‘head consultant’ to take on this liability.

We cannot afford to purchase licences for our team and expect them to do so. I personally think the DOCS licences should be assigned as per the DESIGN licences.

Look forward to your response and any clarifications if I have misunderstood.

Thanks - Rob

[robert]

For those following this thread, the latest wisdom we’ve been able to accumulate is this:

BIM360Design :

• user assigned
• provides access to most of BIM360Docs functions.
• Works as a BYO (Bring Your Own) licence (BYO means invitees can use their own licence to access the BIM360 portal of a project they have been invited to).

BIM360Docs:

• automatically assigned.
• Is not a BYO licence unless a company has one BIM360Design licence. If they have one BIM360Design licence, all their BIM360Docs licences become BYO, but remain auto-assigned.

Observations/ Notes:

1. The lack of reporting as to where BIM360Docs licences are assigned makes tracking licences difficult, if not impossible.
2. The lack of reporting as to what licences invitees have also greatly complicates tracking licences.
3. At present the management portal does not appear to correctly account for BYO licences, and so they report as unlicensed users. Legal implications are unclear if unlicensed invitees access a project – is the company ‘hosting’ liable?- How can they be- given the paucity of reporting outlined in 1 & 2?
4. The company ‘hosting’ the BIM360 project must exercise great care inviting people to the project. If the invitee only has BIM360Docs licences they will not be BYO, and so a BIM360Docs licence of the ‘host’ will be consumed!

Conclusions:

• Apparently this will soon be ‘solved’ by Autodesk turning ‘on’ a licence check feature that will stop people being invited / accessing the project without the correct licencing in place - this will be a welcome relief for management of the current system.
• The ability to turn BIM360Docs into BYO needs to be better communicated by Autodesk, as this will be critical for many subconsultants.
• IMHO the inability to assign BIM360Docs is flawed and needs to be addressed, as does the licencing reporting for all ‘invitees’ to the ‘host’. Without these it is impossible for the ‘host’ to manage the system properly. At the very least the ‘host’ should be warned that the invitee will be consuming one of the ‘hosts' licences if invited…

[Anonymous]

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@bogdan_ciobanu wrote:

You cannot add a new project member for BIM 360 Docs (or for any other BIM 360 service, for that matter) if you ran out of seats.

This is not correct. Here's a quick test I ran....

In short, licensing is messed up. I was also told by Autodesk that if I added a second "Hub" and had the same users in each, I wouldn't need to double up my licensing. Based on this test, that's "correct" but it's only because of the licensing defect.

This is another case like C4R a few years back where licensing wasn't working and all of the sudden Autodesk will "fix it" and leave project teams our of work until licensing can be procured. 

Honestly, most answers I get from Autodesk on BIM360 I can typically prove inaccurate.  Last time they were in my office, took my 1/2 a day to test and prove their guidance on 3 other issues was false.

[Vijay.huple]

Hello @bogdan_ciobanu,

I know this is an old thread, but I find it most relevant to my questions regarding seat assignment in BIM 360 Docs. As you explained, if I have 5 Docs licenses and I invite 2 of my company members to a certain project (say project A), I am left with jus 3 seats now. I ask them to do multiple assignments with these same seats or are they currently assigned to them. will it consume two more seats out of the 3 remaining?

Thank you and best wishes

Vijay Huple

[benno.toorn]

No, its 1 seat/user/account. Not 1 seat/user/project/account.

User = Autodesk ID

Account = the BIM 360 company (Account Admin) environment where you start the projects and assign the license packages to.

We now have the issue that there is no way to manage the seats on account level. Only on project level.

We have +300 projects, +1000 users, +1000 BIM 360 Docs seats and only 25 BIM 360 Design seats for special modeling purposes. Every project admin can activate BIM 360 design and assign those licenses. They have no insight in the current amount of used and available licenses. So they just click on it in test projects to check it out. If an account admin want to detach it from a user, they have to filter the user list on BIM 360 Design > check every project the user is assigned to > remove the seat. Its not possible to deactivate it for the user on all projects in one click or to lock it. Let alone that you need to contact the companies license manager to activate the Revit - BIM 360 connection on manage.autodesk.com for every user.

[emoralesBRMMP]

Under my analytics tab where it shows "member limits by services" I currently show 12/8 document management licenses. I haven't had issues with members using the service yet. I also show 1/1 field management license. Why do I only have 1 of these available?? I just want to advise my boss correctly with how many more licenses we need. Please explain. The licensing here just doesn't make much sense to me.

[emoralesBRMMP]

@bogdan_ciobanu