C4R Subscription Enforcement Starts October 19th

[KyleB_Autodesk]

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Update: 5:20pmEST 10.19.2017

Subscription enforcement has been enabled for C4R.

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All,

As part of our efforts to avoid disruption amongst teams cloud worksharing in C4R, we wanted to post here to alert you all that we will restart enforcement of C4R subscription entitlement next Thursday, October 19th. Any Autodesk IDs without "Collaboration for Revit" allocated in manage.autodesk.com will be unable to browse or open cloud workshared Revit models.

The current lack of entitlement enforcement is a reaction to a defect in our entitlement back end, which was causing users with valid entitlement losing C4R access. We chose to shut off entitlement enforcement until we were confident that paid subscribers couldn't lose access. We are now confident that this cannot happen, and are executing our communication plan to minimize disruption when we re-enable the entitlement enforcement. If you or members of your team are cloud worksharing without entitlement, you likely received an email September 19th, and again this past week.

If you want to continue cloud worksharing, you need to work with your Autodesk or reseller sales partner to obtain subscription, or purchase a subscription on our eStore.

If you do not want to continue cloud worksharing, you can, before October 19th:

1. Open the project models from C4R and do a Save As and to detach and bring the models local.

2. Publish the project models to BIM 360 Team, and then download them from the website.

Please feel free to post here with any questions, as we are here to help ahead of this important deadline.

-Kyle

[Anonymous]

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@angiizzi wrote:

As I totally understand your position, you should consider the cost of hosting your data on a server in your office. You will have to pay for the cost of the server, the set-up of the server sharing solution and the IT cost associated with maintaining your server. You will also not be able to work with others outside your firewall which is the most used feature of Collaboration for Revit. .....

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Please stop spreading this misinformation.  It's simply not true. 

[Anonymous]

I just want to thanks for reaching out and help us to get the information needed to help our affected costumers accordingly.

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@daniel_wells wrote:

It has been suggested that a license for those who do not have licenses assigned from any of the contracts I manage may have a license assigned by another entity.

I therefore submit that the management interface (manage.autodesk.com) be:

1. Made to reflect accurately what is available to the users there regardless of who logs in, contract manager or user.
2. Contract managers MUST be able to see ALL licenses assigned to users listed on their management site, regardless of who assigned them the license. I am not asking to manipulate the licenses of others, but to see who has a license of what and who assigned it to the user.  This will help eliminate duplication of license assignment.

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I suggest that every company gets a license for each of their own users and assign them accordingly. This way you don't get duplicates. CM's can only assign 1 C4R license to each user and can get an overview by filtering on C4R in their user list. If others need to see/control these licenses they can promote others as software coordinators.

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daniel.wells wrote:

When changes are made to the underlying system that will affect users, the contract administrators should be notified in advance. Users may be notified, but they will often not understand the ramifications, those who administer and troubleshoot are better equipped to deal with explaining to their users in terms they will understand.

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You can get notifications from health.autodesk.com

[angiizzi]

Please advise on parts that are not true...

Angi Izzi

[daniel_wells]

What misinformation are you referring to?

We only use C4R to work with others outside our network, We have been internally collaborating on projects for more than 20 years.

[Anonymous]

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@angiizzi wrote:

Please advise on parts that are not true...

Angi Izzi

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Project teams have collaborated outside their firewall for years without the need for C4R. There's a myriad of options available. 

[angiizzi]

I don't think anyone said there were no other options available. We have supported many options for sharing data across teams through our licensing agreement.

Collaboration for Revit was launched a few years ago to target customers who wanted to cut down on expenses of appliances, servers and IT costs. The point is the expense associated of working outside the firewall with secure solutions can get expensive to some firms. We are still very early in market for cloud-based worksharing but teams seem to be enjoying the ease of use and low barrier to entry. 

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused with our recent non-enforcement. Please do use this forum topic only for items that reference this issue so that we may properly assist.

Best,

Angi Izzi

[Anonymous]

Let me quote you again....

---snip---

"You will also not be able to work with others outside your firewall which is the most used feature of Collaboration for Revit."

---snip---

I appreciate that you're trying to address the unfortunate results surrounding the entitlement issue and trying to keep people from making snap judgments based on a single event. However, I believe the best way to do that is by educating the customer with accurate information. 

I also didn't attempt to explain the cost advantage of C4R over On-Prem solutions or the history and reason behind C4R...all of which are not addressing the provisioning issue.

My apologies if you took offense to my calling out your statement. It wasn't personal and I made no judgement about it, just that it's not accurate and should not be told to customers. 

As a customer, I've spend hundreds of hours asking questions and trying to get answers from Autodesk only to have a mix of accurate, inaccurate and wrong information provided. I've listen to fellow Autodesk staff in a QA after a public webcast debate each other whether a life feature should or should not be used because it's unclear if it was tested or works as designed.

This is very relevant as this entire provisioning issue is a result of customers being confused and uneducated. It's not the problem, it's a symptom. 

As I prior worked for an Enterprise Priority customer, we had better access than most to Autodesk experts. And I can tell you it was not easy getting accurate information as to how to properly setup and provision project access, licensing access and the differences between the two and how it all worked. Most of my questions needed further research by Autodesk.

As a customer, I don't need to know why THIS issue happened. I'd really like to know what Autodesk is doing to prevent these types of issues from happening again. While I'm confident in all the user's I've ever setup did not have this issue, the response to this type of incident is a high concern for me. 

Autodesk's back end systems have historically been a mess. Provisioning of various services and products often times required coordination between over a dozen systems and take days. Autodesk had made great progress in addressing a lot of that but it's still not where it needs to be.

If you want to convince/keep me as a C4R customer, I don't need to know the cost justification or purpose of C4R, I'm already sold We used it exclusively even for 100% internal projects at my last firm. What I need to know is what are you doing about the "backend systems" that caused this issue? Those systems and how you improve on these root cause scenarios are what I'm concerned with.

Now, if you think the root cause if this issue and Autodesk's response to it is considered off topic, I'll kindly refrain from further comment.

[colinSRA]

I am a Contract Manager, and I don't remember the last time I got any communication regarding upcoming C4R activities.

I was not aware that Autodesk was working on closing an entitlement loophole, and I was not aware that changes in the service were forthcoming.

I have already chosen to "receive email communications from Autodesk, including information about new products and special promotions." But this doesn't seem to be enough, for me to receive contract-related information.

As a Contract Manager, am I supposed to automatically receive communication from Autodesk about these activities?

Or is there another mailing list I should sign up for?

[Darin_HDR]

I am working with another office and we were a couple days into our 60 day free trial of C4R when this all went down. Half the people lost their access to their free trial and the other half did not. This shut the project down with multiple contributors for days. Mostly because we didn't know what was going on. Those who got the email about the cut off date did not realize it meant they would be cut off from their free trial prior to it's expiration. To further our confusion, our re-seller was pushing us to start the 60 day free trial before it went away on the 19th (so we assumed we had 60 days of use from when we started our trial).

Since I did not loose my free trail, I am not the one seeking customer support, but as far as I know, as of yesterday, nobody from Autodesk had responded to requests to reinstate the free trial of C4R that we had started. 

I was really excited for this product when we started. However, with Autodesk unceremoniously kicking us out of our free trial and then the complete silence (for days and days) when seeking help, it seems pretty clear Autodesk has motives other than keeping current Autodesk subscribers satisfied or getting them interested in using new products like C4R.  

This who experience has been a cluster _____, and has really jaded me towards Autodesk.

[Anonymous]

If you have your team members log out of A360 on EVERY version of Revit they use (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), and shut down all the versions, they should then be able to open the Revit version in question and log back in and have their free trial be accessible again. This worked for us 75% of the time. Other times we had to log out and restart the machine and then log back in. 

The trick is to be sure you log out of EVERY version. If you stay logged in on one version, then the lock on the account remains active.

I hope this helps, I am only a fellow customer.

Best,

Megan 

[KyleB_Autodesk]

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@Darin_HDR wrote:

I am working with another office and we were a couple days into our 60 day free trial of C4R when this all went down. Half the people lost their access to their free trial and the other half did not. This shut the project down with multiple contributors for days. Mostly because we didn't know what was going on. Those who got the email about the cut off date did not realize it meant they would be cut off from their free trial prior to it's expiration. To further our confusion, our re-seller was pushing us to start the 60 day free trial before it went away on the 19th (so we assumed we had 60 days of use from when we started our trial).

Since I did not loose my free trail, I am not the one seeking customer support, but as far as I know, as of yesterday, nobody from Autodesk had responded to requests to reinstate the free trial of C4R that we had started. 

I was really excited for this product when we started. However, with Autodesk unceremoniously kicking us out of our free trial and then the complete silence (for days and days) when seeking help, it seems pretty clear Autodesk has motives other than keeping current Autodesk subscribers satisfied or getting them interested in using new products like C4R.  

This who experience has been a cluster _____, and has really jaded me towards Autodesk.

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Yeah, I'd be pretty frustrated if I were you as well. As I discussed earlier, our goal has been avoiding major disruption, but at the same time having a C4R product that operated against its stated business model. I apologize that your team had a crummy C4R trial experience; as a business that's not exactly within our best interest.

It's important to know that C4R trials do indeed result in a valid, albeit 60-day limited, C4R Subscription. So the enforcement action we took on the 19th did not have an impact to C4R team members operating with a valid trial, at least based on our investigation of numerous similar reports. In all of those cases, not all team members actually started or joined a C4R trial. Those that lost access only joined the BIM 360 Team project that was being used for the trial, which did not actually result in a C4R trial subscription being applied to their Autodesk IDs.  Can you confirm if any of the impacted team members actually see something listed in the Trials section of manage.autodesk.com.  My guess is that they are not, but we're here to help if they followed the trial workflow and still cannot work on the project.

-Kyle

[Darin_HDR]

All I am able to confirm is that when they signed up for the free 60 day trial, the C4R website redirected them to a 30 day trial (which I assume was for BIM 360) and not for C4R. Autodesk then extended their trial period by 30 days. I now realize Autodesk did this knowing that it didn't matter if they extended it 30 days or 300 days as come October 19th it was going to kick them off. Nicely played Autodesk. 

What is frustrating though is not that this happened, but the lack of response they got when they contacted Autodesk to help remedy the situation. Six days after responding to a service ticket twice and they have not gotten a response.

As long as I have the ear of someone who knows the workings of Autodesk, Please pass this on.

Please stop bundling your software and let us pay for just the software we want to use.  Please stop using those who use Revit and Autocad exclusivity to prop up all your other software (that you keep bundeling up for us). Please don't bundle BIM 360, please don't make me pay for Navisworks, 3D Max, InfraWorks, Formit, Revit Live and the likes. Nothing is free and nobody believes that when you bundle this software that we are getting it for free. And frankly we are tired of paying for it. Let us buy Revit and Autocad at a reasonable price point. Revit and Autodesk users are your core in the AEC community and myself and everyone I talk to (small to medium sized Architecture Firms) feel like Autodesk keeps shoving software we don't use at us and making us pay for it through the bundles. If I could buy Revit and Autocad cheaper than the bundle, I would. But of course Autodesk knows that and so that is why you don't give us that option. Bleeeech! That's how Autodesk makes me feel.

[lakek]

Hi there – I am a product manager for Autodesk Account.  My apologies for this latest issue that resulted in authorization issues with Collaboration for Revit.  We do our very best to make sure that what customers see in Autodesk account accurately represents their access to software.   In cases where we experience technical difficulty we err on the side of delivering access to our customers.   We Appreciate the feedback and it has us thinking about how we can better shore up these processes.

-Kathy

Product Manager Autodesk Account

[Anonymous]

Did you roll back this enforcement? Because I can invite users as editors and they can access C4R without a seat assigned... 

Is this a glitch or not? 

[sasha.crotty]

Hi @johannes.risEBA43,

Thanks for asking. Due to some problems with the license checks we are still in the process of rolling out the entitlement checks. We are currently conducting tests to make sure all issues have been resolved. Once those tests are completed we expect to roll out further enforcement. In the meantime, I advise assigning users to purchased licenses to avoid any disruptions.

Thanks,

Sasha

[edited for accuracy]

[Anonymous]

Are we going to be notified in advance this time?

Do people using the Revit viewer still need a C4R licence?

[sasha.crotty]

Hi Lorne,

As of October 19th we have been in the process of rolling out entitlement checks. Therefore please consider the original post in this thread as notice. To avoid disruptions to your work, please ensure anyone accessing models in C4R in your firm has a valid C4R license assigned.

A C4R license is required to open C4R models, including in Revit Viewer. If there is a need for someone without a C4R license to view a model or documentation, the BIM 360 viewer is designed to support this workflow.

Thanks,

Sasha

[Darin_HDR]

@sasha.crotty, I got seriously screwed over by this whole thing and lost a lot of man hours and money (due to lost productivity) dealing with this. There was a bunch of dropped trials then dropped subscriptions once the trials (that were no longer active) ended. This was all (in my mind) Autodesk's fault and I have not had Autodesk once offer me sort of compensation for their screw up. Yet in a month I am going to shell out a bunch more money to renew my Revit subscriptions. How about Autodesk does us a favor as a sorry we screwed you over and give us a couple days notice before you roll out further enforcement. I mean, you could be nice about it instead of sticking it to us like Autodesk seems to do with everything else. Is it too much to ask that you post here a couple of days before that happens so we can get our ducks in a row?

[sasha.crotty]

@Darin_HDR, I completely understand your frustration and apologize for earlier disruptions. The reason I cannot give a date is that there is no one date to give. The roll-out is progressive and we are already in the process. My advice is to get your ducks in a row as soon as possible. 

Part of my job is to make sure that you don't experience disruptions. As a product manager my success is tied to your success. You'll have to take my word for it, therefore, that we are doing everything we can to make sure that there is no downtime as a result of this process. 

Happy holidays!

Sasha

[Darin_HDR]

@sasha.crotty I appreciate your response but I hate it when companies or there representatives talk to use like the machine just runs and there is nothing they can do. The reality is, we are all people and we can all help each other out. I understand there isn't a date you can give us because there isn't one. But there will come a time that there is one (so please don't patronize use). Please correct me if I am wrong with any of this.

There will be a day when someone at Autodesk says, it is time to start enforcement again. At that time anyone who isn't on subscription will have their services dropped. You could ask Autodesk to inform you when that date arrives (even if there isn't a date right now). You could ask Autodesk that when that date arrives to wait a couple of days so that you could inform everyone this is going to happen and they can fill any unfilled subscriptions that are needed. Autodesk could say sure, we will do that, that would be a nice gesture on our part for our screwup. 

But the reality is you probably don't want to ask or plead our case to whoever that would be at Autodesk. And even if you did, Autodesk would say, "Whaaaaaat? Why would we do that? We don't owe anything like that to our users? That would be an inconvenience for us. We would have to stop what we are doing for a couple of days, hold up our work. People are just free loading off the fact we are doing maintenance right now and we gave them warning this was going to end so if they aren't on subscription that is there fault."

When in reality Autodesk did the same thing to us. We were inconvenienced by their actions. We had to stop work on what we were doing for several days trying to figure this out. We are looking for some sort of gesture of apology. Saying your sorry is not the same as acknowledging a mistake through action.

But alas we will not get that because you and Autodesk like to pretend you have no control and you can't change the way things are. Even though the fact is, we are all just people and you and the people at Autodesk have a choice on how you treat your users and you tend to treat us like sheep. At least that is the way you are making this one user (and every other user I talk to) feel.

P.S. This animosity towards Autodesk does not stem from this one issue. There have been several issues over the last couple months with Autodesk screwing up or their lack of services that points me to the conclusion they really don't care about their users.