Product activation

Document Engine is a commercial product and requires a license to work. We provide one activation key for one production installation, and one development activation key for all development installations. Contact our Sales team if you have any questions related to your license.

License types

Document Engine offers two types of licenses: online and offline.

Online license

Online licenses use an activation key to register the license with the Nutrient Portal. The first time the Document Engine container is started, it’ll authenticate the key from the Nutrient Portal and store the license-related data either in the configured database, or, if the container was started without the database configured, in memory.

Document Engine pings the Nutrient Portal every two hours to verify its license and download updated license information. It also sends anonymous usage analytics to the Nutrient Portal. These analytics help us in diagnosing issues and improving the product.

Offline license

Offline licenses use a license key that works without connecting to the Nutrient Portal. Each time the Document Engine container is started, it’ll validate the license key offline and store the license-related data either in the configured database, or, if the container was started without the database configured, in memory.

When using an offline license, Document Engine doesn’t ping the Nutrient Portal, nor does it collect any analytics. Any updates to the license must be handled manually, and the Document Engine instance must be restarted. Contact our Support team for assistance.

Configuring the license

As of version 1.2.0, Document Engine supports both license types using either the ACTIVATION_KEY or LICENSE_KEY environment variable. You can use either variable name to provide your license credentials, regardless of the license type.

Setting Helm values

For deployment with Helm, use the values in the documentEngineLicense section:

documentEngineLicense:
  activationKey: "<your activation or license key>"

You can also use LICENSE_KEY instead of ACTIVATION_KEY.

We recommend using external secrets for the license. For example, for a secret resource named document-engine-license with an activation key or license key stored as DOCUMENT_ENGINE_ACTIVATION_OR_LICENSE_KEY, use:

documentEngineLicense:
  externalSecret:
    name: document-engine-license
    key: DOCUMENT_ENGINE_ACTIVATION_OR_LICENSE_KEY