Dividing Users into Groups with Sublicenses

In large organizations with multiple Macs, there may be groups of Parallels Desktop users with very different needs in terms of capabilities and restrictions, from a software engineer who develops for multiple platforms and needs a dozen virtual machines to test every possible scenario to a back-office staff who would benefit the most from Single Application Mode.

Note: From a system administrator's point of view, dividing the user base into groups is useful for the application of specific policies and/or provision of tailored Golden Images.

The best way to maintain flexible arrangements is by dividing users into groups, each of which would require a sublicense. To create a sublicense, follow these steps:

Warning: If you plan on activating your end users' copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac with license keys on a per-device basis, we strongly recommend against sending out your primary license key to your end-users directly. We recommend employing the Invite Users function which generates unique keys for each invitation email, or creating and sharing additional sublicense keys.

1. Go to Parallels My Account and select Dashboard in the top-right corner;
2. In your Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition card, click on the Subscription Details line;

3. Scroll down to the License Keys card and click Create License Key in its top-right corner;

4. Click on the key name at the top and change it to reflect the name of the group;

5. Assign a certain number of Parallels Desktop installations available with this license key, select the key type, and click Save. To learn more about the differences between Dynamic and Reserved keys, see this chapter in our Licensing Guide, specifically the Allocating Licenses section.

• If you want your users to activate their copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac using license keys, you could send them invitations to activate, which will contain automatically generated individual activation keys (derived from the respective sublicense keys). To do that, use the Invite Users button on the product card in Parallels My Account.

• If your organization uses an identity provider (e.g., Microsoft Azure/Entra ID or Okta), and you want your users to activate their copies of Parallels Desktop for Mac using Single Sign-On, refer to this section of the guide.

Note: With Enterprise Edition, you can maintain a mix of per-device (sublicense key) and per-user (SSO) activations across the same overall setup. Any users not included in the mapped SSO groups will be activated using the quota from the primary license key seats pool. Golden Images will be assigned, and policies will be applied accordingly.

Irrespective of their activation method, dividing users into groups will let you benefit from things like custom policies and restrictions.