Creating Additional License Keys
Last updated
Last updated
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When you purchase a subscription, you will receive a single license key. In many business situations, a single license key may not be flexible enough. For this reason, Parallels provides you with the ability to create additional license keys (also known as sublicenses) linked to your Primary license key. When creating a license key, you can allocate a desired number of licenses to it and specify a custom expiration date.
In general, it is not recommended to use the main license key for activating Parallels Desktop seats as it may be shared with unauthorized third parties, whereas revoking an additional sublicense key and creating a new one is much easier. So, even if you plan to have only one group of users, we recommend that you issue them an additional key instead of the primary one.
Note: Starting from Parallels Desktop 18, 'Activation using corporate account (SSO)' option became available. This option works only if you purchased a special license type and setup integration with your identity provider in Parallels My Account. Please check your license certificate for details. This license option doesn't offer the "sublicenses" functionality.
Additional license keys are useful in these typical scenarios:
You want to protect your primary license key from being shared with unauthorized third parties, even by accident.
You have purchased Parallels Desktop for Mac Enterprise Edition and want to create user groups to flexibly manage policies and restrictions. Each user group requires a separate sublicense key. Read the to learn more.
You want to grant a division of your organization the ability to use a limited number of your available licenses. You can create an additional license key with the required number of licenses and give it to the division's administrator.
You want to give a license key to a temporary employee or a consultant. To do so, you can create a license key with a single individual license and a specific expiration date. When the license key expires, it becomes invalid, and the license goes back to the Primary license key pool.
You are an educational organization and want to activate Parallels Desktop for a group of students for the duration of a specific term. You can create a new license key at the beginning of each term. At the same time, the key that you used for the previous term expires, and the number of licensed seats contained in it goes back to the Primary license key pool.
For additional information, please also see Renewing and Updating Licenses.
When allocating a maximum number of individual licenses to a license key, you need to decide whether they should be reserved or allocated dynamically:
If license keys are reserved, only the given sublicense/user group can use them. This is a good option when you need to guarantee that the license key can activate a specific number of Parallels Desktop copies.
If license keys are allocated dynamically, each new user will have to compete for the remaining quota with the Primary license key and other dynamic keys (if any). You can use this option when you have to use unique license keys in different offices of your organization but don’t want to strictly limit their license usage.
Note: A sum of dynamically allocated license seats across several user groups can exceed the overall remaining quota in your primary license. In this case, the overarching principle is first come, first served.
To create an additional license key:
On the Dashboard, locate the Parallels Desktop for Mac product card and click on Active Subscriptions for Business Edition or Subscription Renewal for Enterprise Edition.
Select a subscription (if you have more than one in Business Edition) and scroll to the License Keys card.
Click the Create License Key button.
The dialog opens where you can specify the license key properties:
Use the Quota of Licenses field to specify the number of licenses to allocate to this license key.
Use the Type drop-down menu to select a license allocation type. See the License allocation subsection above for details.
Select the Renew with Subscription option works as follows:
If selected, the license key will have the same expiration date as the Primary license key. If the Primary key expires and is renewed, this additional license key will be renewed as well.
If cleared, you can specify a desired expiration date for the license key using the Expiration Date field. Once the date is reached, the key becomes invalid, and individual licenses allocated to it will go back to the Primary license key pool.
Click Save to create and save the new license key.
Back on the Subscription Details page, review the new key in the License Keys list. The Name column displays the automatically generated key that you can use to activate Parallels Desktop on Mac computers.
Please note that when you modify or delete a license key, it may affect Parallels Desktop installations in your organization. For example, if you decrease the number of individual licenses allocated to the key, some of the active Parallels Desktop installations may be deactivated. When you delete a license key, all installations that use it will be deactivated. If you want to keep installations activated under this key to keep functioning, you can move them to a different key. Learn more at Switching a Parallels Desktop Installation to a Different License Key.
For additional information, please also see Renewing and Updating Licenses.
Note: You can assign one or more administrators to manage a license key. For example, if you create a license key to be used by a specific division in your organization, you can invite the administrator of that division to join the business account and give them rights to manage that particular license key and the Parallels Desktop installations that are (or will be) activated using it. For the complete information, please see Inviting Users to Join a Business Account and Managing License Administrators.
On the General tab, specify a license key name, click the icon, and then type a name.
To modify or delete a license key that you created earlier, open the Subscription Details page and click the icon (the last column in the list). Use the dialog that opens to modify the license key properties. To delete a license key, click Delete Key.
