This is just a quick post because a client of mine ran into this issue not too long ago.
When one is buying Adobe Connect under the so called “licensed” model, it’s very common to be given only a license key from your reseller or distributor. The Adobe Connect installer however requires you to enter a license file. This is essentially an XML document that contains information about your licenses and which features are part of it and enabled.
This license file has to be generated and downloaded from an Adobe server via a special URL. There are two ways of obtaining the license file:
- During the install process: The installer will ask you for the license key and then present you with a download link for the license file to download.
- Via a link provided in a tech note called “Update Adobe Connect license“.
To make it short: 1 is fine and will give you a proper license file for your version of Adobe Connect. 2 is misleading and will always create you a license file for Macromedia Breeze 5.5.
The main culprit is step 4 as the provided link will automatically default to a Breeze 5.5 license. The license file format for Adobe Connect has changed over the years and versions and a license file for Breeze 5.5 is just different from a license file for Connect 8 or 9.
If you want to create an actually compliant license file for your version of Adobe Connect you have to add a URL parameter “&license=LICENSE_VERSION” to the URL listed in step 4 of the tech note. The text LICENSE_VERSION has to be replaced by the actual license version you want to create. In recent versions of Connect I’ve seen the values “C800.00” and “C900.00” being used.
An example for a valid URL for a Connect 9 license with license key ABCDE-12345-65432-EDFGT would be:
https://license.acrobat.com/license?serial-key=ABCDE-12345-65432-EDFGT&license=C900.00
(Please note that this is NOT a valid license key 🙂
So – how did this issue pop up to my attention in the first place? A client bought Connect 9 through a local Adobe reseller (who have unfortunately not much of a clue of Adobe enterprise software and licensing). They got the license key from Adobe, someone googled the process how to create a license file, found the tech note and ended up with a Breeze 5.5 license file for their Connect installation. This license file did not work and they ended up getting me involved.
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