Adobe Creative Cloud License Management

Easiest way to manage your Adobe Creative Cloud licenses is to set-up a departmental Adobe Creative Cloud Team.

Creating an Adobe VIP Agreement to Purchase Adobe Creative Cloud Licences for your Team

What follows is a rundown on how to obtain an Adobe CC VIP (Value Incentive Plan) Agreement and Portal, which allows you to view and manage licence allocation for Adobe Creative Cloud apps, based on our experiences in NSMS. Adobe Creative Cloud is now licenced on a subscription model, which renews each year. If you have a VIP Agreement, these renewals happen for all your licences purchased through it on your 'anniversary date' which is either 13 months after you start your portal if you do nothing, or can be set to a date of your choosing when you activate the portal (see below).
There are three types of licence under the Creative Cloud for Education agreement, these are:

1. Shared Device licence - for licencing a single device (best for labs)
2. Named User licence - assigned to a user, can be used concurrently on up to two devices
3. Single App licence - a special Named User licence for an individual app rather than the whole suite. Not every app can be purchased this way

For more information on licences please see http://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/buy/education.html (note that the University does not have an enterprise agreement so you will not be able to purchase enterprise licences).

Setting up the VIP Agreement and Portal

1. Contact the Education Account Director at Bytes. Currently this is Robert Knott robert.knott@bytes.co.uk 01372 418791. Tell them that you would like to set up your own VIP agreement at the University of Oxford for your team.

2. Be clear about what you want your team to be called as this is what everyone who is 'invited' to claim a Named User Licence from the portal will see in the email. It should probably be in the format "Your Unit - University of Oxford". Also be clear that you want the University's CLP (Cumulative Licence Program) discount migrated to this portal. This is both so that you can receive the University's discount and so that your licences are counted towards the University's total. You should also talk to Adobe about what you want your anniversary date to be if you are concerned with lining up yearly licence renewals with your financial year. Note - This is a VIP Level 4 Discount (migrated from the CLP level 3).

3. Once this has been set up you may need to sign a purchase agreement with Bytes for your portal, if you have not purchased from them before.

4. You will receive an email from Adobe inviting you to the Value Incentive Plan. You will be required to set up an Adobe ID if you do not already have one. Once you have done this you will receive a second email with your VIP Number, Organization Name and Anniversary date. KEEP THIS EMAIL - you must purchase against your own VIP number

Purchasing licences

1. Obtain a quote for the licences you require from Bytes . You must include your VIP number, and the type and number of each licence you require.

2. Once your purchasing department has paid for the licences they will then become available in your VIP Portal to assign to users or devices.
3. Named User/Single App licences are assigned via email address, again the user will be prompted to create an Adobe ID if they do not have one. When they run an unlicensed copy of an Adobe CC app, they can then licence it by signing in with their Adobe ID.
4. Device licences are activated when a licensed copy of the software runs on a computer.

Distributing the Software

The VIP Portal includes downloads of the software which allows you to create Named User and Shared Device licensed installers of the full suite or any combination of the apps to distribute to users. However, this can quickly get complicated and the Orchard Mac team at EDMS have already done a lot of this work and made all the individual Mac installers and updates available in the Orchard Software Centre. We can also help you allocate and revoke your shared device licences automatically to computers. For more information see Software/AdobeCreativeCloud and Software/AdobeCreativeCloud/Packaging for details on how we do this. Please use the Join Us link at the bottom of the page if you're interested in collaborating with Orchard.