Autodesk Account – Account Migration

Posted August 6, 2019 by Mark Lancaster, Helpdesk Technician
For those who manage the Autodesk subscription and contracts for your organization, we wanted to share some exciting new changes coming to your “Autodesk Account.”  This change will only appear for certain organizations and/or Autodesk contracts or license types.  Not every Autodesk contract, product, or license type will be impacted by this change.

• Wouldn’t it be nice if you no longer had to manage Autodesk serial numbers for your products?
• Would you like to give additional users the benefits of, and ability to administrate your users?
• Do you want to have the ability to review & report on your product (seat) usage?

If you think these changes sound like they would be beneficial to your organization, keep reading!
For a few years now, Autodesk has been on a path of eliminating the serial number/product key as a means of activating your product.  When the 2017 product line was introduced a few years ago, so was a brand new licensing activation method.  It was called the CLIC (cloud based) license, and today it is now designated as the Sign In Method, or the Autodesk ID (“Identifier”) activation method.  This means there’s no serial number issued for your single-user subscription based product.  Instead, you just sign in using the Autodesk Account that’s linked to your organization’s subscription.   You may have already experienced this type of activation based on this change, or you recently subscribed to new products.
Although currently there is no plan to eliminate all Autodesk serial numbers, for now and until the end of the 2019 calendar year, Autodesk is in the process of transitioning or switching selective customers over from the serial number activation method to the Sign In Method, thus transitioning your Autodesk Account from the “Classic User Management” view to the “New User Management” view.

As a reminder, the user management interface can only be accessed or seen by those who manage your subscriptions, contracts, and users.
When Autodesk updates or switches your account over to the Sign-In Method, your entire existing Autodesk Account and users for that subscription are migrated over to the New User Management interface.  So what happens in this migration process?

• Single User Subscription Product effective – Serial number activation is removed and replaced with the ID activation method. End users may see new activation requirements when they launch their product after these given Autodesk products are switched over to this new activation method.  When end users are faced with the “Let’s Get Started” dialog, they will select the following:

select sign-in for the 2017-2018 product line

select single-user for the 2019-2020 product lines

• ROLE: Contract Manager – In the classic view (user management), this individual is the user who has access to billings and renewals, manages the users for your subscriptions/contracts, and has access to those products and services. When this role is switched over to a user under the new user interface, they will be designated as the Contract Owner/Purchaser and assume the Primary Admin role.
• ROLE: Contract Owner/Purchaser – In the new user management, this user would most likely be the designated Primary Admin as well, but would mainly focus on billings and renewals. Even without the designated Primary Admin role, the contract owner/purchaser can either still manage the related single user subscription users and products/services under the new interface, or just focus on Autodesk purchasing requirements.
• ROLE: Primary Admin – This role can only be assigned to one designated individual in a given contract, and is only found under the new user management interface. The sole responsibility is managing the users, and products & services, under the new user interface.  A user holding this role is unable to be removed until this role is assigned to another user.
• ROLE: Software Coordinator – In the classic view (user management), this individual manages the users for your subscriptions/contracts and access your products and services. When this role is switched over to a user under the new user interface, they will take on the role of “Secondary Admin”.
• ROLE: Secondary Admin – This role is much like the Primary Admin role, except numerous end users can be designated as the secondary administrator in order to support your user management, and to assign those given users their benefits. In addition, this role can be added to any other existing user or taken away as needed. A user account holding this role can be removed at any time.
• ROLE: End Users – Existing users that are impacted are also migrated over to the new user interface along with their existing benefits and services. Besides reactivating their product as indicated above, end users should not experience any other changes with this switch.

For those individuals holding the Contract Owner/Purchasing, Primary Admin, or Secondary Admin role, a new reporting tool (seat usages) has been added to the reporting section of your Autodesk Account.

This new tool allows you to report on when a user opens their assigned product in a certain time frame, the list of products that are being used, and a comparison of the number of seats you have on your contract with the actual seats being used.  For additional information on this new reporting tool, please see our related blog article: Autodesk Account Reporting – Seat Usages
Finally, I would like to add that each customer selected for this switch will most likely view their current users, products, and roles differently than some other organization who has also been migrated.  The end results may work well for some, but others may require additional configuration to satisfy their needs.  If you have any questions regarding this matter, contact our subject experts as needed.
Until next time…