Can a single AdobeID have multiple seats?

[Chris ILines]

We have 3 users who are running Adobe applications on two computers at the same time.  Will we need to create extra AdobeID's for these users so that they can install Creative Cloud on their 2nd workstations?

[Beverley Gray]

Hi Chris

You are correct that section 2.2 of the EULA doesn't have any specific language about the number of computers you can install on, but there are no restrictions around using the Creative Cloud apps on 2 computers at the same time for the individual user associated with the membership.

Section 2.1.5 does not apply to Creative Cloud membership.

I appreciate your need for clarification and hope this helps.

Thanks

Bev

[Chris ILines]

Hi Bev, thanks for the quick response.

But you have to apprecate my situtation, there is no specific language saying you can  use two at a time, and differing options from Adobe staff as to whether you can.

And there is a blanket declaration in 2.2.2 of the membership portion of the agreement that states all terms apply, which would include 2.1.5

[Beverley Gray]

Hi Chris

I do appreciate your situation and can only confirm what I've said before - there are no restrictions around using the Creative Cloud apps on 2 computers at the same time for the individual associated with the membership. 

Is there a particular scenario that you are concerned about?

Thanks

Bev

[Chris ILines]

Hi,

I'm concerned that there is a difference of opinion on this topic from different Adobe staff, and so far you have not been able to show me where it states this is acceptable, and the EULA states specifically that you can not.

You must have the information from somewhere that says there are no restrictions.

Until you can show me specifically where it says that is permissable, it seems I have no choice but to make fake emails and Adobe IDs and sign up for ten seats instead of five.

This just seems to be a common business sceneario and a very bizarre approach to set up after volume licensing being a fairly smooth operation.

I can't base what will be a $6000 per year decision on your opinion when there is dissent amoung your ranks, and you can not provide documentation to back up your opinion.

Thanks

[HBLansing]

Chris ILines wrote:

Hi,

I'm concerned that there is a difference of opinion on this topic from different Adobe staff, and so far you have not been able to show me where it states this is acceptable, and the EULA states specifically that you can not.

You must have the information from somewhere that says there are no restrictions.

Until you can show me specifically where it says that is permissable, it seems I have no choice but to make fake emails and Adobe IDs and sign up for ten seats instead of five.

This just seems to be a common business sceneario and a very bizarre approach to set up after volume licensing being a fairly smooth operation.

I can't base what will be a $6000 per year decision on your opinion when there is dissent amoung your ranks, and you can not provide documentation to back up your opinion.

Thanks

Hi Chris,

I have run out of time on this one myself.  That being said, I am:

1. Assigning the two named seats I need for senior instructors who use their own systems, with their own Adobe IDs/emails
2. Creating four...not eight..."dummy IDs" with emails attached and applying them in pairs to the machines that will see students (who all have their own Student Cloud licenses prepaid by us) and part-time contracted instructors share those eight systems.

Adobe can come talk to me later if they want, I no longer have time to see Adobe having apparent internal confusion about what you and I should or should not do.

[David__B]

Sorry for any confusion between what Bev and I said. We're all just trying to help.

Team memberships are intended for specific unique users for each seat, not really floating seats to be used between many different users. That’s not to say it couldn't be used this way, but rather this wasn't how it was intended to be used.

The seats correspond with the number of users not number of systems. Even though a user can use it on two different computers, the intention is for the owner to be able to use the software on two different computers, usually a home and work computer.

What about the owner using it on two different computers at the same time part?

Let me offer an example from a question that came up around this with a past thread - I have two computers, I want to use them both at the same time. I want one computer to be rendering an After Effects composition and I want to jump over and use Photoshop on a second computer while After Effects is busy. Am I allowed to do this per the license agreement? My understanding is yes, although you're working between two different computers, technically you're still only using one at a time. The owner is still physically only working at one machine at a time. The clause in the licensing agreement is to prevent multiple users using the same seat at the same time not prohibit the owner from how they use it between their machines.

How does this translate into the floating license scenario? Even though you could have two users using the same seat at the same time I would consider this not abiding the license agreement-why, because even with floating licenses, its intended for unique users, and not at the same time with the same account.

@HBLansing, sorry I wasn't able to follow up here quickly enough for you, but based on your description I think you're going about it the correct way. For the two instructors accounts, if it’s possible to have them use an email address not associated with any personal memberships that might be a good way to help keep things separate.

[HBLansing]

David__B wrote:

Sorry for any confusion between what Bev and I said. We're all just trying to help.

@HBLansing, sorry I wasn't able to follow up here quickly enough for you, but based on your description I think you're going about it the correct way. For the two instructors accounts, if it’s possible to have them use an email address not associated with any personal memberships that might be a good way to help keep things separate.

Hi David,

The two "named" users have had these seats assigned to them by us, so we're essentially paying for their use of the licenses whether or not they here or at home.  One of their "perks".

Thanks for the final clarification that my approach is appropriate.  I get that it's complicated and that you folks who are in the forums trying to put out fires are not the ones who threw the match

[OneMadCow]

Well, here's the IT Director that is now being bit in the heinie on this screwed up license model. My client just migrated from the Volume License Program (it worked) to CC Team VIP through our reseller. These "seats" are going to, for the most part, be installed on freelance systems that are staffed up for each job. This will go from about 6 staff seats to about 25 when things are busy.

What I'm getting is that I have to license my client software to a freelancer and then go through the headache of revoking when the job is done. Then when a new artist is brought in, finding the machine that's revoked and sign in with another ID... each. freaking. time.

I don't care about running battle over multiple installs per Adobe ID. This is a logistics nightmare to manage and administer. Please tell me I'm completely wrong and Adobe is going to fix this, but like yesterday?

[Hungry Joe]

I'm just a guy with more than two machines. How can I up my license quantity without creating fake email addresses?

Thanks

[Beverley Gray]

Hi HBLansing

Apologies for any confusion.  My replies were to Chris ILines's query about 1 user using the apps on more than one computer at the same time.

I understand your situation is different and will ask my colleague who replied to your previously to follow up with you on this.

Kind regards

Bev

[Steve_House]

It appears a "seat" is defined as being a person, not a physical computer, and Adobe wants the software to be licensed on an individual user basis, not a per computer basis.  So if you had only one computer in the property and 10 individuals who use that computer from time to time, they want you to purchase 10 licenses.  If an 11th user sits down who had not been issued a "seat" as a member of your team, they would not be entitled to use any of the CC software.  Just guessing that['s their intent, though if so it seems mighty flawed in its execution (and an unreasonable expectation to boot).

[HBLansing]

Beverley Gray wrote:

You have a Creative Cloud for Teams membership with 10 seats - correct?

You cannot install and activate all 10 seats using your ID.  As the administrator you would add users to the team by sending them an invite to their email address.  They accept the invite and go to https://creative.adobe.com/ where they log in with their credentials.  This is covered in this doc: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/creative-cloud-teams ---customer.html

The user will then be able to install the Creative Cloud apps on 2 of their computers and can run# the apps at the same time.

If you currently have fewer than 10 employees then you don't need to assign these seats.

Hope this helps

Thanks

Bev

Bev, I need clarification here;

My scenario:

1. 10 total seats purchased under Team
2. 2 specifically assigned to senior instructors using their own systems for teaching
3. 4 Print/Photoshop workstations for assignment printing by students who all have their own individual Student Licenses
4. 2 Technician/PR/Coomunications workstations
5. 2 Instructor Stations that are shared-use by a variety of part-time instructors who rotate through the school throughout the year.

Now, other than the 2 individually assigned and individually used seats which have their own IDs, how many IDs do I need to create?  You've said "If you currently have fewer than 10 employees then you don't need to assign these seats." which reads as you saying I don't need to assign the other 8 seats.  Now how will that possibly work?

I need to be installing applications, I am in fact well behind on this thanks to the rampant confusion...even on this forum by different Adobe employees saying vastly different things...about how this is supposed to work

I need specific and unambiguous guidance.  I needed it when Team launched and I need it now...I have reached a critical path block, courtesy of Adobe, and I have students arriving here in 10 days with this still staring me in the face along with all the usual pre-semester headaches. 

Someone with the authority to say "This is the way it is", and make it stick with the rest of the Adobe Staff posting in these threads so we all stop getting conflicting guidance (like "you only need 5 IDs for 10 concurrent uses of Team" vs "Harrison, you are correct, you need 10 IDs to run 10 seats concurrently under Team") needs to step in here and give us some guidance.  Soon, really soon, now would be great.

[HBLansing]

Ok, my turn:

I manage the systems at a small private photography school.  I own 10 cloud seats.  Four of those seats belong to 4 print/photoshop stations which are and can be used by all of our staff and students for managing the printing to our bank of Epson 4900s.  Three of them belong to systems in classrooms, which will be used by multiple instructors...who are all professionsl photographers/photo-js in their own right and I can't swipe their Adobe IDs to use at the school or I deny them access to their own Cloud subs. 

Three of them I can assign by specific Adobe ID, but then I get to tell the holders of those IDs that I just chewed one of their two legitimate installs og their own cloudware on their home workstation/laptop environments...myself included.

So, if I read this correctly you are telling me to create seven fictitious Adobe IDs in your system and seven fictitious email acocunts to use as sign-ins, and use those seven non-persons to provision team to those seats and to tell three of us we are restricted to one install of our own software or we create fictitious IDs as well.

Are you serious? Whoever dreamed this one up never managed a multi-user/shared system environment in their lives...and apparently neither has anyone up the chain who approved this scheme.

[Steve_House]

First of all I should state I'm just a user and relatively new to CC, not an Adobe spokesperson, so take anything I say for what it's worth.  But as I understand it, creating Adobe IDs for the workstations separate from the individual users IDs would be a viable work-around.  Since an ID can be used for 2 installs, you wouldn`t need 7 but only 4, 2-2-2-1 with one extra install available in reserve.  I do software training and we do similar in the classroom - IDs for each workstation using generic names such as Student1, Student2, ...etc.  When someone is using one of the print/lab workstations or  an instructor is using their in-class instructor workstation they would use the generic logins, not their personal accounts.  As an instructor myself I try to never use any of my personal accounts in class anyway - last thing I want my students to see is my personal email mailbox for example .  Suggest instructors do not use Adobe Cloud storage for their files - seems to be having a lot of birthing pains anyway - but rather something like Dropbox if they really want to use the Cloud (my personal preference is for a portable USB drive - a terrabyte is no bigger than a deck of playing cards and it's more secure and faster than this Cloud nonsense).  That way if they're using Cloud based file storage it's tied to a personal ID rather than the Adobe software ID and independent of their personal Adobe ID. 

Your post does raise an interesting question in my mind though - can a user logged in on one Adobe ID access files stored in a Cloud account under a different Adobe ID if he knows the user name and password to that account?  If I want to have 4 computers logged in to CC at the same time it's my understanding I need 2 accounts/Adobe IDs.  Let's say one of the accounts is myname@myemail.com with password XXXX and the other is myalias@myemail.com with password YYYY.  Each ID has its two allowed installs active and logged in. Is there a way I can save a file to my Creative Cloud storage from a machine logged in under the "myname" account and access it later from a machine that's logged in under the "myalias" account without signing out of "myalias" and logging in as "myname" (and in the process deactivating the software on the two "myname" machines)?  In other words can multiple Adobe IDs share a single Cloud file storage repository?

[HBLansing]

Hi Steve,

I get what you are saying...and yes, I can manage it in pairs.  That still leaves me creating "bogus" people unless I can create multiple Adobe IDs under a single email address.  I'm not planning on going to a model where I have to manage a half-dozen email accounts to manage a half-dozen Adobe IDs to replace what I used to be able to do with a single CLP-purchased license key for multiple installs.  That's a ridiculous paradigm (The paradigm is ridiculous, not your very usable workaround, which I appreciate, so please don't take that the wrong way) and I still have a hard time believing that they can send someone to these forums to tell us that with a straight face.

I want to use one email address as a Master Account Email, a school-specific account, that can then manage multiple seats directly.  If that means I log in under that email to a dashboard where I can then handle multiple subordinate Adobe IDs and do provisioning from there then fine.  For example; I would log into an Adobe account under that address and see XX Ids (PrintPC1, InstructorPC3, etc) and be able, in my Team management console, to assign rights to seats by ID and not be forced to create multiple bogus email addresses.

I know that I am far from being the only person trying to get a handle on the new model of Adobe's who completely disapproves of the way they have decided our headaches and administrative burdens are meaningless.  "Yes, you should reasonably be expected to create non-persons and manage your systems at the individual (or pair) level so that we can profit from our new business model with the least effort on our part" coming from Adobe does nothing more than make me wish GIMP had a much wider adoption and a cleaner UI...or that Corel would leap back into the game in a big way.

This is great software, I'm not just the guy handling technology for this school...I'm a shooter as well and I use PS/Lightroom constantly.  But in my role at the school all this does is make me frustrated with the arrogance displayed by yet another software house.

[HBLansing]

Soooo, nothing?

[Chris ILines]

I know, bizarre huh?

So here's what I get from the whole thing

Each ID can only have one seat.

Additional seats need a fake ID and email to run

Each seat can have two installations- same as in the past

Both installations can running at the same time-unlike the past- benefit of membership.

Which means you only needs half as many seats as you have workstations. The details and locations in the EULA are noted above.

So at some point they will figure this out, and you will have to go back to a seat per workstation that is running. I'm sure that will be after the price goes back up.

Good luck

[HBLansing]

I passed bizarre lying in a ditch a few miles back, Chris.  I know I'm going to just have to create fake people to make this work, but I'm never going to think it's a good idea, or that's it's not a completely needless complication to the lives of people responsible for a lot of Adbobe's money.  Why there were no good tools for managing this before Adobe ever crossed the Rubicon to the Cloud is beyond me.  Were no people in the organization who have to manage groups of users and their application environments ever talked to about this mess?

There is no context in which this is even remotely close to best practice for managing applications in a workplace.  None.  Worst practice?  It's on that list for sure.

A response from Adobe would be welcome, by the way.

[Herbert2001]

HBLansing wrote:

There is no context in which this is even remotely close to best practice for managing applications in a workplace.  None.  Worst practice?  It's on that list for sure.

A response from Adobe would be welcome, by the way.

There is no real practical solution, so how would Adobe respond?

Give it a couple of years, and perhaps Adobe will fix it.

[HBLansing]

Well Herbert, I would like to hear that from Adobe.  I'm their customer, not yours.  No offense, but really...I'm not sure they need you standing in front of them on this one.

[Chris ILines]

Hey Herbert2001

There was a solution already in place for this situation. It was the volume licensing program. All the seats shared 1 serial number and 1 ID.

It was clean, easy and neat.

Any system that requires something like fake emails and ID's to run is an obvious problem. And the moderators on this forum, and the EULA saying you can run two machines at the same time on the same license is a red flag for the future. I find it hard to believe Adobe with leave a 2 for 1 pricing structure in place.

[Steve_House]

If Microsoft's licensing for Office 2013 is any indication, the (generally industry standard) two permitted installs per license) may well be on the way out. MS offers O2013 in two versions, the subscription O365 which allows activation on 5 devices and the conventional perpetual license version.  BUT, where Office up through 2010 allowed for 2 installs per license, now it only allows one!  Plus, when it was originally released, once it had been installed and activated on a particular machine it was forever locked to that one physical box.  No deactivate and uninstall to move to another machine was allowed.  If that hardware failed and had to be replaced, you had to buy all new software! After a huge customer outcry over THAT they relented and now allow an activation transfer to a new box once every 90 days.  But still, only one machine per license.  Want the non-subscription version of Office on both your home desktop and a laptop for travel?  Gotta buy 2 separate full-price retail licenses!

[Herbert2001]

HBLansing wrote:

Well Herbert, I would like to hear that from Adobe.  I'm their customer, not yours.  No offense, but really...I'm not sure they need you standing in front of them on this one.

Sorry for the misunderstanding - I wasn't defending them (at all), just being highly ironic.

[HBLansing]

Herbert2001 wrote:

HBLansing wrote:

Well Herbert, I would like to hear that from Adobe.  I'm their customer, not yours.  No offense, but really...I'm not sure they need you standing in front of them on this one.

Sorry for the misunderstanding - I wasn't defending them (at all), just being highly ironic.

Ah, it was indeed a misunderstanding then.  It's hard to "get" sarcasm in forums sometimes.  Cheers.

[David__B]

Hi HBLansing,

I read through this thread and would say your understanding is correct. In order to use the 10 different seats with a team membership and be in compliance with the license agreement, you would need to have 10 dedicated Adobe ID's/email addresses  specifically for this purpose and it would require creating additional email addresses to be used interchangably by staff.

-Dave