Full and Retrieval Connections

A license that allows you to connect to Laserfiche may be either full or retrieval. This is true of both Named User licenses (which are used by Laserfiche Avante and Rio) and concurrent licensed connections (which are used by Laserfiche Team and United).

Note: The types of licenses available may be limited depending on your Laserfiche Server edition. For example, Laserfiche Avante supports public retrieval access using Public Portal licenses with WebLink, but does not support retrieval named user licenses.

• A full license permits the user to perform any action in the repository that they have sufficient rights for. For example, assuming they have the rights to do so, a user with a full license could perform searches, open and view entries, view document metadata, print and export documents, scan and import documents, perform OCR, annotate pages, add tags or fields to documents, and so on. The license also allows them to perform administrative tasks, if they have sufficient permissions to do so, such as creating templates, managing users and groups, and configuring repository settings.
• A retrieval license only permits the user to view information in the repository, not to modify it. For example, assuming they have the rights to do so, a user with a retrieval license could perform searches, open and view entries, view document metadata, and print and export documents. They could not scan and import documents, perform OCR, annotate pages, or add tags or fields. They also could not perform administrative tasks.

Note: License types do not bypass security settings, and security settings do not bypass license types. For example, a user with a full license must also have the Import feature right to import documents; without the feature right, they cannot import regardless of their license type. Similarly, a user with a retrieval license who has been granted the Import feature right cannot import documents, because that ability is restricted by their license. To perform a specific task, the user must have both the appropriate license and the appropriate rights.

A user should be given a retrieval license only if that user should never be able to create or modify documents or repository settings. Users who will be modifying the repository in any way should be granted a full license even if some of their tasks are read-only.

When using Named User licensing with Laserfiche Rio, you can decide whether to allocate a Retrieval Named User license or a Full Named User license to a particular user. The named user license will be allocated from the appropriate license type. See Named Users and Devices for more information.

In addition, Public Portal licenses, which are used with both Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio in conjunction with WebLink, allow only retrieval connections.

Note: Laserfiche Avante also uses Named User licensing, but retrieval licenses are not supported with Laserfiche Avante.  All Laserfiche Avante named users are full named users.

When using concurrent licensing with Laserfiche Team or United, users are full users by default. To specify that a user should draw their license from the retrieval license pool, you should mark them as a read-only user. That user will then use a retrieval license when they log in. If all the concurrent licenses for a particular type are in use, the user will not be able to log in. (See Flexible Licensing under Server Settings for more information.)

Note: The Read-Only option is available for Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio, and will cause the user to have only read-only access to the repository. However, it does not affect the user's licensing status. With Laserfiche Rio and Laserfiche Avante, only specifying that a user should use a Retrieval Named User license will affect that user's licensing status.

For more information on a specific licensing topic, return to the licensing home page.