Public Portal Licenses
Note: It is possible to use WebLink to access a Laserfiche Server that does not have an associated Public Portal license. In that case, only users with a named user license will be able to sign in. Their access will be read-only regardless of whether they connect with a full or retrieval named user license.
Public Portal licenses are linked to a particular Laserfiche Server, and allow connections to the Laserfiche Server installed on that machine. These connections are retrieval-only, meaning they can be used to view documents but not edit them. Public Portal licenses may only be used with WebLink; they are not available for other applications.
Important: Although the web client is also a Laserfiche web product, it is designed for full repository access, and so does not use Public Portal licenses. Users signing in to your repository through the web client should use Named User licenses.
There are two general types of Public Portal licenses: Public Portal licenses that allow limited numbers of connections, and unlimited Public Portal licenses. With Unlimited Public Portal licenses, your Public Portal licenses must match or exceed the Server computer in number of processors. Limited Public Portal licenses do not have this requirement, but only allow for a certain number of concurrently connected users; additional users cannot sign in once the maximum number of connections is in use.
Example: You might want to allow an unlimited number of anonymous public users to connect via WebLink to your Laserfiche Server. If your Laserfiche Server is on a dual-processor computer, you will need an unlimited Public Portal licenses for a dual-processor computer. A single-processor unlimited Public Portal license will not work. To determine how many processors are currently on your Laserfiche Server computer, see Knowledge Base article 1012643.
Example: You might want to allow up to 25 users to connect via WebLink to your Laserfiche Server. In this case, you can use a limited Public Portal license. The number of processors on your Laserfiche Server is irrelevant. However, once 25 users are signed in at the same time, no other anonymous public users will be able to sign in until someone signs out. If this causes problems, you will need to upgrade to a higher-capacity Public Portal license.
If you are using Laserfiche Rio, your Public Portal licenses must be allocated per Laserfiche Server in Laserfiche Directory Server. If you are using Laserfiche Avante, your Public Portal licenses will already be associated with your Laserfiche Server.
Once your Laserfiche Server has been allocated the appropriate Public Portal license, users will be able to use it to connect to the repository via WebLink. Any user (whether a Laserfiche user, a Windows user, or an LDAP user) who has been marked as a Read-Only user in the Administration Console will automatically use the Public Portal license. (Note that the Manage Trustees privilege overrides Read-Only status.) If the public portal user is an Active Directory user, they do not need to be individually added to Laserfiche Directory Server. Ensure that they are members of a Active Directory group and that the group has appropriate rights to the repository. If Laserfiche Directory Server is also performing authentication for WebLink, ensure that WebLink is configured for single sign-on. This allows Public Portal users with no license to be authenticated by Laserfiche Directory Server without explicitly adding them to the Directory Server user listing, and WebLink will allow access based on group membership and public portal license availability.
Public portal users do not need a named user license, but if a user has been allocated a Named User license, the Laserfiche Server will attempt to connect them using the Public Portal license first. However, if the Public Portal license is a limited license and all connections are in use, the Laserfiche Server will then connect them using their allocated Named User license.
If a user accessing WebLink has not been marked as Read-Only in the Administration Console, they will not be able to connect using the Public Portal license. If the user has a Named User license, that license will be used when signing in to WebLink. If the user does not have a Named User license, they will not be able to sign in.
For more information on a specific licensing topic, return to the licensing home page.