Hi Ken,

I think I know what you are saying, but since my licenses do not work like yours, I'm not 100% sure.  However, I will forward this to someone....

To add to this, the codes to do this manually aren't even available beforehand.  They are supposed to become available at the switch over at an unspecified time?  is it midnight in my timezone or other?

And I can't even do an authorize or authorize request beforehand.  So it is stuck with just the person directly sold too, that is not necessarily the person supporting the software.  This applies to even regular codes, not just the subscriptions.  At least GroupWise isn't complaining about an expiry. 

So many things have to work just right, or things fall down badly. I can see the lawsuit possibilities and terrible publicity for OT if fails line up just right.
Thinking for ZPM, a fail of the subscription update prevents the patching of a new CVE that is then used to compromise an organization. The cyber insurance provider would certainly go after OT for that. 

If an OT service, not getting its subscription updated might cause your organization any damage, then the person is automatically granted the authorization for new licenses really needs to be on-call during this switch overs. An open ticket at that point on this issue for that product might also be useful to prove your own due diligence before the fact.

I've forwarded this thread to the ZENworks Project Manager.  One restriction he has in ZPM code is he has no control over the SLD Licensing Website.  He is aware of the concerns but is limited on what he can do unilaterally, since much depends on the licensing website which is beyond his control.  That being said, they are looking at what can be done without any specific promises.

Thanks Craig!  The current situation leaves no margin for error.  The old system insured that licenses were functioning properly before the cut-off date - a much more sensible solution.

One thing to note:  The actual key that you enter into the ZCC Patch License should not change, unless you renew after the old one expires.  

And this morning we have a subscription fail.

Working with support now.  So hopefully we will have this fixed soon.

And hopefully this can be used as an example of how this new process is a design failure / downgrade, so that we can push in the right quarters to get it fixed to actually work all the time by that renewal showing once it is renewed, not just on activation date.

so if Ken's (or others) hasn't expired yet, selecting it and clicking verify ahead of time might fix things?    I just did that verify on this client's and now it shows as expiring next year like it should, and patches are caching.  Just missed the updates from last night.

I believe that whether manually verifying or allowing the auto verification via the patch maintenance process, you won't see new expire date ahead of time.  it will get the currently active license period up until that changes to the new one on the backend.

Correct.  That is the problem.  In the past, we could verify and the expiration would change to the new date.  Now I have to wait until it expires and if the expiration does not change automatically, I need to manually update it.  Someone made a very stupid decision when they changed how this process works!  I have no idea whether the expiration date will refresh automatically or not.  If it does, great!  If it does not, I have to hope no one screwed anything up on the back end and that my manual verify will complete correctly.  Either way, this does not take into account the following issues:

1. If something on the OpenText backend is screwed up or offline, patch mgmt is affected.

2. If no one is available to manually verify the license on the exact day and time when the license expires, patch mgmt is affected.

This is just a horrible design decision.  I am really getting tired of software companies that do not think through processes.  Dealing with this with another software company right now also. So the issue at hand is that I always make sure I renew my subscriptions ahead of time and then I renew my license prior to expiration.  This gives me a grace period in case anything about the renewal process or license verification fails.  I can resolve it before it affects production.  Now there is no grace period.  Just hoping that everything works correctly and the expiration magically rolls over to the new date.