Setting Up ESD for a Product Option
Electronic Software Delivery (ESD) is a distribution system that will help your customers download your software after they have purchased or been issued a license. Access to the download can be limited by the Status and Download Until date of the License ID, and the customer can access their downloads by logging into the Customer License Portal.
If you have configured your product to automatically start as a free trial without requiring activation, then you can choose to host the trial download on your own website or distribute it through some other means. If the trial version can be activated into a full version, then all the customer will need is their purchased License ID and Password to activate into the full version. If, however, the full retail version of your product is a different build/download than your trial version, or if your customer purchases your software without first downloading the trial version, you can provide a customer with prompt access to download the software through SOLO Server's ESD.
SOLO Server offers Authors two options for download link destinations:
- SOLO Server Hosted Download, where you can upload a retail version of your product to our server and provide your customer with access to the download through the Customer License Portal.
- Externally Hosted Download, where you specify within SOLO Server a URL containing the external location of the retail download of your software.
Each of these options is discussed in greater detail below.
SOLO Server Hosted Download
Using this option, you can upload the full retail version of your software to a private and thoroughly secure folder structure within SOLO Server. This will ensure that subsequent downloads of your product will only be available to those customers who have purchased an authorized License ID. All download requests associated with a given License ID are recorded in the Download Log tab at the bottom of the License Details page in SOLO Server. Alternatively, a report of all ESD downloads for a specified date range and (optionally) specified software products can be generated.
Be aware that there is a series of strictly enforced guidelines which must be followed by SOLO Server Authors when choosing to use this option. Refer to Managing Files for complete details, including upload instructions and important information regarding file size limits.
Once the file is uploaded, configure the following fields when adding a Product Option:
- File to D/L
- Set to the location of the file in the ESD Files folder, such as: \filename.ext or \dir1\dir2\filename.ext
- D/L Page
- Leave blank.
- Days to D/L
- Set to the number of days that the customer is permitted to download the software. When a License ID for this Product Option is generated, the Days To D/L field will be added to the Entered Date and stored in the Download Until field of the License ID record.
- Reset Expiration at Activation
- Optionally enable this field if you want the Download Until date of the License ID to be reset/recalculated to the first activation date plus the Days To D/L field.
Externally Hosted Download
If your installer is too large to host through SOLO Server, it is possible to host the download for your software on your brochure Web site, FTP site, or other download service, and tell SOLO Server the location of the file.
When adding a Product Option:
- Order Confirm HTML
- Could be set to an example like this:
- HTML
- <a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/downloads/yourfile.exe">Download your software now.</a>
- File to D/L
- Leave blank.
- D/L Page
- Set to: http://www.yourdomain.com/downloads/yourfile.exe
- Days to D/L
- Set to the number of days that the customer is permitted to download the software. When a License ID for this Product Option is generated, the Days To D/L field will be added to the Entered Date and stored in the Download Until field of the License ID record. For an externally hosted download, SOLO Server won't restrict access to the file if the customer already has the link.