Lawo Flex - FAQs

A Lawo Flex account is created when the first subscription order from a customer is processed. Once a new account is created, an email is sent to the customer (with a link to sign in to the account). 

You find the Lawo Flex portal at https://my.lawo.com/

Yes.

If a customer has an existing system that uses perpetual licenses, then Lawo Flex subscriptions can be added later (to unlock new features or top-up resources).

One of the advantages of Lawo Flex is that any new features can be deployed immediately following a software upgrade. Credits are independent of the functions they unlock, and so can be utilized as required.

Yes.

Each Lawo Flex account can be managed by several users. This is handled by the customer from the Users page in the licensing portal.

You may wish to have more than one Lawo Flex account to separate the account management within a large organization. For example, to handle different business centres independently.

Please bear in mind that a HOME system can only be assigned to one account, and that you cannot transfer credits or subscriptions between accounts. This means that, if you want to use credits across multiple systems, then they must be assigned to the same Lawo Flex account.

Yes.

The same person can be added as either an admin or operator to multiple Lawo Flex accounts. In this instance, you can switch between the accounts from the Account menu in the licensing portal.

A Credit is a general-purpose license used to unlock licensed features within the Lawo Ecosystem. Credits are functionally agnostic, meaning they can enable any feature that is designed to operate with credits. This applies to nearly all functionality within HOME, all HOME apps, and certain features of hardware devices. To activate a feature, credits are typically applied in groups. The number of credits required depends on the value of the feature — some require more, others fewer.

Credits can be purchased through subscriptions, each of which provides a specific number of credits for a defined period of time. Offered subscription periods range from single months to multiple years, while the amount of contained credits per subscription is usually identified individually for a project.

The number of credits required per subscription depends on project-specific parameters and will be determined in collaboration with Lawo. A single system requires between 100 and several thousand credits, depending on its size and application.

The most suitable subscription period depends on your intended usage. Short-term subscriptions are ideal for covering peak demand, while long-term subscriptions are better suited for maintaining ongoing functional flexibility within a facility.

The process is easy. You order a subscription which suits your requirements. The ordered subscription will be made available to your account in the Lawo portal (my.lawo.com). Should you not have an account by the time of your order, a new account will be created and you'll receive an invitation email. 

To find your new subscription, log into your Lawo Portal account. In a next step, you need to activate the new subscription, which makes the contained credits accessible. You can link one or more HOME systems to your Portal account. Each HOME system within an account can be assigned with a individual amount of credits, originating from one or more subscriptions managed within the same account.  

A subscription can expire, but it must be actively canceled before. Managing cancellations is the responsibility of the subscription owner, and the process is performed through the portal. Subscriptions without cancelation will not expire.

Once a subscription is canceled, it cannot be reactivated and will expire on the specified date. Any unassigned credits from the canceled subscription will be removed from the credit pool once the expiry date is reached.

Credits from a canceled subscription that are already allocated to a specific functionality (for example, a running HOME App) will remain assigned to that active functionality. The HOME UI will display a warning indicating that certain credits are invalid.

While the active functionality will continue to operate during a grace period, stopping the functionality via HOME will immediately remove the associated credits from the pool.

No.

There are three possible licensing options: permanent availability (using perpetual licenses); full flexibility (using Lawo Flex subscriptions); and a hybrid approach that uses perpetual licenses (for baseline functionality) + Lawo Flex subscriptions (for peak demand top-ups). 

By default, all new subscriptions arrive at the portal account in an inactive state. This allows the customer to manually activate the subscription and, hence, choose the start date for the billing period. After a grace period of 3 weeks, any inactive subscriptions are auto-activated (by the portal).

Some HOME installations—for example, in OB systems—use credits only temporarily before being disconnected and relocated. If you do not actively reclaim credits from a system before it becomes inaccessible, those credits will remain allocated to that system and cannot be reused elsewhere.

To prevent credits from becoming inaccessibly assigned, you can define a “revoke date” for each credit assignment. This specifies a date on which allocated credits will be automatically returned, even if the consuming system is offline.

Alternatively, credits are also automatically returned once they reach the end of their lifetime. 

Each credit has a 30-day validity period, a "lifetime", starting from the begin date of its originating subscription.

After 30 days, the validity of a credit has to be renewed. If it is not renewed, the credit is reclaimed from the consuming system and auto-returned to the portal.

As long as the originating subscription is active and valid, the validity of a credit can be renewed. For example, a 6 month subscription allow the contained credits to be renewed 5 times. Systems connected online to the portal renew the validity of credits automatically and in the background. Disconnected (air-gapped) systems require the user to actively renew credits every month to avoid that credits are returned to the portal.

Yes, that's possible. You can hold multiple subscriptions with different durations under the same account and use the credits from these subscriptions to unlock functionality. Since the subscription with the shortest runtime determines when the first credits become invalid, it is recommended to use credits with sufficient validity to cover the entire duration of a specific production.