Last Chance to Trade-in to Named User: Everything you need to know

NOELLE RUIZ: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining the session. Today we will go over everything you need to know to transition to named user, including how to prepare, what to expect with onboarding, how to execute the transition, and how to begin using some of the new reporting capabilities available to you on named user. So let's jump in. Before we get started, this is our safe harbor statement. I will pause here for just a few moments. OK, let's move forward.

On the agenda today, we'll first go over what the multi-user trade-in is. And we'll cover some of the basics and some of the key important dates that we should make note of. We'll also cover the four steps that you can take to prepare, in the weeks, and even days, before you take the trade-in. We'll talk about the four steps that you'll need to take after you take the trade-in. So the process of actually transitioning your users to named user.

We'll discuss some of the new reporting capabilities you'll now have on standard as well as on premium, and then we'll cover some common questions we get asked from customers. And finally, to wrap things up, we'll talk about next steps. And I'll go ahead and share some resources that are helpful for you and that you can follow-up on at the end of the session.

I think it's always a great way to start a class with a goal in mind so that you understand what the goal of this class is and what we intend for you to walk away with. So with that, today's goal is that you leave this room feeling prepared and equipped to transition your users to named user. Now, let's get started.

As you all know, Autodesk is in the middle of a transition. A few years ago, we launched new plans that are based on people. And at the same time, we also begin to retire plans that are based on serial numbers. As of today, we've already retired maintenance plans, and we're coming up to the retirement of multi-user subscription.

In fact, February 7th, 2023, is the retirement date for multi-user subscription, which means after this day, you'll no longer be able to renew the subscription access type. For customers with multi-user subscription, we're providing a two-for-one trade-in offer, which will run until February 6th, 2024. This is the last day that you can trade-in and receive the two-for-one offer.

February 7th, 2024, is when the offer officially ends, and you can no longer trade-in. This is a full year after the retirement date, which allows customers, regardless of when their renewal is, an opportunity to trade-in. I mentioned, we'll get into the details on how to prepare in just a minute, but since we're talking about dates, it's also important to know that you need to be within your 90-day renewal window to trade-in. So noting these dates will be more crucial for those of you who have renewal windows that go past February 6th. You'll want to plan to renew at the beginning of your renewal window to not miss out on your offer.

So what is the trade-in offer exactly? The trade-in offer allows you to trade in one multi-user subscription for two named user subscriptions at a similar price to what you're paying today. Again, this offer can only be accepted during your renewal period, so be sure to take advantage of this offer at your next renewal, before February 7th, 2024.

Now, what does this look on a larger scale? Let's say you have 20 multi-user subscriptions today. If you trade-in at your next renewal, again, before February 7th, 2024. You will receive 40 named user subscriptions. So as you can see, it is a straight two-for-one offer regardless of how many multi-user subscriptions you own today and how many you plan on trading in.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that perhaps you may not need all 40 named user subscriptions. If that's the case, you can consider dropping some of your multi-user subscriptions at renewal. This will entirely depend on how many users you have sharing a single subscription today. OK, now that we've recapped what the trade in offer is and when to take advantage of it, let's talk about the things you can do to prepare in advance.

First you'll want to make sure that you're within your 90-day renewal window. As part of named user, your users will need to reconnect to the internet every 30 days after the initial sign in. This is something you'll need to make sure that they can do.

You should also check to make sure the products you own are eligible for trade-in. There are a handful of products that are not eligible, and you can find these products listed in the FAQ section of the transition to named user landing page on autodesk.com. If you have a product that is ineligible, you can continue to use that product, and you should trade in the other products that are eligible. Finally, you will want to make sure that you're willing to upgrade to the current version of your product or up to five versions back. All right, so when you do decide to take the trade-in offer, you'll get a receipt on the day you place your order. Once your new subscription starts, you'll receive this onboarding email, which lists the four steps you'll need to follow to complete the transition and help your users get started with their software.

And to clarify, you'll want to make sure to complete these steps within the first 30 days of when your old subscription ends. So for example, if your subscription expires on October 12th, October 13th is when the new subscription starts. And you'll have until November 13th to complete these steps.

When you first sign in to Autodesk account, after your new subscription starts, you'll see this reminder letting you know that your subscription is ready, and you can begin the four-step process to get your users up and running. You'll see the "days left" countdown at the top of the Home page reminding you how many days are left to complete the transition. And you can use the dropdown in this picture to reference the four steps, as well. Also under the notification bell, you can see which new products you now have from the trade-in. Here we can see that we now have two new AutoCAD seats from our AutoCAD multi-user subscription trade-in.

After the trade-in, is when your new subscription starts. And these are the four steps you'll need to complete after your trade-in. First, you'll need to add users. Next, you'll want to assign these users to their new subscriptions through Autodesk account. You'll want to switch your network license to named user. And there are two away to do this. Admins can either automate it across all user devices with the support tool we provide, or you can have your end users do it. And we'll get into both of these methods shortly.

And finally, you'll want to inform your users about the new sign in process. They will be prompted to sign in the next time they open up their software on any device they're working on. There is no need for them to enter a serial number or to reinstall. Great, so now let's jump into these four steps in more detail.

To add users to Autodesk account, you can use the by user view under User Management. From here, you select Invite users. There are a couple of options to choose from when adding users. You can either invite a user at a time, under the Invite Single tab. You can also invite several users at once, under the Invite Multiple tab. Or you can use the import selection and upload many users at once through a CSV file.

After you successfully complete this step, your users will receive this email notification prompting them to create their Autodesk account. If you have any users who already have an Autodesk account, they won't receive any emails until they're actually assigned to a product.

OK, step two, step two is assigning users to their new named user subscriptions. You can do this under the User Management tab under By Product view. You will want to click on a product. And you can either assign users by pasting their names and email addresses into the box, or again, you can import large lists of users to add and assign them to products in one step with the Import to Add and Assign feature.

On the premium plan, customers also have the ability to integrate with Active Directory, so you can sync Autodesk permissions with the rest of your user management in Active Directory. And after you complete the step, your users are assigned to their products. And they'll all receive an email like this letting them know that they now have access to the products that you've just given them access to.

OK and step three is switching the network license to a named user license. And as I mentioned before, there are two ways to do this. You can have users do it on their end, or you can choose to do it on behalf of your users. And let's go over both of these options starting with the option to have users do it on their end.

To do this, users first need to open up their product and select Manage License. And they'll want to click on Change License Type. From here, they'll select Single User, which will switch them from a named user license for all current versions of their product and up to five back. After the user completes this step, they'll be prompted to sign in next time they open their software.

And as part of named user, users will need to sign in and connect to the internet every 30 days. If a user is working offline for an extended period of time, they'll be notified 3 days before reaching their 30-day limit and are prompted to reconnect to the internet.

Another option is to change the license type on behalf of your users. If you decide to switch the license type for your users, you can use the automated tool available on Autodesk Knowledge Network. This can be found under the Update License tab within the Transition to Named User section. This page provides a step-by-step guide on how to run the tool for your specific system. And the tool can be executed manually on each computer or rolled out across devices.

And finally, the final step is to inform users about the new sign in process they can expect to see after they've transitioned to named user. So after transitioning, users will use their Autodesk ID and password to access their products. For added security, it is a good idea to encourage users to set up two-step verification, which is pictured here.

Now, for customers who are on the premium plan, they'll have the option to enable single-sign on. This is where users access their software by signing in with their company credentials. Once users sign in after the trade-in, you should decommission their license server to ensure that they're only accessing via their identity to stay compliant. After completing this step, congratulations, you have fully transitioned your users over to named user. And now you can begin to explore some of the benefits and features available to you on a named user plan. Now, let's get into some of that.

Whether you're on a standard or premium plan, you'll have access to the Summary and the By Product tab under Reporting. The Summary tab gives you an aggregate view of how many users are using which products over a specified period of time. You can also filter this information by team if you have multiple teams.

To get a better idea of usage by product, you can click on By Product tab to see how many users use each product over each given month. And you can even click into a product or collection to understand the frequency of use. And if you select an industry collection, you can click into a specific product to see the usage for that individual product within the collection.

By User reporting is another view that was previously only available to premium customers. We're happy to announce that, beginning this fall, this view will also be available to customers on the standard plan. The By User view is where you can see the products used by each user as well as their individual average frequency. But even more, you can click on a specific user and see exactly how many days they've used each specific product as well as their frequency of use for each product over time. And if your user is on a collection, you can even drill down to see the product-by-product usage.

OK, now that we've covered all of the things that you need to know to transition to named user, including the steps you can take in the days and weeks in advance, how to prepare, what the onboarding looks like, we're now going to get into some common questions that we get asked by customers.

OK, so starting with the first question. Can I switch license types without being in the office? Changing your license type is easy. And you have two methods to choose from. You can have your users update their license manually on their devices, or you can automate the update across all user devices with a support tool provided by Autodesk. And again, you can find this tool on the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

Just remember, for both options, users must be assigned to their products beforehand. Once the update is complete, users will need to restart their software and sign in, but they can continue using their products uninterrupted while the tool is running. Either option can be done remotely or in the office. And if you choose to automate the update, as long as your users can access the company network, there is no need for them to be on premise to complete the update. And also, reinstalling the product is not needed.

The next question is, will I lose my previous version rights? If you're on a supported version of your product, you'll not lose access to your previous versions. You can access the latest version of your product and up to five versions back automatically via AVA, which is Autodesk's Virtual Agent. Once a new version of your product is released, your previous version access will roll up to be the five back from the newest version.

And since Autodesk products may vary, and it may have different version release dates, the latest version may not always be the same from product to product. So for example, if AutoCAD releases its new version before Revit, you may have access to AutoCAD 2023 to 2018 while another user may have access to Revit 2022 to 2017, until the new version of Revit is released. If you're not currently on a supported version, you should either plan to upgrade or work with your Autodesk representative to request an exception if it's needed.

Question number three, do I need to add and assign all of my users manually? Adding and assigning users does not need to be a manual task. Bulk import and assign is available to admins and allows you to easily add up to 5,000 users at once by uploading a single CSV file containing each user's first name, last name, and email address. While the file is uploading, you can continue to work, and a notification will display when the import is complete.

After completing the step, users who don't already have an Autodesk account will receive an email notification prompting them to create one. Users who have existing Autodesk accounts, won't receive any email notifications until they're actually assigned to a product.

We also have groups. And groups further streamlines user management. This feature gives you the ability to organize users by similar rules, who need the same product assignments, such as architects or designers. So you can quickly assign the same products to many users at a time with this ability.

So for example, if you have users in your organization who only need 3D design products and others who only use AutoCAD LT, you can create a separate group for each. Now, you can quickly assign or unassign the right set of products to each group based on their roles. Likewise, if you work with external users who need access to a different set of products than internal users, you can also use this feature for that use case as well.

The premium plan offers administrative features that even further streamline and automate user management. For example, you can create users via single-sign on. Once single-sign on has been enabled for your domain, any user who authenticates on your domain without an existing Autodesk account, will automatically have an account created and will be added to your user list.

And when a user leaves your company, they're automatically deleted from your user list, and they lose access to their products. On the premium plan, you can also sync groups from your directory with Autodesk account, so you can assign groups of users to a default set of products based on their permissions in Directory Sync.

The next question is, will my users get Autodesk emails that will confuse them? Communications delivered to named users are driven with intent and purpose. Users will always be notified of important events, such as when a new account is created in their name, when there are new products assigned to them, but they also have the option to opt out of our educational emails from their profile. So these features give users a choice and allows them to easily customize their communication preferences.

The next question is, do my users need to sign in every day and stay online to use the software? This is another common misconception. Users are not required to sign in and use their products every day. Sign in details are cached for 15 days, making it easy for users to stay up and running without the hassle of having to sign in every time they use the product, but users can also choose to bypass having their sign in details cached by simply signing out of the product.

Even more, users with single-user subscription can work offline for up to 30 days at a time. This can be beneficial for users who work remotely with limited internet access. Users working offline, will be notified 3 days before reaching their 30-day limit, and after they reconnect to the internet, they can resume working offline for another 30 days, and so on.

However, it is important to know that usage data is not recorded while users are working offline. Also, the maximum time a user on Flex can work offline, is for 24 hours. So it's best for users who need this benefit to be on single-user subscription. If you have users who need to work offline for more than 30 days at a time, we recommend that you talk to your Autodesk representative or your partner about alternatives.

OK let's go to the next question here. How can I use the usage reporting to better my business? So while network license reporting tools can provide some high-level information. There are unique types of data that can only be provided in a named user environment. And I will go ahead and walk you through some of these use cases.

First, with named user reporting, you can look at which product versions your users are using. For example, if you see a user on a 2017 version of a product, you can have a conversation with them about upgrading. There are many benefits to upgrading to newer versions, like having access to the latest features, staying current, and reducing the risk of downtime if a version reaches end of support. By doing this, you also avoid version conflict that can occur when teams are collaborating with different versions of a product.

For the second scenario, you'll want to see how many days, on average, users are using their products. If there is low to no usage with a product, that's a good sign to check with your users to understand why. It may be that they need more training, or they need more support.

Similarly, you'll want to see if the user is using all the products in a collection. We commonly see that users with industry collections are only using one product in that collection. If they're underutilizing their collection, it's a great opportunity to understand why and how you can support them.

Admins can also see which individual products are under-assigned. This is an insight available to all admins and can help ensure that you maximize your investment by making sure no product goes underassigned or unassigned to a user. Even more, admins on the premium plan, will see inactive user insights that summarize the number of inactive users in a team in the last three months. This insight nudges the admin to check the user's usage details and by user reporting, where they can also see a report of inactive users in a given time period.

We're also offering personalized insights to individual users called, My Insights. This gives you recommendations based on your usage of an Autodesk product. My Insights is currently only available for AutoCAD and offers suggestions, such as command or feature recommendations. This visual is a sample of my insights for AutoCAD that you might see in Account.

One thing to note, is that every user will see different product insights based on how they use AutoCAD, and you may not see any of your My Insights if you haven't been using the product enough. We're working to bring even more insights to both admins and users.

This now brings us to the end of our session. We've covered a lot today. And before you go, I did want to share some helpful resources that are available to you after you leave the session today. So please make note of some of these next steps before you leave.

We do have a transition to named user website available on dotcom, this will give you all of the insight on the trade-in offer, as well as some of the things we covered today like benefits of transitioning to named user, what you can expect, and what the four steps are to transition.

In more detail, if you need more insights into those four steps, you can also find them on the Autodesk Knowledge Network. So that is available in the screenshot, you can see here. And finally, if you have any additional questions, we encourage you to visit our customer forum, so one of our community managers can get back to you.

And with that, we thank you so much for joining the session today. We hope that you walked away with more insight and direction on how to transition your users over to named user and definitely encourage you to check out some of those resources. Enjoy the rest of AU, and we will see you next year.