How does the Hipchat Data Center license work?

Hipchat Data Center uses a subscription license, which means that the license expires periodically and needs to be renewed. The actual license file is issued by Atlassian, and can be downloaded through the my.atlassian.com portal. The licenses also allow for specific numbers of users or "seats", with one seat representing one licensed user. Licenses can be purchased in "tiers" or blocks of a certain number of users. As your organization grows and more people start using Hipchat, you might need to upgrade to a higher license tier, which would require you to update the license stored on your Hipchat instance.

In version 3.1.4 and later, a user only consumes a seat on the license when they log in to Hipchat. This also means that users who are synchronized from an external directory (such as SAML or LDAP) don't count towards your license until they log in. Disabled or deleted accounts aren't counted as active and don't consume license seats, so you can also disable users who leave your organization if needed. Guest accounts also don't consume a license seat.

What about bots?

Most Hipchat services (add-ons, integrations, plugins, or apps) use an API token to connect to your Hipchat instance and listen for events, and do not use a licensed seat. However, some bots (for example Hubot) do log in as a user, and are counted towards your license count.

What happens when my license expires?

We outline which feature set is disabled at Functionality lost as Hipchat Server/Data Center license expires.

What's in my license?

A valid production license includes information about your organization and environment (which might be useful when talking to Atlassian Support).
The following information is included:

• Organization: the name of your organization.
• Contact Name and Contact Email: the person from your organization who requested, purchased, or manages the license  
• License Creation Date and License Expiration Date
• Server ID: An ID number randomly generated by the server at deployment time.
• License Type: Either Production, or Demonstration
• Number of Users
• SEN: Your Service Enablement Number. This number entitles you to Atlassian Support.

View your Hipchat license

In Hipchat Data Center version 3.1.2 and later, you can view your license information from the administrator web UI.

To view your license information:

1. Log in to the Hipchat web UI as an administrator.
   (The web UI is located at your Hipchat instance's Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), for example hipchat.example.com.)
2. Click System.
3. Locate the License tab.

You can also run the CLI command, hipchat license -w  to see the license you have installed and its status.

Update your Hipchat license

If you're using an evaluation license and want to switch to your paid license, or if you've upgraded your license type or tier, you'll need to update the license stored on your Hipchat deployment.

Before you begin:

• Make sure you have a valid license file by going to https://my.atlassian.com. You may need to log in to see your license. 

• Download the license file, or have it ready to copy to your clipboard.

Update your Hipchat license from the web UI

Hipchat Data Center version 3.1.3 allows administrators to update the license from the web admin UI.

To update the license:

1. Log in to the admin UI using an administrator account, or the owner account.
2. In the left-navigation, click System, then select the License tab. 
3. Scroll down to the License Key field.
4. Copy your license key, and then paste it into the field.
5. Click Update.

Update your Hipchat license using the CLI tool

If you are upgrading from Hipchat Data Center 3.0.1 or earlier, you will have to reapply the license file to each of the Hipchat nodes.

• Make sure you know the IPs of at least one Hipchat host in your cluster, and can connect to it. 
  (You may need to connect to the host through your cluster's jumpbox, bastion host, or other management portal server. Learn more about connecting to AWS nodes using credential forwarding here.)

To update your license: 

1. Connect to a Hipchat host as an administrator using your terminal program. 
2. Copy the license file to the host. Depending on how you're running your cluster, you've got two options:
   1. Copy the license file to the hosts using scp or a similar terminal command. 
   2. You can also save the file locally, and then copy and paste the license file contents into a text editor such as vim on the remote host. 

3. Run the hipchat license command, using the path to the license file instead of the placeholder text in the following example command:

   hipchat license -i /path/to/license_file

4. To confirm that the license was updated, run the following command and check the output for the license type and number of users.

   hipchat license -w

5. For security purposes, delete the license file once you've updated the server successfully.