Licensing

Umbraco Workflow is a licensed product that does not require a purchase. New installations default to a trial license while the paid license is available for purchase.

Purchasing an Umbraco Workflow License

If you want to buy an Umbraco Workflow license, use the contact form to get in touch.

Free vs licensed versions

Umbraco Workflow is available in free and licensed versions. While the licensed version includes all features and no restrictions, the free version has some limitations.

In the free version, the following features are disabled:

• Document Type workflow configuration

• Document Type content review configuration

• History cleanup and related configuration

• Approval thresholds and related configuration

• Content comparison

• Exclude nodes

• Offline workflow approvals

In the free version, a maximum of five approval groups can be created.

Installing your license

Once you have received your license code it needs to be installed on your site.

1. Open the root directory for your project files.

2. Locate and open the appSettings.json file.

3. Add your Umbraco Workflow license key to Umbraco:Licenses:Umbraco.Workflow:

"Umbraco": {
  "Licenses": {
    "Umbraco.Workflow": "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY"
  }
}

Verify the license installation

You can verify that your license is successfully installed by logging into your project's backoffice and navigating to the settings section. Here you will see a licenses dashboard which should display the status of your license.

When and how to configure an UmbracoApplicationUrl

The website domain used for validating the license is determined from your Umbraco instance. To ensure the correct one is used, you can configure the UmbracoApplicationUrl.

If you are running on a single domain for both your frontend and backend environments, it's not necessary to configure a UmbracoApplicationUrl.

If you have different domains for your frontend and backend, then it's advised that you configure an UmbracoApplicationUrl set to your backoffice URL. This helps the licensing engine know which URL should be used for validation checks. Without this configuration setting, the licensing engine will try and work out the domain to validate from the HTTP request object. This can lead to errors when switching between domains.

An UmbracoApplicationUrl can be configured in your appSettings.json file like so:

{
    "Umbraco": {
        "CMS": {
            "WebRouting": {
                "UmbracoApplicationUrl": "https://admin.my-custom-domain.com/"
            }
        }
    }
}

See the Fixed Application URL documentation for more details about this setting.

Configuring UmbracoApplicationUrl on Umbraco Cloud

If you are hosting on Umbraco Cloud you will find the configuration described above won't be reflected in your environment. The reason for this is that Umbraco Cloud sets this value as an environment variable set to the Cloud project domain (<your project>.umbraco.io). This overrides what is set via the appSettings.json file.

There are two options in this case:

• Either the domains for each of your Cloud environments can be added to your license.

• Or, for more control and to ensure this value is set correctly for other reasons, you can apply the configuration via code.

For example, in your Program.cs file:

builder.Services.Configure<WebRoutingSettings>(o => o.UmbracoApplicationUrl = "<your application URL>");

In practice, you will probably want to make this a bit more sophisticated. You can read the value from another configuration key, removing the need to hard-code it and have it set as appropriate in different environments. You can also move this code into a composer or an extension method if you prefer not to clutter up the Program.cs file.

Using a Trial License

The trial license introduces some restrictions around advanced features but is otherwise a full-featured workflow platform. The paid license is valid for one top-level domain and all its subdomains.

To impersonate the full license on a local site, set EnableTestLicense to true in the appSettings.json file:

{
 “Umbraco”: {
   “Workflow”: {
     “EnableTestLicense”: true
   }
  }
}

The test license is restricted to sites running in a development environment with a debugger attached. Hit F5 in Visual Studio, in Debug mode to enable the test license.

Validating a license without an outgoing Internet connection

Some Umbraco installations will have a highly locked down production environment, with firewall rules that prevent outgoing HTTP requests. This will interfere with the normal process of license validation.

On start-up, and periodically whilst Umbraco is running, the license component used by Umbraco Workflow will make an HTTP POST request to https://license-validation.umbraco.com/api/ValidateLicense.

If it's possible to do so, the firewall rules should be adjusted to allow this request.

If such a change is not feasible, there is another approach you can use.

You will need to have a server, or serverless function, that is running and can make a request to the online license validation service. That needs to run on a daily schedule, making a request and relaying it onto the restricted Umbraco environment.

To set this up, firstly ensure you have a reference to Umbraco.Licenses version 13.1 or higher. If the version of Workflow you are using depends on an earlier version, you can add a direct package reference for Umbraco.Licenses.

Then configure a random string as an authorization key in configuration. This is used as protection to ensure only valid requests are handled. You can also disable the normal regular license checks - as there is no point in these running if they will be blocked:

  "Umbraco": {
    "Licenses": {
      "Umbraco.Workflow": "<your license key>"
    },
    "LicensesOptions": {
      "EnableScheduledValidation": false,
      "ValidatedLicenseRelayAuthKey": "<your authorization key>"
    }

Your Internet enabled server should make a request of the following form to the online license validation service:

POST https://license-validation.umbraco.com/api/ValidateLicense
{
    "ProductId": "Umbraco.Workflow",
    "LicenseKey": "<your license key>",
    "Domain": "<your licensed domain>"
}

The response should be relayed exactly via an HTTP request to your restricted Umbraco environment:

POST http://<your umbraco environment>/umbraco/licenses/validatedLicense/relay?productId=<product id>&licenseKey=<license key>

A header with a key of X-AUTH-KEY and value of the authorization key you have configured should be provided.

This will trigger the same processes that occur when the normal scheduled validation completes ensuring your product is considered licensed.