Producers and Product Lines

When an end user is entitled to downloads from more than one producer, the End-User Portal groups download packages by producer and then product line. For this reason, both Producer and Product Line are required attributes for download packages. Each download package can have only one producer and only one product line.

Producers

Although FlexNet Operations documentation frequently refers to Producer Portal users—typically software publishers or intelligent device manufacturers—as “producers,” this term also refers to the logical entities that Producer Portal users must define as part of their electronic software delivery setup.

Many software publishers and intelligent device manufacturers only use a single producer. In this case, the Producer attribute typically reflects the name of the user’s account. Others define multiple producers and use the Producer attribute to distinguish between different product groups or families or simply as an additional layer of navigation before end users choose a product line. When you click List Producers in the Products menu, the Producer Portal displays a list of all the producers your account has created.

Product Lines

Product lines allow you to group, classify, and describe products and to control how download packages are presented in the End-User Portal. Product lines can also be used to define end-user access rights to product information. In the End-User Portal, users can only see the product lines to which their user accounts are linked.

Display of Downloads in the End-User Portal

In the End-User Portal, the producer is the highest level of grouping for products lines, download packages, and files. Users who are entitled to products of more than one producer see a list of producers when they look for downloads. For example, users who click List Downloads from the Downloads menu in the End-User Portal must first choose from a list of producers and then from a list of product lines to show a list of download packages for that product line. If an end user is entitled to downloads from only one producer, the End-User Portal skips the producer list and shows product lines directly.

Tip:For more information about other tasks and topics related to the Electronic Software Delivery module, see Electronic Software Delivery: Advanced Topics at the end of this document.