Why MicroStation Kicks Out Some Users and Never Others

Two of your people get thrown out of MicroStation several times a week. Everyone else never sees it, on the same network, the same project, and the same software. That points at the install, not the internet.

What that offline message actually means

It happens in the middle of a QC review. MicroStation puts up a message about offline mode, and the user is locked out. The person at the next desk has been in the same file all morning with no trouble. Same office, same network, same project, same software.

That last part is the clue. If the network were the problem, it would hit everybody.

Here is the short version. MicroStation is not complaining about your internet. It is complaining about its license. Newer Bentley products check in with Bentley over the internet to confirm you are allowed to run them. There is an administrator setting that decides whether the software may run at all when it cannot reach Bentley. If offline use is turned off for your firm, the user must be online and signed in or the product will not run. If offline use is allowed, the user gets a seven day grace period and then gets locked out anyway. (Bentley Entitlement Management, Bentley Offline Usage)

It hits some users and never others because that state is saved per machine, per Windows profile, and per Bentley sign in. Two people at the same firm can be in very different shape.

One note before the steps. The exact wording of these messages changes between versions, and your screenshot may not match word for word. What does not change is the machinery underneath, which is what the rest of this covers.

MicroStation is not complaining about your internet. It is complaining about its license.

First, check which MicroStation you are running

Do this before anything else, because it splits the whole article in two.

Bentley runs two different licensing systems. Most CONNECT Edition versions use the Subscription Entitlement Service, where you sign in with your Bentley account. Older versions use SELECTserver, which uses activation keys instead. Bentley says these settings “only apply to applications that use Subscription Entitlement Service and are not applicable to applications that are used with SELECTserver activation keys.” (Bentley Entitlement Management)

This matters more in civil than anywhere else. DOT work can keep firms on older versions for years. So one office may run V8i on SELECTserver right next to newer software on the account based system.

If your team is on V8i with activation keys, stop here. None of the steps below apply to you. Your fix lives in the License Management Tool and your SELECTserver, not in the CONNECTION Client. To check which one your firm is running, look in the system tray for a small Bentley program asking you to sign in with an email address. If it is there, you are on the newer system and the rest of this is for you.

How the newer licensing actually works

Bentley moved away from product keys. Now your Bentley account decides what you can open. Bentley calls this the Subscription Entitlement Service.

The piece doing the work is the CONNECTION Client. That is the small Bentley program in your system tray, down by the clock. You sign in to it once with your Bentley email. After that it runs in the background. It keeps your security token current (a token is a temporary pass that proves you are signed in). (Bentley)

Once you have signed in on a machine and your entitlements have loaded, that machine remembers the answer. If you later cannot sign in, the machine falls back on the last answer it got. You then have a seven day grace period before you have to sign back in or the application stops working. (Bentley Offline Usage)

That is the part people tend to know. The next part is easy to miss.

The setting that is easy to miss

Your administrator can turn offline use off entirely.

It sits in the Entitlement Management service inside CONNECT Center, under each application in your portfolio. Bentley describes it this way: “you can decide if offline usage is enabled. If set to ON, the user must be online and signed in to the application in order to be able to use it. If this is set to OFF, users will be able to continue to use the product in the event that they have no network connection.” (Bentley Entitlement Management)

Read that twice, because Bentley’s own naming is backwards from what you would expect. There is a per application switch that decides whether MicroStation may run without reaching Bentley. If it is set the strict way, there is no grace period at all. The moment the machine cannot check in, the user is kicked out.

That switch is set per application. So MicroStation can be strict while everything else on the same machine is relaxed. That alone can explain a lockout that gets blamed on the WiFi.

Six reasons it hits one person and not another

• That offline setting, combined with who actually goes offline. If offline use is turned off for MicroStation, only the people who lose the connection ever find out. Everyone on a wired desk never notices.
• What that specific machine can reach on the network. Bentley tells firms to allow traffic to the required Bentley domains and ports through the firewall. One machine can be blocked while every other machine gets through fine. That happens on guest WiFi, behind a different proxy, or with antivirus web filtering turned on. For two users who never leave the building, this is the first thing to check, not the last.
• Time since the last real sign in. Every successful check in resets the seven day clock. People on the office network reset it daily without knowing it exists.
• Which Windows profile is being used. The saved state belongs to one Windows profile on one machine. On a machine shared by several Windows logins, Bentley’s checkout guidance says a checked out license has to be imported into each Windows profile that needs it. Same machine, different profile, different licensing state.
• Which Bentley account they signed in with. Some people have more than one Bentley login, usually one left over from an old employer or a training account. Signing in with the wrong one means no entitlement for your firm’s subscription.
• The machine name changed. Say a machine has a checked out license and somebody renames the computer. Bentley’s checkout guidance says the license then stops working and has to be checked in and checked out again. This bites firms running virtual desktops, where the machine name can change on the user.

Where to look, in order

The first four of these do not require an IT person.

• Open the CONNECTION Client and confirm who is signed in. System tray, down by the clock. Does it say signed in, and is it the right email address? Sometimes the fix ends right here.
• Open the Bentley Licensing Tool. It shows your entitlements and product status for that machine. If MicroStation is missing or looks wrong here, the problem is licensing, not the drawing and not the network drive.
• Put a working machine next to the broken one. This is the step that actually solves it. Open the Licensing Tool on both. Compare the signed in account, the entitlements listed, the product version, and the CONNECTION Client version. Write down every difference, even small ones. We wrote about that pattern in Why Does the Same Software Work on One Machine But Not Another?
• Ask the person about their last week. Were they out of the office? On a job site? On a VPN that drops? You are looking for a gap of more than seven days without a clean sign in.
• Have your administrator check the offline usage setting. CONNECT Center, Entitlement Management, your application portfolio, MicroStation. This is a two minute check, and it is easy to never know it exists.
• Then check the network path. Can that machine reach Bentley’s licensing endpoints, or is a firewall rule, proxy, or antivirus web filter eating that traffic on this machine only? Test on the machine that fails, not on one that works.

Checking out a license, and the bill that can follow

If someone is regularly away from a stable connection, waiting for them to break is the wrong plan. Proactive is better than reactive. Bentley has a feature for this, and it comes with a catch your vendor may not mention.

An administrator generates a checkout from the Entitlement Management website. For the newer account based products it produces a .BELIC file tied to one machine name. The user then imports that file in the Bentley Licensing Tool. (Bentley License Checkouts)

Now the catch. Bentley’s checkout guidance says a checked out license is recorded as round the clock usage until it is checked back in. It also counts toward the usage alert your administrator sets. Bentley’s admin guide adds that usage keeps being logged and “may be subject to term licensing.” (Bentley License Checkouts)

That is not a small footnote. Say your firm is on an agreement where Bentley bills on recorded usage. A license checked out for three months is recorded as three months of round the clock use. It does not matter whether the engineer opened it twice or every day. The alert itself is just a warning number your administrator picks. The cost comes from usage above the licenses you own. Bentley says continued use past that point “may result in a term license being issued,” and a term license is billed.

So you should check out licenses for people who genuinely work disconnected. You should not check out licenses for the whole office as a precaution. And before you set up long checkouts, you should talk to whoever owns your Bentley agreement about how your contract records usage.

Two more practical limits. The checkout runs to your contract end date if that is less than a year away, and is capped at one year otherwise. And a checked out license still lets the CONNECTION Client ask for a sign in, which the user can safely dismiss.

What to have ready before you call Bentley

Support will ask for all of this anyway. Having it in hand speeds up the call.

• The exact message and a screenshot.
• The MicroStation version and update number, and whether it uses account sign in or activation keys.
• The CONNECTION Client version.
• The Bentley email the user signed in with.
• The last date that user was online and signed in.
• Whether offline usage is enabled for that application in Entitlement Management.
• Whether the machine has a checked out license.
• The same list from a machine that works.

Frequently asked questions

What this means for your firm

Every one of these lockouts is billable time that walks out the door. A QC engineer thrown out three times a week loses hours they cannot put on a project number, and those hours land closest to deadline, when the reviews stack up and the field work picks up. Nobody logs it as an IT problem because the software opens again the next morning.

A licensing error like this often gets bounced between IT and the software vendor. Each side thinks it belongs to the other, and the engineer keeps getting kicked out in the meantime.

We only serve architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Based in East Tennessee. Serving firms nationwide. We keep the computers, files, licenses, and security behind MicroStation running, including the CONNECTION Client that checks your license. We know there is an offline setting buried in Entitlement Management that can lock out your field staff. We know a long checkout can land on your next Bentley invoice. We track your seats, your versions, and your machines, so when someone gets kicked out, we can find the cause quickly and your team can focus on the work instead of the software. It is all part of our managed IT services. If MicroStation keeps kicking your people out, give us a call for a free IT checkup.

Sources: Bentley, Offline Usage; Bentley, Entitlement Management Overview; Bentley, License Checkouts; Bentley, CONNECTION Client; Bentley, Subscription Entitlement Service for Administrators (PDF)