Parsware Platform
What happens when a trial ends
When a trial runs out, nothing is deleted and nobody is locked out. Everyone can still sign in, read and export; only changes stop, and the data is kept for 60 days. We let Tailspin Toys' trial end while its administrator was working, watched a save refused and the units still readable, then subscribed and carried on where it stopped.
A trial gives a new customer a tenant of their own for a fixed time. When it runs out, the rule is short: what you lose by not subscribing is progress, not your work. Nobody is locked out and nothing is deleted. You can read everything and export it; you can't change anything.
We followed Casey Brooks, the administrator of Tailspin Toys, through the end of a trial.
Before
The operator's Tenants list shows when each trial ends:
While the trial runs, Tailspin is an ordinary tenant. Casey adds a unit, Western Region, to the organisation chart, and it saves:
The trial ends
Once the end date passes, the platform marks the tenant Trial lapsed and emails every administrator: reading and export carry on, and the data is kept until a date 60 days on. On Casey's next sign-in, every screen carries a bar under the top bar:
Everything is still there, Western Region included. Views, records, reports and exports all work. A change is refused where it's attempted, in plain words, and nothing on the screen is lost:
The operator sees the same thing from the other side:
The 60 days
Three messages go to every administrator, in the language the trial was started in: the day the trial ends, a week before the data is removed, and the day it's removed. Until then the tenant can:
- export records from any view;
- export a whole solution from the Admin Control Center, with every table, form, view, process and report;
- download files from the records they belong to.
Subscribing
Subscribing at any point in the 60 days restores the tenant unchanged: the same data, apps and addresses, with nothing rebuilt. Casey signs in again, the bar is gone, and Eastern Region saves:
If the bar is still there after paying, sign out and in again: the tenant's standing travels with the sign-in, and one made before the payment still carries the old one.
What we fixed
- A lapsed tenant couldn't read its own organisation chart. The rule is that reading continues, and the platform lets through any request that only reads. Some reads arrive in the shape of a change (a tree of records asking for a node's children, a report asking for its data) and must say they're reads. Two of the tree's three reads didn't, so Casey's units showed This trial has ended where the tree should be. The tree and the report data now say so, and a test lists every such read by name.
Try it
This needs a trial tenant on a deployment you run. Let one lapse, sign in as one of its users, open a view and export it, then try to save a record.
Next: A customer portal on your own data.