Documentation about adding paid license KEY technique for Custom Visual

[wdehaas]

Hi all,

I want to start developing paid Custom Visuals. I searched through the documentation (https://powerbi.microsoft.com/nl-nl/developers/custom-visualization/) but I couldn't find any explanation about how to implement the monetizing feature (adding license key) as described in this article: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-monetization-option-for-power-bi-custom-visuals-through....

Can someone provide me with technical documentation on how to setup this? For example I want to distinguish the price of the Visual between Viewers and Creators.

Thanks for advance for your help.

greetings,

Waldemar

[dm-p]

Hi,

I apologise up-front to say that this is not really an answer but more of a means to flag my mutual interest and promote some discussion around figuring this out for the lay-person. I've pondered the same thing as you and hadn't got very far with figuring it out.

They say the best way to know if you're wrong is to post something on the Internet and see if anyone corrects you  Here's my interpretation of things:

• The recent changes to the framework allow you to provide a splash screen for your visual upon creation that you can use to decorate with licensing info etc. as well as flagging that your visual has the option to purchase additional functionality when submitting to AppSource (the store only used to accept free visuals and those that were paid had to be fully managed offsite).
• You add the necessary capabilities to allow the the user to input a license key (plus other fields such as a salt if your implementation requires it) that you provide offsite through a licensing/purcashing mechanism of your own choosing.
• Your visual code has a way of validating this key and switching on the appropriate features according to the same model.

I'm unsure if these recent changes allow you to have, say, a visual that is certified and communicates to a licensing server for validation, or you need to manage this internally without any external calls. I suspect it's the latter.

I've had a look around for packages or patterns that get you started with this kind of feature set but it seems fairly arbitrary, presumably because it might invite people to reverse-engineer keys for their products.

It might be better reaching out directly to specific vendors to see if they are willing to share any learning they have in this space. I've comtemplated this but at present, I'm not confident that my visuals would attract many users if I put a price on them (although they represent a significant amount of time investment).

[wdehaas]

Hi, 

Thanks for your reply. Can you point me to the documentation about how to build the splash screen? 

Can you provide me with some sample code about the switch functionality to show/hide features that are linked to the key-validation?

I think it would be a nice idea that Microsoft provides some kind of a standard solution/framework for building in the Paid-features/KEY-validation, etc. This would stimulate companies to put more effort in monitizing custom visuals. I will submit this feature as an Idea on this forum. 

Thanks again for your reply.

greetings,

Waldemar de Haas