LOOP

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What the licence covers ​

LOOP is commercial software, and the line is drawn in one place: changing the configuration and sending notices need an active licence; reading and exporting never do.

The line ​

Needs an active licence:

  • creating, editing and deleting certifications and editions;
  • editing the wording of the notices;
  • importing CSV, both files;
  • queuing and sending notices — including a send by hand from the mail queue, a resend from the message logs, and a test send to yourself;
  • sending the monthly manager report;
  • recomputing the validity window of an issued certificate.

Never blocked, in any licence state:

  • the Home dashboard, user status pages and certification history;
  • the message logs, mail queue and reports sent;
  • CSV export of both files, table downloads, and Report Builder reports.

A lapsed licence therefore pauses the automation but cannot lock you out of your own compliance data.

How validation works ​

The licence is a signed entitlement, checked against a key held inside the plugin. That check needs no network: LOOP can tell on its own whether an entitlement is genuine.

The network calls cover what a signature cannot express: that the key has not been withdrawn, that this site still holds a seat, and how many active users to account for. They carry no student data — see Data and privacy.

Offline grace ​

The signed entitlement is stored locally, so a site that loses outbound connectivity keeps working for a limited number of days rather than stopping at the first missed check. Once that window closes with no successful validation, the licensed features pause; the read-only ones do not.

This is why the status list separates two cases that look similar:

  • In grace period — the licence is past its expiry date, and the licensing server granted extra time.
  • Active (offline grace) — the licence is fine; the server could not be reached.

A site with no internet access at all can be activated with an entitlement file instead, which is never re-checked over the network. See Activate the licence.

What the licence does not do ​

  • There is no per-feature tier: either the automation runs or it is paused.
  • The plugin does not enforce a user count. Seats are accounted for on the licensing server.
  • Nothing stored is degraded or hidden when a licence lapses.

What you see when it lapses ​

A banner on the LOOP pages, with a link to the License page. The certification forms refuse to save, with a message saying the licence is not active.

The dashboards keep telling the truth: the nightly rebuild of statuses and dates is not licensed, so figures go on moving as certificates reach their expiry and people are enrolled. What pauses is the queuing and the sending of notices. Notices already in the queue are held rather than discarded, and they go out when a licence is active again.