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We are on Citrix and would like to provide 3 shortcuts to our users so they can launch the three license levels (ArcView, ArcEditor and ArcInfo). We can't do this through desktop admin as the users don't have admin rights and we would like an intuitive workflow anyway.
How do others provide access to the different license levels in their organisations for the users to quickly open the product license that they want?
If you want to control the license on a per-application basis, you could create batch files that set the ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS variable to either Professional,Editor,Viewer and then start ArcMap/ArcCatalog.
A SET ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS=Viewer statement will switch to ArcView:
And a SET ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS=Editor will switch to ArcEditor:
If you create the batch files, the ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS variable is only in scope for that instance of the application. So you could start an ArcView and ArcEditor at the same time (if the license manager has available licenses).
Alternatively, a user could set a user system variable of ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS to the desired license and then every application would be at the same license level.
Related Bug: http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/32729
ESRI_SOFTWARE_CLASS in a variable, that would create a user variable, not a system variable.
– Jay Cummins
Apr 23 '12 at 13:48
ArcMapBasic.exe or ArcMapProfessional.exe), it will start the ArcMap with that software class.
– Jay Cummins
Jun 20 '14 at 18:40
From our internal KB article, which I adapted from @jay-cummin's post here, and then wrote some scripts to make using them quick and painless:
As many of you have discovered, at times you can’t switch from ArcGIS Basic to ArcGIS Advanced because the radio buttons in ArcGIS Administrator are disabled:
Fortunately there is a workaround, set the license level in an environment variable first and then run ArcMap/Catalog. We’ve placed scripts for this in Z:\Tools [GitHub]:
ArcMap-Advanced.bat run ArcMap using Advanced (ArcInfo) license
ArcMap-Editor.bat run ArcMap using Editor (ArcEditor) license
ArcMap-Viewer.bat run ArcMap using Viewer (Basic) license
I actually prefer the workaround to the original method: you don’t have to close all your sessions down first just because you want to run an Advanced-only tool for 5 minute job like Create Random Points, and you can run Advanced and Basic side by side at the same time.
