License management

    License management shows which of your discovered AI agents are covered by licenses you have purchased in ManageEngine SecureAI. It also lets you decide which agents those licenses go to. Use it to license an agent that needs to be owned, reviewed, or certified and to take the license back from an agent that no longer needs to be governed. When more agents are discovered than the license covers, the licensed and consumed counts will indicate a shortfall. Apply a larger license file to cover the gap.

    How it works

    License management holds no agent records of its own. It lists every AI agent discovered through the sync scheduled with your onboarded platforms, licensed or not. The number of licenses available to spend on your agents comes from the license file applied to SecureAI. That file also sets the license type and the expiry date. Assigning a license reserves one of those licenses for an agent, while revoking one returns it to the pool. A license counts as consumed once you perform a management action for the agent, such as updating an owner or executing an access certification request. It stays consumed until it is released or revoked. The licensed count and the consumed count are therefore reported separately, because an agent can hold a license before any action has consumed it.

    Prerequisites

    Before you use license management, ensure the following:

    • Apply a license file to SecureAI and confirm the number of agents it covers. Without one, only 10 agents (available through the Free edition) can be licensed.
    • Onboard at least one directory or agent platform instance, and let its first sync complete. Agents that have not been discovered cannot be licensed.
    • Sign in with a role that covers Settings, such as Super Admin.
    Note:
    • Licenses are counted for AI agents only. Technicians, MCP servers, and models are not licensed individually.
    • Neither the license type nor the expiry date can be changed in license management. Both follow the license file applied in the license details.
    • License management reports which agents hold a license, not which management action consumed each one or when.
    • An agent discovered after your last visit starts unlicensed, so the licensed count can fall behind the agent count without anything having changed in your licensing.
    • The Free edition covers 10 AI agents. An eleventh agent stays unlicensed until a Professional license file is applied.

    Configuration instructions

    1. Navigate to Settings > License Management. The following summary figures are provided:
      Summary What it shows
      Licensed / Unlicensed AI Agents The number of discovered agents that hold a license and the number that do not.
      Consumed / Purchased License The number of licenses in use and the number you have purchased.
      License Type Whether the applied license is paid or otherwise.
      Expires On The date the license expires or Never for a license that does not.
    2. Click the Licensed AI Agents tab to view the agents that hold a license or the Unlicensed AI Agents tab to view those that do not.
    3. To bring an agent under governance, select it in Unlicensed AI Agents, then click Assign License.
    4. To return a license to the pool, select the agent in Licensed AI Agents, then click Revoke License.

    Tips

    • Check the Unlicensed AI Agents tabs after a sync brings in a batch of new agents. This is because an agent that stays unlicensed is outside every governance action you run.
    • Revoke the licenses held by agents that have been retired in their source platform rather than waiting for a sync to remove them. The license will be immediately usable again.
    • Check how many licenses are still unspent, which the Consumed / Purchased License value reports, before a large onboarding. Purchasing more takes longer to arrange than reclaiming the ones you hold.
    • License an agent before you raise a certification campaign or an ownership policy that includes it. This ensures that the agent is not skipped when the campaign runs.
    • Where agent counts are split across teams, agree which team's agents take priority when licenses run short since license management applies no such order of its own.
    • Where you need to cover more agents than your license allows, apply a larger license file. See Licensing SecureAI.