This section is a brief introduction to the SoftwareShield License Manager application. For comprehensive help on the application, all its functions and components - you should instead see the SoftwareShield License Manager section.

The SoftwareShield License Manager is a multiple document (license) interface Windows application that you use to create and modify your SoftwareShield licenses. The License Manager comes with all versions of the SoftwareShield package.

The SoftwareShield License Manager allows you to load and edit license projects. A license project is a file with the ".lpj" extension. This is the project file that contains every piece of information you need for development of your licenses. Never distribute license projects to your customers. The SoftwareShield License Manager will create (from a license project) a compiled license (called a distributed license). Distributed licenses are what you ship with your application. To learn more about licenses and the files the SoftwareShield License Manager uses and creates, see the section on SoftwareShield Files.

A good way to think about the SoftwareShield License Manager is as "the compiler for your licenses" The license project is your "source code" (for your license) , and the distributed license is the "compiled" version that you ship.

The following picture gives a quick view of what the SoftwareShield License Managers user interface looks like. The layout is quite simple. As you can see the child forms each represent a single license project. You can have multiple licenses open at the same time if you wish.

Using the application, you can quickly and easily create licenses that are based on other licenses if you wish, or start from scratch. See the section on Using an Existing License as a Template if you want to get a jump-start.

The SoftwareShield License Manager has fully connected context help linked to this help system as well as integrated pop-up help and tips available from inside the application. See the section on Getting Help for more information.