Feature Specification
Product Registration

Contents

Abstract

Functional description

Registration menu item

Registration Dialog

Error Handling

Configuration

Configuration Entries

Enabling/Disabling the registration mechanism

Abstract

OpenOffice.org features a mechanism for online product registration. Thus, any vendor who creates his own, branded version from OpenOffice.org can allow his users to register their product copy. This feature is optional, and is disabled in the normal OpenOffice.org builds, but can be easily enabled by just changing a configuration entry.

In this context, registration means that the user is directed to a web site, provided by the vendor, where the real registration takes place.

Functional description

OpenOffice.org provides mechanisms to point the user to a registration web page provided, usually by the vendor of the OpenOffice.org based product. For browsing to the URL, the system browser is used, the same as is invoked when clicking on any link in a OOo document.
The URL is a configurable aspect, stored in the configuration.

There are two different entry points for this registration:

• a menu item in the Help menu, called "Registration"

• a dialog, which is raised after the product has been installed, and asks the user to do the registration

Both entry points can be enabled or disabled independently.

Registration menu item

In the help menu, there is an item "Registration...". Upon choosing it, the system browser is invoked with the registration URL.

Registration dialog

• The registration dialog starts when the product is run the n-th time after its installation. The number n is configurable, the default is 2.

• The dialog looks as follows:
  
  
  
  At runtime, every occurrence of "OpenOffice.org" is replaced with the real product name, and 1.0 is replaced with the concrete product version.

• If the user chooses "Please register now", the registration URL is invoked (same as when choosing the "Registration" menu item)

• If the user chooses "Remind me to register later", the dialog vanishes and will reappear again after 7 days (at the earliest – more precise, it reappears at the first product start which is at least 7 days later than the current date).

• If the user chooses "Never register", the dialog disappears and will never reappear again.

• If the user chooses "I'm already ...", the dialog disappears and will never reappear again.

• If the user cancels the dialog, this is interpreted as "Remind me to register later".

Error Handling

When calling the external browser to direct the user to the online registration page, if an error occurs (maybe because the user did not yet configure a system browser), a message box pops up suggesting to check the settings of OpenOffice.org, as well as the system browser.

If this error happens when the browser should be invoked from the dialog, the dialog won't appear again - the only possibility to reach the registration then is the menu item.

Configuration

The registration mechanisms are controlled via configuration entries.

Configuration entries

The relevant data is stored in the following data nodes to be found under org.openoffice.Office.Common/Help/Register :

URL

string specifying the URL to be used for online registration

ReminderDate

string representation of the date at which the user should be reminded (e.g. "13.02.2002")

RequestDialog

number used internally to determine when the dialog should be started

ShowMenuItem

boolean specifying if the "Registration..." menu item is available

Enabling/Disabling the registration mechanism

To enable both the registration dialog and the registration menu item, a vendor needs to

• provide a URL to the registration web page and store it in the URL node

• set the ReminderDate to an empty string

• set the RequestDialog value to 1 (or 2 for the dialog to appear at the second start.)

• set the ShowMenuItem value to true

To disable the menu item only, the ShowMenuItem should be set to false.

To disable the dialog only, the RequestDialog should be set to 0.

To disable both features at once, the URL should be set to an empty string. This overrules the before-mentioned settings, since without an URL the features do not make sense.

Author: Frank Schönheit
Last Modified: $Date: 2005/11/03 07:49:28 $
Copyright © 2001 OpenOffice.org