Licence and Updates (Pro)
Licence and Updates (Pro)
Your Pro licence unlocks the Pro features and gives you automatic updates. This page explains how to activate the licence, how the plugin checks it, what happens during the 7-day grace period if it lapses, what’s locked once the grace period ends, how updates are delivered, and how Pro’s optional data-retention pruning works.
🔒 Pro feature — requires the Pro plugin.
Who this page is for
Site administrators who install and maintain Dantian Policy Management Pro. Activating, changing or deactivating the licence requires the Administrator role. Your licence is sold and managed through the Dantian online store; this page covers what happens on your WordPress site.
Pro needs the free Dantian Policy Management plugin installed and active, on WordPress 6.7 or later and PHP 8.2 or later.
Where to find the licence settings
Go to Policy Management → Settings and open the Licence tab. (On a site without Pro, the same tab is called Upgrade.) The tab shows the message “Dantian Policy Management Pro is active.” followed by the licence panel.
Other places link here too:
- The Activate your licence step in the Pro setup checklist shown on Policy Management screens after installation.
- The Activate licence, Manage licence, Renew licence or View licence link in the licence reminder notice.
- The Activate your licence button on any locked Pro page.
Who can see what
| Role | What they see on the Licence tab |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Full panel: status, licence key, activation and deactivation |
| Other users who can open the plugin’s Settings screen | When the licence is active, the status summary with the key masked. When it isn’t active, “You do not have permission to view the licence key.” |
| Everyone else | No access to Settings |
Activating your licence
- Find your licence key in your purchase confirmation email or your account on the Dantian store.
- Go to Policy Management → Settings → Licence.
- Paste the key into Pro Licence Key.
- Click Activate Licence.
Your site contacts the licensing store to confirm the key. On success you’ll see “Licence activated. Pro features are unlocked.” and the panel switches to the active view:
| Row | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Status | Active |
| Licence key | Your key with the middle hidden — only the first four and last four characters are shown |
| Plan | The plan you purchased (shown when the store provides it) |
| Expires | The expiry date in your site’s date format, or Never (lifetime) |
Keep your licence key private. Don’t paste it into support forums or screenshots.
Moving your licence to another site
- On the old site, go to Policy Management → Settings → Licence and click Deactivate Licence. You’ll see “Licence deactivated on this site.” This releases the activation with the store.
- On the new site, activate the key as described above.
Do this when you migrate hosts or replace a staging site with a production site.
How the licence is checked
Your site re-checks the licence with the store once a day in the background (starting about an hour after Pro is first loaded). You don’t need to do anything.
The check is designed to fail safe: if the store can’t be reached — a network outage, a firewall, or your host blocking outbound connections — nothing changes on your site. Pro features are never switched off because a check couldn’t be completed. Only a confirmed result from the store that the licence isn’t valid starts the grace period.
The 7-day grace period
If the daily check confirms that your licence is no longer valid — because it has expired, been disabled by the store, or is otherwise not active — a 7-day grace period starts. During the grace period:
- All Pro features keep working.
- Administrators see a warning notice on Policy Management screens, the WordPress Dashboard and the Plugins screen, with the number of days left — for example “Your Dantian Policy Management Pro licence has expired. Pro features remain available for 5 more days — please renew your licence.” with a Renew licence link.
- The Licence tab shows “Pro features remain active for N more days during the grace period.”
- Automatic updates stop being provided (see Updates below).
As soon as you activate a valid key, the grace period is cleared and the warning disappears.
The same 7-day window applies on a new installation that has never been activated: Pro works straight away, and the notice reads “Your Dantian Policy Management Pro licence has not been activated yet. Pro features remain available for up to 7 days — activate your licence to keep them enabled.” If you deactivate your licence, the grace period starts again from the next daily check.
The notice doesn’t appear on the Settings screen itself (the Licence tab states the position there), and it’s hidden while the Pro setup checklist is showing, so you aren’t prompted twice.
What’s locked after the grace period
When the grace period ends, Pro goes dormant and your site falls back to the free plugin’s behaviour. Administrators see a red notice, for example “Your Dantian Policy Management Pro licence has expired and Pro features are now disabled. Renew your licence to restore them.” If the store has disabled the licence, the notice reads “Your Dantian Policy Management Pro licence has been disabled. Please contact support to resolve this.”
Switched off until you reactivate:
- The Calendar and Document Compliance pages — both show “This is a Pro feature” with an Activate your licence button
- The Waiver Register — the menu disappears and waivers stop exempting people
- Acknowledgement escalation emails and the Escalation Manager setting
- Scheduled compliance report emails
- Approval chains, regulatory frameworks (including Coverage & Gaps), and evidence packs
- AI features, bulk document import, and FAQ bulk import
- Pro’s acknowledgement PDF exports and other Pro screens and settings
Keeps working regardless of the licence:
- Everything in the free plugin, including documents, acknowledgements, reminders, the hub and Free reports
- The Licence tab, so you can always reactivate
- The Pro setup checklist
- Personal data export and erasure for Pro’s data (privacy rights never depend on a licence)
- Data-retention pruning, if you’ve switched it on
- Protection around how update downloads are fetched
Your data is kept. Locking Pro doesn’t delete anything. Waivers, approval-chain history, framework mappings and settings are all still there. Activate a valid licence and everything comes back as it was.
Updates
Pro updates arrive through the normal WordPress update system — Dashboard → Updates and the Plugins screen — just like plugins from WordPress.org. You can update manually or turn on WordPress’s auto-updates for Pro on the Plugins screen.
- Updates are only provided while your licence is valid. With an expired, disabled or missing licence, the store doesn’t supply the update download.
- When a renewed licence is activated, updates resume.
- Pro checks that update downloads come from the expected secure source before WordPress installs them.
Always keep the free plugin and Pro up to date together. Pro is built and tested against the matching free release.
Data retention pruning
Pro keeps a log of every AI request (who made it, which document, the provider and model, token counts and cost). This log is kept indefinitely unless you switch on Pro’s retention pruning.
Default: off. Retention pruning is off on every installation, so upgrading never deletes history unexpectedly.
When it’s switched on:
- A job runs once a day and deletes AI log entries older than 365 days.
- Each run deletes at most 5,000 entries, so a large backlog is cleared over several days.
- The retention period can be changed, or pruning disabled for the AI log, by your developer.
There’s no on-screen switch for retention pruning. It’s turned on as a site configuration change, usually by your developer or host. Ask them to enable Pro’s retention option.
When retention pruning is off and the AI log grows past 1,000 entries, Administrators see a notice on Policy Management screens: “Automatic retention pruning is off, and the AI usage logs are growing.” The Configure retention button opens the plugin’s Settings screen, but there’s no retention control there yet; use Dismiss once you’ve made a decision with your developer. The notice is dismissed per user.
Separately, and regardless of the retention setting, the same daily job clears finished background AI jobs (completed or failed) about an hour after they finish. Jobs still waiting or in progress are never removed.
Search logs, page-view logs and PDF download logs are managed by the free plugin’s own retention settings, not by Pro.
Uninstalling Pro
- Deactivating Pro removes nothing. The licence check and retention job stop running.
- Deleting Pro (Plugins → Delete) always removes your stored licence details (including the key) and Pro’s saved AI and webhook credentials, and stops Pro’s scheduled jobs.
- Pro’s own data (waivers, approval-chain history, AI logs and others) is removed only if you tick Remove Pro data on uninstall under Policy Management → Settings → System Configuration before deleting. The default is off.
Deactivate your licence before deleting Pro if you plan to use the key on another site.
Troubleshooting
“Please enter a licence key.” The Pro Licence Key box was empty. Paste the key and try again.
“Activation did not succeed — the store reported the licence as “…”. Please check the key and try again.” The store recognised the request but the key isn’t usable. “invalid” usually means a typo or extra spaces; “expired” means the licence needs renewing; “disabled” means the store has disabled it — contact support. You may instead see an error message passed back from the store, such as the activation limit having been reached. Deactivate the key on a site you no longer use and try again.
“Licensing is unavailable.” or “Licensing is unavailable. Please reinstall Dantian Policy Management Pro.” Pro’s licensing component is missing or damaged. Download a fresh copy of Pro from your store account, then delete and reinstall the plugin. Your settings and data are kept unless you ticked Remove Pro data on uninstall.
The licence shows as active on the store but my site says the grace period has started. The daily check runs in the background and depends on WordPress’s scheduled tasks. On low-traffic sites these only run when someone visits. Open the Licence tab and click Activate Licence with your key to re-check immediately, and ask your host to set up a real server cron job. If your host blocks outbound connections, ask them to allow your site to reach the Dantian store.
Worked example: a general practice clinic
Harbourside Family Practice buys a one-year Pro licence in June 2026.
- The practice manager, an Administrator, installs Pro alongside the free plugin. The setup checklist appears with Activate your licence as its first step.
- She pastes the key from her purchase email into Pro Licence Key and clicks Activate Licence. The panel shows Status: Active, the masked key, the plan, and Expires in June 2027.
- In October the practice moves to a new host. Before switching, she clicks Deactivate Licence on the old site, then activates the same key on the new one.
- In June 2027 the renewal payment fails. The next morning’s licence check confirms the licence has expired, and a yellow notice says Pro features remain available for 7 more days, with a Renew licence link. Updates stop being offered.
- She renews on day 5 and activates the renewed key. The notice disappears, updates resume, and no staff member notices any change.
Had she not renewed, from day 8 the Document Compliance dashboard and Calendar would show “This is a Pro feature”, the practice’s two waivers for staff on leave would stop applying, and escalations would stop. All of it would come back unchanged after reactivation.