Getting started with Adobe InDesign Server 2020 — Serial Number Licensing

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Adobe® InDesign® Server is a scalable engine that let you programmatically create automated documents. Use cases of InDesign Server are, generating documents to PDF, SVG, JPEG, EPS, XML etc. InDesign Server is used in a variety of CMS/DAM workflows in print & publishing solutions

Use Cases & Customer References

InDesign Server has a wide range if industry leading use cases https://www.adobe.com/products/indesignserver/indesign-server-by-industry.html Used by some of the biggest publishers in the world https://www.adobe.com/products/indesignserver/customer-references.html

System Requirements

Microsoft Windows Servers and Apple Mac OS, more details https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/system-requirements-indesign-server.html

Note : For development/testing purposes, Windows 10 should also work just fine

Download

InDesign Server(IDS) comes with a 90 day trial, so you have plenty of time to test and see if it’s the right solution for you. Installers are available at www.adobeprerelease.com under the Trial Download Program. In this series, we’ll be running IDS 2020.0 as an example.

Note : InDesign Server 2020.1.1 and up now supports the new FRL licensing method, so the steps in this article doesn’t apply, make sure you’re on 2020.0 or below to follow along

Installation/ Trial

Installer screen at the end of installation should prompt if you want to activate trial, click yes and you’re ready to start using IDS as 90 day trail. If for any reason IDS failed to start with the error message “Adobe InDesign Server is not properly licensed and will now quit” see activate 90 day trial section below

Activation

IDS can be activated using Adobe Provisioning Toolkit, it’s a command line tool used mostly in an enterprise environment where IT administrators can automate deployments of applications.

Download activation tool, extract and place it on desktop or another location of your choice Win : Mac

Activate 90 day Trial

1. Open command prompt or terminal and cd into folder where you’ve downloaded adobe_prtk tool above
2. Win:adobe_prtk --tool=StartTrial --leid=V7{}InDesignServer-15-Win-GM
3. Mac:adobe_prtk --tool=StartTrial --leid=V7{}InDesignServer-15-Mac-GM

Activate with a serial number

1. Open command prompt or terminal and cd into folder where you’ve downloaded adobe_prtk tool above. Replace with your24 digit IDS serial number in the command below
2. Win: adobe_prtk --tool=VolumeSerialize --generate --serial=22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx --leid=V7{}InDesignServer-15-Win-GM --provfilepath=
3. Mac: adobe_prtk --tool=VolumeSerialize --generate --serial=22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx-22xx --leid=V7{}InDesignServer-15-Mac-GM --provfilepath=
4. If above command is successful, you should seeReturn Code = 0 If you receive any other code other than 0, refer the error code section for more details. Also, a prov.xml file is generated in the same folder where adobe_prtk tool is or at the path specified in the--provfilepath, for example--provfilepath=C:\user\username\desktop
5. Make sure you have prov.xml in the same folder as adobe_prtk tool, execute the following command to activate IDS : Win / Mac : adobe_prtk --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile=prov.xml

Now that we have InDesign Server ready to use, in the next part of this series, we’ll learn how to run IDS and execute scripts against it to produce PDF and other documents. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions