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Lock Activation and Licensing Overview

Any device using or being operated via the Tapkey platform requires a license to do so. Licenses as well as rights associated with licenses are negotiated on business level. This chapter describes the technical view and implications, but does not overrule contracts on business level.

Entities

Accounting Owner Account

An Accounting Owner Account is a regular Owner Account, which is used for a special purpose, namely for managing Contracts and licenses. Any business entity or person having a license contract with Tapkey usually also has an Owner Account which is used for managing those licenses and contracts. This Owner Account is considered the Accounting Owner Account. The Accounting Owner Account is in contrast to the Managing Owner Account, which is used for managing access. In some scenarios where the entity managing access is the same as the one having the contract with Tapkey, same Owner Account may be used for both roles.

Contract

A Contract entity represents a license contract between a contract partner and Tapkey. The Contract is connected to exactly one (the partner's) Accounting Owner Account. A Contract is identified via it's ContractId. Among others a Contract usually defines which locks may be operated using which apps and how they are charged for.

Accounting Code

An Accounting Code can be used to register a Tapkey lock with a certain Accounting Owner Account. Once registered, the lock can be activated or deactivated by the Accounting Owner Account.

Activation

Any lock needs to be activated in order to be fully operational. While locking devices operated via the Tapkey App are usually shipped with a valid license already included, locking devices intended to be operated with integrator's apps usually don't have an associated license when leaving the factory. The process of assigning a license to a locking device and thereby making it operable is referred to as Activation. After running through the Activation process a lock is considered as activated until it runs through the Deactivation process. Depending on the individual contract, Activation and Deactivation may represent payment-relevant events.

Accounting Registration

In order to gain authorization to being able to activate and deactivate a certain lock, the lock needs to be registered with a certain Accounting Owner Account. Just like Binding is the process of registering a locking device with a Management Owner Account, Accounting Registration is the process of registering a locking device with an Accounting Owner Account. Accounting Registration can be performed by using the Accounting Code associated with a certain lock. Once registered with a certain Accounting Owner Account, this account will be able to activate and deactivate the respective locks.

Deactivation

The process of removing a license from an activated lock and thereby making it inoperable is referred to as Deactivation. Any locking device not associated with a valid license is referred to as deactivated. Deactivated locks have an undefined state regarding their accessibility. Locks must not be deactivated as long as they are expected to provide access or protection against unauthorized access.

Restrictions of deactivated locks

Any deactivated lock is subject to the following restrictions:

  • No grants may be created, modified or revoked for deactivated locks via the Tapkey Access Management Web API.
  • No new keys will be issued for deactivated locking devices.

Note: While no new keys will be issued for a deactivated lock, existing keys may or may not continue to function normally. I.e. if an active lock is deactivated, keys that have already been issued before deactivation may or may not be actively revoked. Tapkey may decide from case to case how to handle such cases.

Note: The actual restrictions are subject to change in the future without prior notice. Any software using the Tapkey Platform shall not make any assumptions on how Tapkey will handle deactivated locks.

Process Overview

This section outlines the usual flows associated with activation and deactivation.

Preparation

  • Create an Accounting Owner Account
  • Create one or more Contract entities (done by Tapkey).

Registering a new lock

  • Get a lock's Accounting Code
  • Use the Accounting Code to Accounting-Register a lock with the Accounting Owner Account

Operate a lock

  • Ship a lock to a customer
  • Activate the lock
  • Bind a lock to a Management Owner Account (binding process done by the lock owner)
  • Manage the lock via the Tapkey Access Management Web API (done by the lock owner)
  • Access a lock using one or more Apps

Deactivate a lock

  • Deactivate the lock

A lock may (depending on the associated contract) be activated and deactivated multiple times throughout it's lifetime.

Operations