Updating the Semaphore licence
- Last Updated: May 13, 2026
- 2 minute read
- Semaphore
- Documentation
A Semaphore “environment” licence is issued based upon the terms of your contract with Progress and is required for Semaphore server components (Semaphore Studio, Semantic Enhancement Server and Classification Server). When (or if) the licence key have been given expires these products will no longer function and a new licence key will be required. Part of standard contract renewal includes the generation of this key by Progress at which time it will be sent to you.
Manual Updating of the Licence Key
The value of the Windows environment variable “SEMAPHORE_LICENCE_DIR” determines where the licence key should actually be placed. If this variable is not set then the location defaults to “C:\Program Files\Smartlogic” (you can check if this variable is set or not by starting a command prompt then typing the command “SET” to see what variables exist). The licence file should be copied into this directory then renamed to, simply, “licence”.
Note: The licence file name should not have any file extension (the file name must be “licence” not “licence.txt”). If using Windows Explorer the default settings do not show file extensions so you may need to change the settings there to allow you to remove the file extension when renaming the file.
Using the New Licence Key
Once a new licence key is installed you need to restart the “Semaphore <Version> - Semantic Enhancement Server” and “Semaphore <Version> - Classification Server” Windows services so it picks up the new key.
After this, if you receive any licencing errors from Semaphore please create a Support ticket.
Updating licence on Semaphore Studio
Semaphore Studio does not pick up the licence installed on the server using the above mechanism, rather you need to update it within Semaphore Studio itself. To update the licence used in Semaphore Studio please see Initial Studio Configuration.