Licensing & support

Licensing works the same way for every ChartPad visual. Where a step depends on the visual, the tables below list each one.

How licensing works

Every ChartPad visual is fully functional for free while you evaluate it: every feature works, with no locked or hidden capabilities. Licensing only affects whether an on-visual notification appears in published reports.

• Try everything for free. You can build, test, and demo the complete visual without a license.
• A license removes the notification. Unlicensed visuals display a small license notification. This appears for both report editors and report viewers.
• Licenses are assigned per user. Everyone who edits or views a report containing the visual needs their own license. Generally, that's everyone the report is shared with.
• 30-day free trial on some visuals. Where a visual offers one, activating the trial removes the license notification for 30 days so you can pilot the visual in a real, shared report. The Marketplace table shows which visuals have a trial.

note

Because the visual keeps working whether or not it's licensed, licensing is about presentation (removing the notification for your audience), not about unlocking features.

The notification is never shown on the visual's landing page, and never burned into PDF or PowerPoint exports — so an unlicensed visual won't spoil an exported document.

Two ways to license

Track	Use it when	How
AppSource licensing	Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service — the standard case	Buy or trial on the Marketplace; an admin assigns licenses to users
Direct license key	Report Server, Embedded, Publish to web, SharePoint, sovereign clouds, offline	Buy a key from ChartPad and paste it into the visual

Not sure which one you need? The licensing page on chartpad.io walks you through it in four questions.

AppSource licensing

Getting a license

Licenses, and free trials where offered, are available from each visual's Microsoft Marketplace listing:

Visual	Marketplace listing	Free trial
Bump Chart	chartpad.bump	Yes
Calendar	chartpad.calendar	—
Gantt Chart	chartpad.gantt	Yes
Organizational Chart	chartpad.performance	Yes
Parliament Chart	chartpad.parliament	—

When a plan covers a range of users (for example 1–200), you choose the exact number of licenses at checkout and pay only for those.

Who manages the subscription

Whoever completes the purchase on the Marketplace becomes the subscription owner. After checkout they're redirected to the Microsoft 365 admin center, where licenses are assigned — there is no separate ChartPad portal. A purchaser without an admin role gets a limited view of the admin center that only covers this subscription, which is enough to assign and reassign its licenses.

When a non-admin makes the purchase, that person stays responsible for license assignments:

• Tenant admins can see the subscription in the admin center and can cancel it, but can't assign or unassign its licenses.
• Microsoft offers no way to transfer ownership of a visual subscription bought by a non-admin. If the purchaser leaves the organization, existing licenses keep working while the subscription stays active, but nobody can reassign them.

Have an admin make the purchase

If central IT should manage the visual's licenses — or the purchaser might change roles — have a tenant administrator buy the subscription. Any admin with a licensing role can then manage it.

If a non-admin purchaser has already left, a tenant admin can recover control without interrupting anyone:

1. Buy a new subscription with an admin account.
2. Assign its licenses to the same users.
3. Cancel the original subscription.

Users stay licensed throughout.

Assign licenses to users

After you have purchased one or more licenses, you need to assign them to your users or Active Directory groups. Assign the visual's license to everyone who edits or views the report (generally, everyone it's shared with):

Who can assign licenses

• If you bought the licenses, you can assign them yourself — including to other people — without needing an admin role.
• If an admin bought them, anyone with the Global Administrator, License Administrator or User Administrator role can assign them.
• If a non-admin colleague bought them, only that colleague can assign them. Tenant admins can see the subscription but can't change its assignments — see Who manages the subscription.
• To license people by group instead of one at a time, use group-based licensing: see Microsoft's Assign or unassign licenses to a group.

In every case the steps below are the same.

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Go to Billing → Licenses and select the ChartPad product you bought.
3. Click on Assign License and select the users or groups to assign the license to.
4. Add the users who need a license, then save to confirm.

For full step-by-step instructions, see Microsoft's guide: Assign licenses to users.

tip

Licenses are cached for the duration of a Power BI session. If a newly-licensed user still sees the notification, have them sign out and back in.

Unassign licenses

When someone leaves the team or no longer needs the visual, free up their license the same way:

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center and go to Billing → Licenses.
2. Select the ChartPad product.
3. Select the users or groups you want to remove the license from, then select Unassign licenses.

The freed license can be reassigned to someone else straight away.

Environments AppSource licensing doesn't cover

Microsoft's AppSource licensing model is not available on these platforms:

• Power BI Report Server
• Power BI Embedded
• SharePoint (Power BI web part)
• Publish to web
• National / sovereign clouds

A Microsoft-managed license can't be applied there. Use a direct license key instead.

Direct license keys

A direct license key is a signed key issued by ChartPad that licenses the visual anywhere — including every environment above. It is verified inside the visual, offline: no network call is made, and nothing about your report or your data leaves Power BI. That's what keeps the visual certification-compliant.

Getting a key

Buy a key at chartpad.io/licensing — keys are sold per visual or as an all-visuals bundle, on an annual or three-year term. See pricing for the current rates. Checkout is handled by Paddle; your key is shown immediately after payment and sent by email.

Get in touch at hello@chartpad.io if you need a quote, a purchase order or an invoice.

tip

Lost your key? Retrieve it at chartpad.io/license-key using the Paddle transaction id from your receipt email. The same id also retrieves the fresh key with the new expiry date after each renewal — worth keeping alongside the key itself.

Entering a key

1. Select the visual and open the Format pane.
2. Expand the License card.
3. Paste your key (it starts with PBI-) into the License key field.
4. A Status line appears underneath confirming the result.

The key is stored with the report, so everyone who opens or views the report is licensed, with no additional configuration required. If you deploy many reports, inject it through a report theme file instead.

note

Report editors must add the license key to the visual properties each time the visual is added to a report. If the visual is used multiple times in the same report, editors can copy and paste the visual to carry the license key with it.

What the status line tells you

Status	Meaning
Licensed to name until date	The key is valid. The date is inclusive — the key works through the end of that day.
Invalid license key	The key is malformed or its signature doesn't verify. Check for a truncated copy-paste.
License expired on date	The key has passed its expiry. Renew it to get a fresh key.
This license key is for a different ChartPad product	The key was issued for another ChartPad visual. Product-specific keys only license their own visual; bundle keys license all of them.
License verification requires HTTPS	While license key verification can be performed offline in sandboxed environments, the visual still needs to use the browser's cryptography tools that only run on secure origins. Enable HTTPS on your Power BI Report Server.

tip

Expiry is re-checked while a report is open, so a key that lapses mid-session takes effect immediately rather than waiting for a reload. Renew a few days before the date on the status line.

Deploying a key through a report theme

Instead of pasting the key into every report, put it in a report theme JSON file and apply that theme across your reports. Each visual is keyed by its GUID:

{
  "name": "ChartPad licensing",
  "visualStyles": {
    "ganttB5863C5BD9EE494DBC8BC10C132053AD": {
      "*": {
        "license": [{ "key": "PBI-your-key-here" }]
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace the GUID with the one for your visual:

Visual	GUID
Bump Chart	bumpChartB48F185DA6DB46AB89E89E3C66CAF28C
Calendar	CalendarVisualb7f3c2a1d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5
Gantt Chart	ganttB5863C5BD9EE494DBC8BC10C132053AD
Organizational Chart	performanceFlowLite4D065F067E0243B99F249D8428909837
Parliament Chart	parliament544886D08EFF4EE48B352842F1B02926

Only set key. The status property is a read-only display line the visual fills in itself.

With a bundle key, add one entry per visual to the same visualStyles block, each with the same key. A theme can also carry each visual's formatting defaults alongside the key — see the formatting reference of the visual concerned.

Getting help

• In-product: open the Documentation button on the visual's landing page to reach this site (docs.chartpad.io).
• Email support: hello@chartpad.io
• Website: chartpad.io

If you hit an issue, it helps to include your Power BI version (Desktop or Service), the visual, its version, and a screenshot or a small sample of your data. Each visual's Troubleshooting & FAQ page covers the most common problems.