protecting and selling an excel tool that integrates with Visio - how to get started! :)

[miless2111s]

I have developed a tool which takes information pasted into Excel and drives a Visio diagram. This allows me to copy and paste information from MS Project and drive Visio to produce a high quality Project Summary suitable for all audiences.

The number of times that I have been told "you should sell this" has finally sunk in and I'm moving in that direction.

My question is how to protect, licence and distribute this which I've broken down into three starter questions

How to protect the guts of the tool?
In excel I have a number of inputs and options which the user changes to manipulate the colours, date range, appearance etc or the final report however there are a huge number of calculations, sheets etc which drive the final output sheet.
I would like to be able to protect and hide these so that people can't see how I did it or worse fiddle with it.
I know that I can hide, protect etc using passwords but I am also aware these are rather easy to crack using tools on the internet.
What techniques are available to protect or change the tool so that the Intellectual Property is protected? Note that the final output needs to be in Excel so that the tool actually works!

how to licence the product?
The tool currently consists of a pair of files per report - one excel and one Visio. Each project summary needs a different pair due to the level of customisation which is required (you're report to the board might be half a PowerPoint slide with big blocks and the report for the project team might be a detailed A0 plot).
As such the user needs to be able to copy (at the moment) each pair many times. Alternatively in the future something might generate the pair but I expect it will always be a pair.
How can I licence to an individual and distribute to them?

how to offer a time limited trial
Linked to the licencing issue how can I offer a free trial for same a month to an individual and then either upgrade them to full licence status or shut the functionality down?

Obviously I will either have to learn some new stuff or more likely to pay someone to help me with this however I don't know the questions to ask or the areas to search in at the moment so any suggestions or advice will be gratefully received.!

Thanks in advance

Miles

 

[miless2111s]

Nothing? Or am I expecting to much too soon

 

[Krayons]

Unfortunately, Excel is simply a terrible platform for accomplishing everything you mentioned above. The reality is, Excel was not designed with security in mind, at least, in the sense you're thinking. There is no way to protect the guts of VBA code inside of a workbook. Even if you could encrypt the whole code, you'd still need unencrypted parts to be able to decrypt the code. And if the user can read this encryption code, then it makes you're whole effort moot. I would think the closest thing you could do, would be to scramble the code to the point where it becomes unreadable by the human eye, and yet still able to be interpreted properly by Excel.

So far as licencing is concerned, I cannot offer you much advice.

I used to play around with Visual Basic 6 in school; this allows you to publish an executable file. Perhaps you could look into that as an option, instead of doing the code work inside of excel itself. Alternatively, and is an option I would highly recommend, look to building an online service.

PHP is a very powerful server language. While it would certainly require more work on your behalf, if you were to offer an online version of your application, you can then very easily control licensing and offer trials as you see fit. There is a great engine, called PHPExcel that was built for PHP, that will allow you to interact with excel files.

I wish you the best of luck with your application!

Edit: PHPExcel is part of a larger library, called PHPOffice, that will allow you to interact with Visio as well! See here.

 

[starl]

Bill was advertising a 3rd party tool earlier this week. It completely encrypts your VB code (so you better have a backup).
Unviewable+ VBA Project For Excel - PowerPoint - Word - Spreadsheet1 - Excel Data Analytics

As for licensing - i've been helping a client setup the QLM product from Soraco. It creates license keys - all kinds. I rather like it. Yes, it would let you setup trial keys

 

[Krayons]

Bill was advertising a 3rd party tool earlier this week. It completely encrypts your VB code (so you better have a backup).
Unviewable+ VBA Project For Excel - PowerPoint - Word - Spreadsheet1 - Excel Data Analytics

Very interesting. Are you familiar with this Unviewable+ project?

The UnviewablePlus.exe is a portable Delphi application [it is not an Excel add-in]. It will not install anything on your PC. The EXE file is the windows application that will make macro-enabled Office Excel, PowerPoint and Word files unviewable in VBE. It can be used on client sites by developers and by IT admins on user PCs to lock unviewable VBA projects in macro-enabled files.

Does this mean that a user would need to have this portable executable file somewhere on their PC to make it all work? Or does this somehow embed this protection within the .xlsm file, thereby allowing me to send said file anywhere I want with the VBA code protected from prying eyes?

 

[starl]

The developer runs the app on the workbook and can then distribute it. Scroll down a little further on the page for a breakdown.

 

[miless2111s]

I can't read the link at the moment but just to help clarify things a little the vba element is probably the least sensitive element. The full 'glory' is in the many sheets of calculations which drive the output. The vba basically ensure that all the pivots are updated etc.

I'll have a proper read of your posts and linked materials tomorrow
Thanks

 

[Smitty]

I'll ditto what Tracy said about QLM (Quick License Manager) from Soraco. I've got a client who's been using it for a while and it does a good job. It's about $600+, but is pretty robust. You'd have to get in touch with them to see if it will accommodate your needs, but they've got pretty good customer support.

 

[miless2111s]

I'll ditto what Tracy said about QLM (Quick License Manager) from Soraco. I've got a client who's been using it for a while and it does a good job. It's about $600+, but is pretty robust. You'd have to get in touch with them to see if it will accommodate your needs, but they've got pretty good customer support.

Please tell me that's a one off payment not a monthly figure?
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look at them.
Miles

 

[miless2111s]

Over the weekend I had a thought and wanted to run it by you all to see if it was totally stupid or if there is a the beginning of a way forwards on this....

1) I code some of the more important calculations in VBA and output the results to the overall output sheet, thereby removing them from the Worksheet and putting them in code
2) I need to Pivot tables in the worksheet as I have no idea how to replicate a pivot table in code
3) I produce (somehow!) an add on that uses a licence solution such as QLM recommended above to confirm that someone has bought the product or is within a valid free trial period5
4) The code in the worksheet looks at the Add in and checks that the licence is valid - if so the calculations run and if not it outputs "out of licence" to the Visio file
5) Using the VBA obscuring technology recommended (Unviewable+ VBA Project For Excel - PowerPoint - Word - Spreadsheet1 - Excel Data Analytics) I secure the code (and therefore the more "secret sauce" elements of the calculations.

So in short I use the suggested licencing solution to authorise an add on which produces an "OK" signal to the worksheet so that can run, the code in the sheet is obscured and protected and the key calculations are hidden in the code.

Would this work? Or do I just need to give up with the VBA / Worksheet approach and get this coded into something else - if so what?

Regards

Miles