Best Practices for the License Management App

The License Management App (LMA) is a Salesforce-managed package that helps ISVs track and manage leads and licenses for their AppExchange solutions. It integrates with sales and marketing processes to improve customer engagement, retention, and business growth. Installed in all partner business orgs (PBO), LMA includes custom objects for tracking package details, versions, and licenses, ensuring better control over product distribution and usage.
In this post, you’ll review best practices for setting up the license management app and managing licenses with LMA. Additionally, you’ll get to know three common challenges in license management and how to overcome them.
Setting Up the License Management App
Getting started with your license management app, or even optimizing existing LMA may require expertise with Salesforce and substantial effort. Here’s the basic procedure for configuration and the best practices for approaching LMA in a business setting:
First, let’s review the procedure to set up the LMA to understand the technicalities behind the process.
Steps to configure the LMA:
- Install the LMA package from the AppExchange.
- To install the LMA in an org other than your PBO, log in to the Salesforce Partner Community.
- Click the question icon AppExchange Support question mark and then click Log a Case for Help.
- Select Salesforce Partner Program Support.
Tip: If you don’t see the Salesforce Partner Program Support tile, use the org picker to select the org that’s associated with your Salesforce partnership account.
- Navigate to ”Setup” → “Installed Packages” to verify the installation.
- Associate a Package with the License Management App
- Assign required permissions to administrators and users managing licenses.
- Enable key features such as automated notifications and license provisioning workflows.
Additionally. For product, enter and select Partner Programs & Benefits. For the topic, enter and select ISV Technology Request. Provide any other required details, and then click Create Case.
After Salesforce reviews the case, you receive an email with an installation URL.
As for the best practices to carry out this step, they are the following:
- Align the initial configuration with organizational goals to ensure the LMA supports strategic license management outcomes.
- Establish consistent naming conventions for licenses and user groups simplifies future tracking and reporting efforts.
- Add custom fields in the LMA is beneficial for capturing additional data specific to license usage needs.
- Use dashboards during setup helps monitor progress and identify any configuration gaps effectively.
- Design scalable workflows ensures the LMA can adapt to organizational growth or structural changes.
If you’re curious about setting up the LMA, you may be as well interested in how to build an app for Salesforce AppExchange.
Now, we proceed with figuring out how to assign licenses.
Key Best Practices for Managing Licenses with LMA
Frankly enough, even if LMA is set up error-free, there’s still room for mistakes or inefficiencies. They are mostly related to usage and management. Let’s explore how to manage licenses with LMA in an optimal way:
Optimizing Customer Retention with License Activity Tracking
Effective customer retention requires proactive monitoring of license activity. The License Management App (LMA) provides valuable insights into customer engagement, allowing businesses to detect potential churn risks and act before customers discontinue their licenses.
Best strategies for license activity tracking:
- Monitor license expirations: Set up Apex triggers or automation flows to notify sales reps before a license expires, allowing them to initiate renewal discussions with customers.
- Track uninstalls: Implement automated notifications to alert customer retention specialists when a customer uninstalls an offering. This enables timely outreach to understand the reason and potentially restore the relationship.
- Analyze engagement trends: Use LMA data to identify customers who rarely use their licenses, signaling a need for support, additional training, or feature improvements.
- Segment customers based on usage: Categorize license holders into active, at-risk, and inactive groups to tailor support and marketing efforts accordingly.
By leveraging LMA’s tracking capabilities, businesses can proactively manage customer relationships, ensuring higher retention rates and improved user satisfaction.
Enhancing License Compliance and Access Control
Maintaining compliance and proper access control is critical for software vendors managing licenses at scale. LMA provides structured tools to ensure that licenses are correctly assigned, managed, and audited.
Best strategies for license compliance and access control:
- Use the API for license validation: The isCurrentUserLicensed method in Apex helps determine whether a user has an active license for a managed package, ensuring only authorized users can access the solution.
- Restrict direct modifications to LMA objects: LMA automatically creates package, package version, and license records. Instead of modifying these records directly, always use the Modify License page to update entitlements and permissions.
- Create list view filters for lead management: Distinguish subscriber-generated leads from other sources by setting up list view filters in Salesforce, helping sales teams focus on AppExchange prospects.
- Conduct periodic license audits: Regularly review user entitlements and access levels to ensure compliance with licensing agreements and prevent unauthorized usage.
Implementing these best practices helps businesses streamline license administration, enhance security, and maintain compliance with Salesforce’s licensing framework.
Regular Audits
Regular license audits play a strategic role in aligning license usage with organizational goals. They uncover patterns of underutilization or inefficiencies, offering insights for license reallocation or cost-saving opportunities.
Beyond compliance, audits help forecast future needs, ensuring the organization scales efficiently while maintaining operational effectiveness and adhering to Salesforce licensing agreements.
Benefits of regular audits:
- Reduce costs by identifying unused or underutilized licenses for reallocation or deactivation.
- Improve compliance with Salesforce licensing policies and regulatory requirements like GDPR or HIPAA.
- Align license usage with organizational needs, preventing overprovisioning or inefficiencies.
- Enhance forecasting by providing data to predict future license requirements and budget planning.
- Minimize risks associated with non-compliance or licensing agreement violations.
A sample audit checklist is provided in the image below:

Automating License Management
Automating license management streamlines allocation and de-provisioning, reducing manual effort, errors, and costs. By leveraging Salesforce’s built-in automation tools, organizations can efficiently manage licenses while ensuring compliance and operational efficiency.
Best strategies for automating license management:
- Usage-based allocation: Automate the reassignment of licenses based on actual usage patterns, deactivating licenses for inactive users and reallocating them to new users.
- Threshold-based alerts: Set up automation to trigger alerts when license usage reaches predefined thresholds, enabling proactive adjustments.
- Lifecycle management: Implement end-to-end automation for the license lifecycle, from provisioning during onboarding to de-provisioning during offboarding or role changes.
Salesforce automation capabilities:
- Workflow rules
- Process builder
- Approval processes
- Einstein next best action
- Scheduled jobs
- Platform events
Best tools:
- Salesforce Flow: Salesforce Flow automates complex business processes, including license allocation and de-provisioning, using a visual interface.
- Apex Triggers: Utilize Apex code to execute specific actions, such as updating license records, based on defined events within Salesforce.
- License Management App (LMA): Manage leads and licenses for AppExchange solutions, integrating the LMA into sales and marketing processes for better customer engagement.
Should you experience difficulty with LMA management, consider requesting Salesforce administration services or explore how to hire a Salesforce administrator in another blog post by Synebo.
Tracking License Expiry and Renewals
Proactively managing Salesforce license expiration and renewals is critical for maintaining operations and ensuring Salesforce license compliance. Effective strategies help prevent service disruptions, reduce costs, and support Salesforce license optimization.
Tips for managing license expiration and renewal processes:
- Automated alerts: Configure notifications in Salesforce to alert administrators 30, 60, or 90 days before license expiration.
- Centralized tracking: Maintain a centralized system or dashboard that tracks all license expiration dates and renewal statuses.
- Stagger renewals: Schedule license renewals on a staggered basis to prevent resource strain and enable better budget planning.
- Vendor communication: Establish regular touchpoints with Salesforce account managers to discuss renewal terms, license needs, and potential discounts.
Potential pitfalls to avoid:
- Ignoring expiration alerts: Failing to act on alerts can lead to service disruptions or compliance issues.
- Overprovisioning at renewal: Renewing all licenses without assessing usage leads to unnecessary costs.
- Lack of documentation: Inadequate tracking of renewal terms and costs can complicate future negotiations or audits.
Customizing the App for Specific Business Needs
The Salesforce License Management App (LMA) offers customization options to align with specific organizational needs, enhancing Salesforce license management processes. Customizations can improve efficiency, compliance, and scalability across various business scenarios.
Customization options in LMA:
- Custom fields:
- Custom workflows
- Dashboards and reports
- Approval processes
- Automation with Salesforce Flow
At this moment, you may be wondering what’s the difference between configuration and customization and why the first was described as a part of the set-up procedure, why the latter is tied to managing LMAs. You may see how customization and configuration are different and what specialists are responsible for one or another scope of work in the image below:

Best practices:
- Centralized tracking: Maintain a centralized dashboard that provides a real-time overview of all licenses to ensure consistent monitoring.
- Role-based access: Configure workflows to allocate licenses based on predefined roles and responsibilities, ensuring compliance and efficiency.
- Proactive notifications: Set up automated alerts for nearing expiration dates or unusual usage patterns to avoid disruptions.
- Scalable processes: Design workflows and reports that accommodate organizational growth without requiring extensive manual updates.
- Regular review: Periodically assess customizations to ensure they align with evolving business needs and regulatory changes.
You may be additionally interested in Salesforce AppExchange development services by a trusted Salesforce partner.
Integrating LMA with Other Salesforce Tools
Integrating the Salesforce License Management App with other Salesforce tools or third-party applications can significantly enhance Salesforce license management by improving efficiency, tracking, and automation. These integrations streamline workflows, provide deeper insights, and ensure compliance.
Third-party integrations recommended:
- Salesforce Sales Cloud: Connect LMA with Sales Cloud to link license data with customer accounts, enabling better tracking of client-specific license usage.
- Salesforce Flow: Use Flow for automation, such as assigning licenses based on user onboarding triggers or de-provisioning licenses upon role changes.
- Einstein Analytics: Integrate with Einstein Analytics to generate advanced reports and predictive insights about license usage trends and future needs.
- Third-party HR tools: Sync LMA with HR platforms like Workday or BambooHR to automate license provisioning and deactivation during employee onboarding or offboarding.
- Collaboration tools: Integrate with Slack or Microsoft Teams for real-time notifications about license usage, expiration, or other key updates.
How integrations can enhance license management
- Reduce operational costs by optimizing license allocation and usage.
- Minimize compliance risks through automated workflows and real-time tracking.
- Improve efficiency by eliminating manual processes for license provisioning.
- Enhance decision-making with actionable insights from advanced analytics.
- Increase productivity by centralizing license management across tools.
- Reduce downtime by automating renewal alerts and deactivations.
3 Common Challenges in License Management and How to Overcome Them
And now, let’s get through three of the most common challenges in utilizing and managing LMA and ways to address them:
#1 Overcoming compliance issues
Adhering to compliance standards like GDPR or SOX is necessary to ensure that licenses match user roles and avoid feature misuse. For instance, granting admin-level licenses to users who don’t need access violates internal control policies and could breach compliance regulations, risking fines or audits.
Solution: It’s advised to implement automated license provisioning and de-provisioning based on role-based access control (RBAC). Regularly audit license assignments to ensure they align with compliance requirements, such as data protection under GDPR or operational transparency for SOX. Use Salesforce reports to flag inconsistencies, and provide teams with compliance training to reduce violations.
#2 Handling unexpected costs
Unexpected costs in Salesforce license management arise from improper allocation, overprovisioning, and underutilization of licenses. These issues increase expenses and waste resources. Effective Salesforce license monitoring and optimization are crucial to managing costs and maintaining compliance while maximizing ROI.
Tips and strategies:
- Conduct regular audits to identify unused licenses.
- Automate license allocation with Salesforce tools.
- Monitor active versus assigned licenses.
- Use Salesforce license optimization dashboards.
- Negotiate flexible license agreements.
- Consolidate duplicate user accounts.
- Train employees on efficient license usage.
#3 Improving user adoption of license management processes
Low user adoption in managing Salesforce licenses can lead to inefficiencies and compliance risks. Encouraging best practices here requires clear communication, streamlined processes, and regular training.
Strategies for adoption:
- Create role-based user guides for managing Salesforce licenses.
- Conduct workshops or Q&A sessions to address user concerns.
- Share internal documentation through collaborative tools like Confluence or SharePoint.
- Communicate updates via Slack or email with clear action points.
Useful resources:
- Salesforce Trailhead Modules for training on license management.
- Salesforce Help Center for official documentation and guides.
- Trailblazer Community for connecting with experts and learning best practices.
- Confluence for internal documentation sharing.
- Slack for effective communication and updates.
You may also be interested in exploring 3 steps for the Salesforce app development lifecycle in another blog post by Synebo.
Final Take
Effective license management with Salesforce’s License Management App can significantly improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance compliance. By following best practices like regular audits, automation, and integration with other tools, organizations can optimize license usage while avoiding common pitfalls.
Entrust your LMA project to Synebo — a Salesforce development agency with more than 9 years of experience on the market and over 1000 projects under our belt. Our team of senior Salesforce specialists is ready, willing, and able to execute LMA setup and management for you.
Contact us for assistance.