FoCal License Management System Update

We’ve spent a bit of time updating the FoCal License Management System to make it a easier to use and also to support new ways of buying FoCal (more about that later).

Passwords

When you log in to the LMS now at lms.fo-cal.co.uk you’ll notice that it’s nice and bright!  But the biggest change we’ve made to people familiar with the system is the use of passwords rather than restricting you to just use the PayPal transaction ID.

Why passwords?

We’ve made this change for a couple of big reasons.  Firstly, because of the way PayPal works, the PayPal Transaction ID that appears in your email from Reikan is not the same as the one that appears on your receipt (you get a buyer transaction ID, and our system gets a seller transactionID, which is the one used for the LMS).  Over the years, this has led to a lot of confusion as to why customers can’t log in with the PayPal Transaction ID on their receipt!  It’s a nuisance for both you and us, so we’re glad to get rid of that system!

Secondly, being able to set your own password is industry standard and means you don’t have to keep looking up long Transaction IDs from old emails, which should make things significantly easier for you.

Password Security

There’s lots of press recently about security of personal information on the internet, so when implementing the password system we’ve used the latest ideas from security researchers.  Technically, passwords are stored as salted hashes (which is industry standard), but we use a deliberately very slow algorithm to generate the hash which means the passwords require a lot of computational power to crack.

What’s more, as we only store the password hashes, we have absolutely no idea what your password is.  Which means if you forget your password, you have to reset it (we can’t tell you what it was!)

New Customers

When you buy FoCal now, you will receive an email which contains installation instructions and at the bottom will tell you your email and password for logging in to the LMS and for using in the License Management page of the FoCal application when you first install it.

You can log in to the LMS at lms.fo-cal.co.uk if you want to change your email address or your password.

I haven’t got a Password!

If you bought FoCal before we launched the new License Management System, you won’t yet have a password.  You can still log in to the License Management System exactly as before – with the PayPal Transaction ID sent in your original purchase email from Reikan.  If you’ve lost your original email, you can enter your registered email address in the “Resend Email” section on the website at lms.fo-cal.co.uk to have your original purchase email sent to you – this will contain your PayPal Transaction ID that you need to log in.

Once you’ve entered your details and can see your personal license page, you can set a password in the Password section:

Simply enter you password twice and click “Update your Password“.  Note: When you run the FoCal application next, you will need to update your password in the License Management page (Windows: Click About then License, or Mac: Click the FoCal menu and choose License…).

Forgotten your Password?

If you’ve forgotten your password, you can reset it by entering your email address in the “Forgotten your Password?” section on at lms.fo-cal.co.uk:

Mail Preferences

We’ve also added a mailing preferences section to your license details page:

If you don’t want to receive any emails from us, you can un-tick the box and click “Update your Email / Mailing Prefs“.

In case you’re wondering if you’ve missed emails from us in the past – don’t worry!  We haven’t sent any for over a year, but we’re planning on sending out one or two emails a month with information about program updates, new features and how to get the best out of FoCal.

And Finally…

We hope you like the new LMS and find it easier to use, but if you have any problems then get in touch using the contact page and let us know.