Adobe Creative Cloud 2019, the death of Creative Cloud Packager, Serial Numbers & Device Pool Licensing

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Earlier today at Adobe’s annual Adobe Max Creativity Conference, Adobe announced Adobe Creative Cloud 2019.

Whilst that announcement will not surprise many an admin, there are some other changes that will impact us.

Details on these can be found below.

Creative Cloud 2019

MacRumors has a decent little writeup listing some of the app changes & updates included within Creative Cloud 2019.

Death of Creative Cloud Packager

Love it or loathe it, Creative Cloud Packager (CCP) has been around since mid-2013, & has been a helpful tool for us Admins to create PKG’s for the various Creative Cloud releases.

Around mid 2016, Adobe published a KB on automating CCP using some specially crafted XML.

Soon after, both mosen & tvsutton started to experiment in leveraging this automation. This later became the adobe-ccp-recipes repo, of which I am happy to have contributed to.

However….

This new kb, Apps not available in Creative Cloud Packager | CC 2019, details that:

You cannot use Creative Cloud Packager to create packages that include CC 2019 apps or later. This means that when creating a package, the Creative Cloud Packager Applications and Updates screen will not display CC 2019 apps

However, there is a solution:

To create packages for CC 2019 apps, go to the Packages tab in the Admin Console. For help on creating packages, see Package apps in the Admin Console. For more information, see the Packaging user guide.

But, if you have a Teams license, you might not see the above option due to:

We are transitioning to a redesigned Admin Console. However, if you currently have the following Admin Console experience, you cannot use CCP or the Admin Console to package CC 2019 apps and deploy these for your end users

After reaching out to Adobe, all accounts on the “old” Admin Console will be transitioned by end of Jan 2019.

If you’re not sure which console you have, see this kb., with the “old” console on the left & the “new” console on the right.

So, if you’re on the “old” console.. wait until Jan or maybe Adobe Support can create the PKG’s for you as per the form from the Apps not available in Creative Cloud Packager | CC 2019 kb:

If, for some reason, you are unable to deploy the Creative Cloud desktop app to your end-user computers, contact Adobe support for a package that includes CC 2019 apps.

I didn’t have much luck there, however.

Device Licensing

Earlier this year, there was an Adobe Webinar on Adobe updating it’s licensing technology.

The main news from that was:

Serial Number End of Life Notification
At the end of 2019, we plan to start decommissioning the use of serial numbers. Once decommissioned, a serial number will not work, and thus the applicable products, applications, and services will no longer work. To continue your use of these products, applications, and services, they must be deployed via the named user deployment method.

If you are an Education customer, then you might also have had device licenses.

This kb incorrectly states “Creative Cloud 2017 is the last version of Creative Cloud available on device licenses.”, as device licenses gave worked throughout CC 2018.

However, it appears that they no longer work for CC 2019.

Reaching out to Adobe Support, I received the response:

You can use 2018 version in that sign in not required. 2019 is only available in named user license.

13 thoughts on “Adobe Creative Cloud 2019, the death of Creative Cloud Packager, Serial Numbers & Device Pool Licensing

  1. Kheenan halvorson

    So if I read this right 2019 CC can only be deployed as a named user license? What happens when my device licenses have to be renewed?

  2. Allegedly will be a lab solution for edu coming “Summer 2019” which will licence a machine while requiring an adobe ID sign in for things like XD (according to Adobe rep in macadmins Slack)

    • Yep. Will happily post an update once there is something more substantial to back that up.

      Don’t get me wrong, I trust the guy.. just Adobe need to get better at this.

    • I’d really have hoped that folks with 100’s of systems would have tested 1st!!

      But if Adobe’s messaging had been clearer, problems could have been averted.

      • Flippant and chauvinistic response is not appreciated. In an educational setting, students bring 2019 files back to the college studio (on 2018). There’s no way to “test” what happens when they up/down/up/downgrade from different systems, especially since Adobe also scrambled in new type licensing. Teachers aren’t welcome to mess with the Admin Console by IT departments who usually see Adobe (to say nothing of Apple) as an outsized pain. The same problem exists in any work group or business that takes customer native files. Adobe has massively failed its users and as our IT department says “there’s nothing we can do.”

        • “Flippant and chauvinistic response is not appreciated.”

          I’m sure you don’t mean “chauvinistic”, but it might have been seen as somewhat flippant (which if you stick around is a common theme here).

          Anyways, I work for an MSP.. we support Business & Edu customers.

          Adobe have poorly communicated this, & as a customer of theirs, you need to express your displeasure to them.

          Nothing that I can do outside trying to spread the information, as I did above.

          Certainly, commenting like you have on this little blog of mine is not going to make a difference to Adobe.

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