FAQ for Education

Step 1: ARIS Community

1. Navigate to the Overview page.
2. Click the “Subscribe” button for ARIS Cloud for Students.
3. The subsequent page will contain a form that will be pre-populated with your data. Please check to make sure that it is accurate.
   • If the information is incorrect, please click to change it.
4. After you have reviewed the form, click the button “Request your free educational ARIS Cloud link”.
5. After a few minutes, you will receive an email with a link to the ARIS Cloud Shop.

Step 2: ARIS Cloud Shop

1. Click the link provided in the email from the ARIS Community to access the ARIS Cloud Shop.
   • At first glance, it may seem like this offer requires payment; this is, however, not the case. Your ARIS Cloud for Students 6 weeks subscription is free.
2. Fill out the form with your personal information. Please remember that at no point will your payment information be necessary, so don’t worry about being billed for this offer.
3. After you have filled out and checked that you have accurately filled in your information, click “Continue”, then “Place Order” on the subsequent webpage.
4. During the course of the next 15 minutes you will receive three emails, the first two of which require no action. In the third email, click on the first link to access your ARIS Cloud project room, using the user name and password provided in the email to log in.
5. Click “Launch” on the next page to begin planning your first process!

No, the price for this offer is 0.00 €! We even sent you an invoice stating the 0.00€ total for your convenience.

In order to export/download your models from ARIS Cloud, there are a few ways you can try:

Option 1:

1. Go to the Application Launcher (top-left corner), and select "Published content"
2. Navigate to the model you want to export
3. Go to "Diagram"
4. Click on the printer icon on the top-right corner, under "Edit model". You will then see a window to download the model as a PDF file

Option 2:

1. Go to the Application Launcher (top-left corner), and select "Models & Objects"
2. Navigate to the model you want to export
3. Click on the model to open the edit page for that model
4. From the edit page: Go to "Model" and click the icon of a picture. You will then download the model as a PNG file

Your ARIS Basic for Students subscription will last for 6 weeks. At the end of this period, you will have the opportunity to renew your subscription for an additional 6 weeks, if required. You may only do this once.

We always try to offer the newest and best software to our Students. Therefore with a subscription to ARIS Cloud for Students you gain access to ARIS Basic, the newest member of the ARIS Cloud family. In order to get more information about Basic have a look at these FAQs an these tutorial videos.

ARIS Basic is not designed to fit the faculty members' needs, it is meant to be used by students. However, as a faculty member, please feel free to subscribe for 6 weeks to gain an impression on how easy it is to use ARIS Basic for students. In order to continue using ARIS after your subscription ends, you should download ARIS Download for Faculties or ARIS Cloud for Faculties.

You should fill in your university’s physical address in the fields labeled “Address” through “State or province”.

Patience! After you submit your information to the ARIS Cloud Shop, you will receive three emails within 15 minutes after your submission. The first two emails, the order confirmation and invoice, require no action. The third contains your login credentials, which you can use to access ARIS Cloud. If you have not received your credentials within an hour after submitting your order, please post your question in the University Relations forum.

For further details related to ARIS Basic, please have a look here.

You have the following options:

1. ARIS Education Package
2. ARIS Cloud (Paid subscription)
3. If you need ARIS Basic for Students for just a few more days to complete your project then you can renew your subscription for an additional 6 weeks. You may only do this once.

Currently, we can only offer free vouchers to students as long as they are still in stock. If you couldn't get yours in time, we recommend the On-Premise alternative ARIS Education Package for Students.

1. Login to ARIS Cloud, click on the Application Launcher (top-left corner), and select “Manage database”.
2. Start backup, A zip file with .adb extension is created.
3. Start ARIS Architect and connect to your local Server (User: system, Password: manager)
4. Click on ARIS menu, open Administration tab. Right click on LOCAL server and select “Restore database” option.
5. Select the backup file which was exported previously and click on finish.
6. After successful importing of the databases, you can see a new entry with ARIS Cloud Basic database.
7. To access the imported process models, Click on “ARIS” menu, select “Explorer”. Under ARIS Cloud Basic ->Content , you can find the process models.

To request an extension code, please contact us at universitycommunity(at)softwareag.com

To extend your project room, please log in to your project room and go to Administration -> Subscriptions and Licenses. There, under “Your ARIS Edition”, you should see a button that says “Renew subscription” that links to your ARIS Cloud Shop log in page, where you can manage and renew your subscriptions. Once logged in there, please go to “My Products”, choose “Renew now” for your subscription and put in your discount code at the checkout page.

If your project room has been expired for more than 30 days, then you would need to create a new one as all the data of the old one has been deleted. If this is the case, please request a new one.

We need to verify that you are a student or faculty member in order to grant you a free license. We do so by matching the domain of your email with the university domain that is saved in our database.

This means we couldn't identify you as a university member. To solve the issue, please follow these steps:

• Make sure you used your university email address when you've registered in the forum. If not, please go to your profile and change it! Please take care that there are no spelling mistakes and that you are using lowercase letters.
• Make sure your university is already saved in our database. You can see the global academic network in the reference section. If your university does not show up, you can quickly add your university yourself!
• To get access to the faculty member-only or teacher-only offerings, please fill the additional registration form to become acknowledged. 
  Please understand checking your registration may take 2-3 working days. You will receive an email from University Relations.

Please check your spam filter. It might be the case that the successful download message was filtered out. We kindly ask you to a) remove the spam filter and b) request the license key a second time. If you used a campus email address, please ask your university's server administrator to check the filter.

As long as you are a university member you can request new licenses using the Overview page four weeks (!) before the expiry date of your existing keys:

1. Choose the appropriate program from the Overview page and request your new license. You’ll receive an email containing your new license key.
2. Run the setup for ARIS software (again). As long as it is the same version, there’s no need to download the installation files again.
3. Choose "update license" and link to the saved ZIP file when prompted

Don't do it before time. Any earlier request for new keys will result in re-sending of the existing keys. You will also get an email notification four weeks prior to expiration. In fact it's not a prolongation, but a new license agreement. You will receive new license keys with the same duration (6 or 12 months) to overwrite the existing keys, given that the product version has not been updated meanwhile.That means students can request licenses every six months and faculty members can request licenses every twelve months.There is no other way of extending the licenses. We also do not grant perpetual licenses in this free of charge offering.

For the detailed information about extension process of already expired license, please have a look here.

To support you in the installation process even better, we have created an ARIS Quickstart Guide on YouTube that explains how to install and configure ARIS in your academic environment.

If you are a Faculty member, please contact UniversityCommunity(at)softwareag.com. We would be happy to assist you.

The recommended hardware requirements apply to the currently offered ARIS version. For a more detailed view, please have a look at the ARIS System Requirements.

ARIS is officially supported only for Windows.

ARIS Education Package for Students | Single User local installation WITH or WITHOUT local database system:

• Windows 10 (64 bit)

ARIS Education Package for Faculties | Multi user private cloud local installation:

• Windows 10 (64 bit)
• Windows 11 (64 bit)

If you want to use ARIS Education Package for Students | Single User local installation MAC or Linux, you can do so with a Virtual Machine.

ARIS Connect Server from the ARIS Education Package for Faculties | Multi User private cloud can be used either on Windows or Linux. If you want to use it on MAC, you can do so with a Virtual Machine.

For more details about the supported Server Operating System Platforms please see our ARIS System Requirements:
ARIS Education for Students | Single User local installation
ARIS Education for Faculties | Multi User private cloud

You will receive an email with the following steps after successfully requesting the software.

1. Download the ARIS Client Setup
2. Unzip the downloaded file
3. Open the folder "ARIS Client" and start the setup.exe
   • Accept the license agreement
   • Activate both ARIS Architect/Designer and ARIS UML Designer checkboxes
   • Choose whether you want to use a local database system
   • Save the attached ZIP file (this is your license key) to your local system, do NOT unzip this file
   • Link to the saved ZIP file when prompted
4. Depending on your system, the installation procedure may take up to half an hour or more.
5. Launch the program when the installation has finished and enter:
   • User: system
   • Password: manager

For better illustrated instructions (screen shots) to help you through the process, please see our installation guide.

1. Download the ARIS DVD 10.X
2. Unzip the downloaded file
3. Open the folder "ARIS Server" and start the setup.exe
   • Accept the license agreement
   • Save the attached ZIP file (this is your license key) to your local system and do NOT unzip this file
   • Link to the saved ZIP file when prompted
4. Depending on your system the installation procedure may take up to half an hour or more. Do not interrupt the installation.
5. Start the server by opening Windows Start menu and then navigate to the folder “ARIS”, click “Start ARIS”. Depending on your system, this procedure may take some time.
6. Open “<name of your server>/umc” in your browser to configure databases and users and assign your licenses to users or groups
   • User: system
   • Password: manager
7. Go to ARIS Connect Home and then “administration” to publish your database for all users (See also ARIS Architect).
8. Go to ARIS Connect Home and then to “User administration” to add users and manage groups. Click on a user or a group and go to privileges to assign licences.

For more information about server setup and administration see this excellent forum post: Getting started with ARIS 9 - the server side of life. The post is still valid for this ARIS 10 software.

1. Export data via tenant backup from ARIS 9.
2. Switch off ARIS 9. Do NOT uninstall yet.
3. Install ARIS 10 on the same computer and import tenant backup.

Do NOT operate ARIS 9 and ARIS 10 in parallel, although it should theoretically work (except for the HTTP port conflict)

Do NOT mix ARIS Connect server and ARIS Architect in different versions.

An installation with a local database is needed in a single-user scenario, i.e. if you want to use ARIS for an individual matter (working paper, project, thesis, just playing around etc.) and want to host your database by yourself on your local machine.

An installation without a local database is usually needed in a multi-user scenario, e.g. if you want to use ARIS as a part of an university course. In this case, ARIS Connect Server has to be previously installed in the university’s network. The Faculty then hosts the cloud where all models are stored. The users (e.g. students) access the ARIS software in their browser without any prior installations and connect to the private cloud.

With the successful request of one of our University Relations products, you will receive an email with further download/installation information as well as an attached license key in form of a ZIP file. Please do NOT unzip the ZIP license key.

During the installation process you will be prompted to specify the location of this ZIP license file. Therefore, please ensure that the license file is in a location that will be accessible during the installation, such as on the file system.

Error "IDS_BADSIGN_ABORT" = "The setup source path contains spaces or invalid characters, such as:'_()[]}\&$%= `.;'. This installation will be aborted." Your install path contains one of these illegal characters.

Please use the install path "C:" to avoid this error. Do not install in "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Program Files (x86)".

Please check if your license key is still valid. You can find the expiry date of your current license key in the email you received when you downloaded the product or in the ZIP file.

If your license key is no longer valid, please go to the Downloads & Subscriptions page and request a new license key. If it is still valid, please re-install ARIS and make sure you enter the license key as a ZIP file, not as an xml.

Remark: You can re-use your already installed data by using the “Repair” functionality by opening your system control panel under Windows. Execute the “Software” applet, search for your ARIS installation and execute the “Repair” function. While repairing the program, you will be requested to enter a new license key. The repair function does not delete personal settings/user files on your computer. The repair process takes almost as long as a new installation process.

• After installing ARIS Connect server, start the server by opening Windows Start menu and then navigate to the folder “ARIS”, click “Start ARIS”. Depending on your system, this procedure may take some time.
• If you want to use ARIS Architect with a local database/local server, you need to change a radio button during the installation process. If the error “cannot connect to LOCAL server” appears, you missed to do so. Please re-install ARIS and ensure to install “ARIS with local standard database system”.

Your hostname contains an illegal character such as an underscore ('_')
Hostname labels may contain only the letters 'a' through 'z' (in a case-insensitive manner), the digits '0' through '9', and the hyphen ('-'). Dots ('.') are only allowed if they separate two domain parts. Labels must not start or end with a hyphen.
Please replace all illegal characters with hyphens ('-') to solve the issue.

The simulation is currently not working on LOCAL database. If you are a faculty member please install the Education package WITHOUT LOCAL database. If you are a student please contact us in order to find a fitting solution for you.

The error is described as followed: A user creates, saves and closes a model. When opening the model (by the same user) the model is marked as protected/ read-only and can not be edited.

The error occurs if more than one user uses the same account and the version of ARIS is below 10.0.12 . To solve this issue, make sure that only one user uses an account at the same time and update your ARIS installation to the newest version.

Kindly check if the versions of ARIS Connect server and ARIS Architect matches. We recommend to update your ARIS installation to the newest version.

In this case, please try re-installing the ARIS Server again using your new license keys.

This is because the current database that you are logged into isn't available in your chosen language. Please change your language settings to one of the languages supported by your professor - this would normally be the national language of your institution.

We offer you a variety of opportunities to review and discuss issues if needed such as the forum, tutorials and the FAQ. We do our best to fulfill all your student and faculty needs. Please let us know about your struggles in our forum, so we can create content that serves your needs. However, please understand that we cannot provide personal premium support in this free of charge offering.

Please find more information about University Relations and the University Relations Program at:

• Software AG University Relations Website
• Software AG Education Community

In case of any requests, comments, criticism, ideas - whatsoever: please contact universitycommunity@SoftwareAG.com. 

Please note: none of the free-of-charge offerings include support. If you need help, please post your query in the forum.

Software AG offers an extensive training platform with product badges at Software AG Learning Portal

Dieses Angebot ist je nach Sichtweise richtig und falsch. Lassen Sie uns bitte eines vorwegnehmen, bevor wir in die Erläuterung eintauchen:

Sie können “ARIS for Schools” auch weiterhin kostenlos verwenden!

Wie Sie wissen, stellen wir Ihnen mit dem “ARIS for Schools” -Angebot die volle Funktionalität der ARIS Basic Software in der Cloud zur Verfügung. Genau, wie jedem anderen zahlenden Kunden. Einziger Unterschied ist, dass Sie mit dem „ARIS for Schools“-Voucher eine 12-monatige, kostenlose Nutzung erhalten. Aber ansonsten durchlaufen Sie ja bekanntlich denselben Kaufprozess. Wie alle anderen Kunden, haben Sie sich im ARIS Cloud Shop registriert und erhielten je eine E-Mail über:

• Die Auftragsbestätigung
• Die Rechnung (in Ihrem Fall über 0,00 Euro) und
• Die Zugangsdaten für Ihren Projektraum

Wie alle anderen Kunden werden auch Sie vor Ende des Ablaufdatums ein Angebot erhalten, Ihre Laufzeit kostenpflichtig zu verlängern. Davon ausgehend, dass Sie systemseitig, wie zahlende Kunden betrachtet werden, ist an diesem Angebot grundsätzlich nichts falsch. Bitte haben Sie aber im Hinterkopf, dass im Rahmen des “ARIS for Schools”-Angebots in der ARIS Community auch weiterhin kostenlose Voucher bereitstehen.

Dank Ihrer Rückmeldungen wurde uns der Bedarf verdeutlicht, die Laufzeit eines Tenants in beide Richtungen flexibler zu gestalten. Keine Sorge, die Lizenzbedingungen bleiben unverändert gültig: Jeder Voucher ermöglicht eine 12-monatige, kostenlose Nutzung eines Tenants.

Neu: Sie können die Laufzeit Ihres Tenants selbst festlegen und nach jedem Schulhalbjahr neu entscheiden. Grundsätzlich unterscheiden wir zwischen einer Aktivierung und einer Verlängerung:

• Eine Aktivierung bezieht sich auf die zweiten 6 Monate der Nutzung eines Tenants. Ohne Ihre Aktivierung läuft Ihr Tenant nach 6 Monaten aus.
• Eine Verlängerung ist möglich, nachdem die 12-monatige, kostenlose Nutzung eines Tenants abgelaufen ist. Dazu benötigen Sie einen neuen Voucher.

Jeder Voucher ermöglicht eine 12-monatige, kostenlose Nutzung eines Tenants.

Neu: Sie sind flexibler in der Gestaltung der Nutzungsdauer Ihrer Tenants und können Schulhalbjahresweise entscheiden, wie Sie weiter vorgehen möchten. Bitte achten Sie darauf, dass unsere E-Mails nicht in Ihrem Spam-Ordner landen:

• Fall 1) Sie haben das Schulhalbjahr mit Ihrer Schulklasse abgeschlossen und wollen den Tenant auslaufen lassen. → Das ist einfach: Hier haben Sie nichts zu tun. Der Tenant deaktiviert sich selbst, läuft also nach 6 Monaten aus und alle Daten werden gelöscht.
• Fall 2) Sie wollen im folgenden Schulhalbjahr mit Ihrer Schulklasse im bestehenden Tenant weiterarbeiten. → Aktivieren Sie einfach die durchgehende 12-monatige Nutzung, sobald Sie in einer E-Mail dazu aufgefordert werden. Hinweis: für die durchgehende Nutzung benötigen Sie keinen neuen Voucher, es ist aber erforderlich, dass Sie die durchgehende Nutzung aktivieren, da sonst Fall 1 eintritt.
• Fall 3) Die 12-monatige Nutzungsdauer ist abgelaufen und die Daten werden nicht weiter benötigt. → Das ist wieder einfach: Sie haben nichts zu tun. Der Tenant läuft aus und alle Daten werden gelöscht.
• Fall 4) Die 12-monatige Nutzungsdauer ist abgelaufen, aber Sie wollen den Tenant weiterhin nutzen. → Beantragen Sie einen neuen Voucher in Ihrer ARIS Community. Verwenden Sie diesen Voucher für die kostenlose Verlängerung eines bestehenden Tenants. Danach gilt die Nutzungsdauer wieder von vorne und alle vier hier genannten Fälle sind anwendbar.

Sie dürfen bis zu 5 Voucher gleichzeitig beantragen und somit 5 Tenants gleichzeitig betreiben, oder anders ausgedrückt: Sie können bis zu 5 Schulklassen mit jeweils eigenen Projekträumen versehen. Jeder Tenant ist technisch gesehen eigenständig. Wenn Sie 5 Tenants gleichzeitig betreiben, erhalten Sie auch 5 gleichzeitige Benachrichtigungen, z.B. 5 Erinnerungen über das bevorstehende Laufzeit-Ende eines jeden Tenants.

For further resources related to ARIS, please have a look here.

For details about security aspects in ARIS Cloud, please have a look here.

Software AG offers a wide range of training material. Check it out!

You can find the Accessibility Report on ARIS here: ARIS Accessibility Report. You need to be logged in as a Faculty Member to see the report.