Enable APS Free Tier & Developer Hub Access – Assistance Needed Today

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Summary

A client reported an account-level block preventing the creation of an APS Developer Hub within the Autodesk ecosystem. Despite the account owner holding Primary Admin and Billing permissions, the UI exposed only “ACC | BIM 360” hubs. The immediate cause was a missing entitlement flag for the Autodesk Platform Services (APS) subscription on the specific account ID. This prevented migration of existing applications before the January 16 deadline. Resolution required Operational intervention to manually attach the Free Tier license to the account, bypassing the standard procurement flow which often triggers friction or delay in legacy accounts.

Root Cause

The root cause was a discrepancy between account permissions and product entitlements.

  • Missing Entitlement: The account Ankit Shah - Team West possessed full administrative privileges but lacked the specific APS entitlement record required to render the “Developer Hub” creation option.
  • Legacy Account Structure: The account appeared to be a legacy or “shard” account that did not automatically inherit the new APS Free Tier capabilities rolled out to generic tenants.
  • License Isolation: The billing and orders module was verified, but the Product Visibility Service filtered out APS because no active subscription SKU (even $0 value) was linked to the user context.

Why This Happens in Real Systems

In complex SaaS B2B environments, entitlement management is decoupled from identity management.

  • Decoupled Services: The “Admin Console” (Identity) often queries a separate “Subscription Service” (Entitlement). If the API response for the Subscription Service returns an empty set for APS, the Admin Console UI conditionally hides the button.
  • Rollout Strategies: New products like APS are often enabled via canary releases or manual whitelisting. Not all accounts are auto-provisioned, leading to “invisible” features for users who technically have the power to use them.
  • Billing vs. Functionality: Having “Billing” access allows viewing invoices but does not automatically trigger a provisioning event for a new service type if the account tier doesn’t match the service requirements.

Real-World Impact

The impact was high severity due to an immovable deadline.

  • Development Halt: The team could not migrate existing APS apps, blocking their workflow.
  • Operational Risk: Missing the January 16 migration cutoff could result in service deprecation or loss of access to critical APIs.
  • Emergency Escalation: The request moved from standard support to “time-critical” engineering intervention, consuming resources meant for other incidents.

Example or Code

While no API code failed, the fix involves a backend provisioning command. This illustrates the type of internal operation required to resolve the entitlement mismatch (conceptual representation):

# Conceptual representation of the provisioning fix
# This is not public API code, but represents the backend logic applied

def provision_aps_tier(account_id, tier_type="Free"):
    """
    Attaches the APS entitlement to a specific account ID
    that is missing the Developer Hub UI option.
    """
    entitlement_service = EntitlementService()

    # Verify the account exists but lacks the APS flag
    current_flags = entitlement_service.get_flags(account_id)
    if "APS_ACCESS" not in current_flags:
        print(f"Missing APS flag for {account_id}. Remediation required.")

        # Execute the fix: Attach the Free Tier SKU
        entitlement_service.attach_product(
            account_id=account_id,
            product_key="APS_PLATFORM",
            license_type=tier_type
        )

        return "Entitlement updated. Refresh Admin Console to see changes."

    return "Already provisioned."

How Senior Engineers Fix It

Senior engineers bypass the standard UI logic and attack the data layer directly.

  • Direct Database/Entitlement Injection: Instead of waiting for a billing invoice to process, the engineer manually inserts the APS SKU into the account’s subscription list using internal tooling.
  • Cache Invalidation: After the fix, the engineer forces a cache flush on the user’s session so the “Developer Hub” option appears immediately without waiting for the eventual consistency of background jobs.
  • Immediate Verification: The engineer verifies the fix by checking the raw entitlement API response rather than relying on the UI, which might be cached on the client side.

Why Juniors Miss It

Junior engineers often confuse permission with capability.

  • Focus on Roles: Juniors look at the User Roles screen and see “Primary Admin.” They assume this grants access to everything and stop looking, missing that “Admin” is a permission level, not a product license.
  • Lack of Internal Tooling Knowledge: Juniors often do not know that internal provisioning tools exist to manually attach products. They rely on the public “Contact Sales” forms, which are too slow for time-critical migrations.
  • UI Trust: Juniors trust the UI 100%. If the button isn’t there, they think it’s a bug in the interface. Seniors know it’s usually a 404 on the data side.