Minter User Guide
Day-to-day operating instructions for the Minter licence system (Trust Armory + Support Funnel). This page is not linked from any menu — bookmark it directly.
What Minter Is
Minter is the self-contained Excel workbook (Minter.xlsm) used to mint, track, and manage software licences for Trust Armory and Support Funnel. Every licence is cryptographically signed (Ed25519) via a companion program, Signer.exe, logged to a plain-text audit file, and issued to the customer as a PDF certificate.
Minter is built for one administrator, one active session at a time. It has no login system of its own — Windows account access to this PC is the access control.
Minting a Licence
- Go to the Trust Armory or Support Funnel sheet.
- Enter the customer’s domain, or tick Any Domain for a portable licence.
- Choose Licence Type: Trial or Paid.
- Enter the Product Version being licensed.
- Set an Expiry Date, or tick Perpetual (Paid only — trials always expire).
- Fill in the customer’s details.
- Click Mint Licence.
If this is a repeat trial for a domain that already had one, you’ll see a warning with the previous expiry date. Only tick Override Trial Restriction if you deliberately want to issue a second trial — it’s recorded in the audit trail.
What Happens If Something Fails Mid-Mint
The mint sequence is: sign → write to the licence log file → write to the audit trail → refresh the on-screen table → generate the PDF.
Once the licence log file write succeeds, the licence is valid and permanently recorded. Anything that goes wrong after that point is reported as a specific, narrow problem rather than “the mint failed”:
- Audit trail write fails → you are told the licence is valid but the audit entry is missing
- On-screen table refresh fails → use Rebuild Workbook From Audit File
- PDF generation fails → use Regenerate PDF once the underlying issue is fixed
Only a failure at the signing or licence log write step means nothing happened at all.
Key Management: The Basics
Generate New Key Pair creates a new key version but does not activate it. You must separately click Activate Key on the version you want live. Only one key per product can be active at a time.
Archive Key retires a key from signing new licences — but its public key is kept forever, so licences already signed under it remain verifiable.
Encrypted Key Backup — Do This Every Time
Run Create Encrypted Key Backup immediately after every Generate, Activate, or Archive action. There is no automatic reminder for this — it is a manual habit you must own.
Why: your last .enc backup is a snapshot frozen at the moment you created it. If you generate or activate a new key afterward and your PC dies before you back up again, that key is gone forever — any licence minted under it becomes permanently unverifiable, and you can never sign under that exact identity again.
Write the backup password down somewhere you’ll actually check (password manager, secure note). There is no recovery mechanism for a lost password — the backup file becomes permanently useless without it, by design.
Backups vs. Key Backups — They Are Not The Same Thing
| Create Backup | Create Encrypted Key Backup |
|---|---|
Copies Minter.xlsm, LicenceLog.txt, and LicenceHistory.txt into Backups\ | Exports your actual private signing keys, password-encrypted, into KeyBackups\ |
| Protects your licence records and audit history | Protects your ability to mint new licences at all |
| Does not include the private keys | Portable to a new PC — not tied to this machine |
If your PC died today, a Backups\ snapshot alone would restore your records but leave you unable to mint anything new. You need a current KeyBackups\ .enc file, and its password, to actually recover minting capability.
Disaster Recovery: If Your PC Dies
- Install Minter.xlsm + the entire Signer folder on the new PC.
- Key Management → Restore Encrypted Key Backup → select your
.encfile → enter the password. - Restored keys come back archived, not active — this is deliberate. Explicitly Activate Key for the correct version on each product.
- Copy over LicenceLog.txt and LicenceHistory.txt if available, then run Rebuild Workbook From Audit File.
- Mint a test licence to confirm the whole chain works before doing anything real.
Test this before you need it. Restore your key backup onto a separate/scratch machine (never onto your live setup), confirm it decrypts and a test mint succeeds, then discard the scratch copy. A backup you have never restored is not a backup you can trust.
Using OneDrive
The whole Minter folder — including KeyBackups — can live inside a OneDrive-synced folder for off-machine redundancy. Rules to keep in mind:
- Never have the workbook open on two devices at the same time — there is no protection against two sessions writing to the log files at once
- If OneDrive shows a sync conflict on any file in Minter, resolve it manually, then run Rebuild Workbook From Audit File
- Syncing KeyBackups is fine — those files are already password-encrypted, so syncing adds redundancy without adding exposure
Rotating Signing Keys — When Is It Safe to Retire an Old One?
Keep an old key in the plugin’s verification list until every licence issued under it has expired, including grace periods — check the Licence Log for the latest ExpiryDate among that key’s records.
If even one Perpetual licence was ever minted under a key, that key can never be safely removed — it must stay in rotation indefinitely.
When rotating: add the new public key to the plugin, don’t replace the old one, until you’re certain every customer on the old key has moved off it.
New in v1.1: Audit History Viewer
A dedicated, searchable window onto your audit trail — no more opening LicenceHistory.txt as raw text. Access it from the Licence Log sheet.
- Shows every audit entry newest-first in a scrollable list
- Double-click a MINT entry to jump straight to that licence's full details
- Double-click a PDF_CREATED entry to open that licence's PDF directly
- Press Enter on a selected row as a keyboard shortcut for the same actions
New in v1.1: Licence Details Popup
Select any row on the Licence Log and open its full details in a clean popup — licence ID, product, version, key version, domain, dates, and full customer details in one view, rather than scrolling across 20 columns.
The popup also lets you edit the Notes field directly — click Edit, make changes, click Save. This updates the LicenceLog table in place.
New in v1.1: Quick Search & Row Actions
The Licence Log’s search box now searches live across all columns as you type, and jumps to and selects the first match.
Row-level actions available with a record selected: Open PDF, Copy Key (to clipboard), Regenerate PDF, and Delete Record (removes the log entry only — never invalidates the underlying licence, per the core design).
A Note on File Paths (Read If You Move the Minter Folder)
A small number of buttons currently assume the Minter folder lives at C:\Minter\ specifically. If you ever move the folder — a different drive, a renamed folder, or into OneDrive — these particular buttons may stop finding PDFs even though everything else keeps working.
This is a known, minor inconsistency being tracked for a fix. If a PDF-related button says a file is missing after moving the folder, it’s worth checking whether that’s the cause before assuming the PDF itself is lost.