Grace periods

FortiFlex provides two types of 90-day grace periods, Program Expiration and Negative Points.

Program Expiration

This grace period is triggered when the FortiFlex program reaches the expiration date and it is applicable for both Prepaid and Postpaid programs.

During the Program Expiration grace period, all entitlements with Termination Mode set to Follow Program will have their FortiGuard expiration date set to 90 days after the original expiration date. This is to avoid service stoppage, allowing the user to renew the program to recover from the grace period.

It is important to highlight that during this period, the entitlement will still show as expired in the FortiCloud Asset Management portal, but internally FortiGuard will grant an extra 90 days on top. The extended expiration data will only be visible from within product’s UI or through CLI commands.

The Program Expiration grace period also plays a key role on the Prepaid program unused points. If the account has unused points, these points will be kept as valid in the account, as long as the program is renewed within the grace period but will be 100% forfeited if the grace period ends and program remains expired.

Negative Points

This grace period is only applicable to the Prepaid program, and it is triggered when the remaining points balance becomes negative.

FortiFlex allows points to be consumed as negative for up to 90 days and points true up will automatically happen whenever new points packs are added. When the points balance becomes positive again, then the FortiFlex program will leave the grace period. If the points balance remains negative after the grace period has ended, then all active entitlements will be stopped, and the user will be unable to use FortiFlex until the points balance becomes positive.

To buy additional points packs, please contact your Fortinet Inc. sales representative.

During any of the two grace periods, creating and updating entitlements is not allowed, and only existing active entitlements remain working. Points deduction will continue normally.

It is also possible that a given account hits both grace periods at the same time, where the user must fix both conditions in order to get the account out of the grace period restrictions.

If the FortiCloud account has the Asset Groups feature enabled, make sure to register the FortiFlex contract renewal under the same Asset Group and User Group where the FortiFlex service is registered to avoid the creation of a new FortiFlex SN, instead of renewing the existing one. See Asset groups in the FortiCloud Asset Management guide for more information.