Change domain

Move your server’s seat licence to a new domain: a real domain after a made-up one, or a company’s new name. The seats and the price stay. For a transition period, the old addresses lead people, links, OpenBI Studio and OpenBI Gateway on to the new ones.

What changes, and what doesn’t

• The licence is for the new domain instead of the old one, with the same key. People open https://bi.<new domain> and sign in at https://accounts.<new domain>. With OpenBI Accounts, everyone signs in once more, under its new address.
• No price change: the seats, the plan and the price stay as they are, and nothing is charged.
• The old domain’s workspaces and gateways move to the new one, with everything in them.
• One domain at a time: the new one replaces the old. A licence that names several domains is changed by the seller, Querex AS, instead.
• The new name must be a domain, as the buy form takes it (see Your server’s web address): a real one, or a made-up one under home.arpa. A pasted address is fine. The server must not hold another licence for it already.
• DNS and certificates for the new names are your own, as they were for the old ones.
• People’s e-mail addresses change too? Admin portal → Users → Change e-mail addresses… (see People’s e-mail addresses changed).
• Who: the server’s administrators, in Billing, or IT on the server’s command line. It is for a seat licence; a licence from before seats is changed where it was bought.

Change it in Billing

1. In the Admin portal, Billing, under Domain: Change domain.
2. Type or paste the new Your server’s web address. The dialog says what the licence will be for as you type, and Use a made-up name fills one in.
3. Transition: days the old names lead on to the new ones: 0 to 180, 90 by default (see The transition).
4. Read what changes and what to do afterwards, in English or Norwegian (English · Norsk), tick “I understand: people sign in at the new address, and its DNS and certificates are ours to set up.”, then Change domain.

The seller’s billing service changes the licence’s domain, signed, and e-mails the billing contact. This server then activates itself for the new domain with the same key, at once, moves the old domain’s workspaces and gateways to it, and writes the change in its audit log: who, from, to, and what moved. Billing then says: “The license is for <new domain> now (… workspaces and … gateways moved).”

A change that stopped half way, such as when the server couldn’t take the new licence at once, is finished by running it again: the billing service answers that it had the change already, and the server does the rest.

From the command line

Without --apply it changes nothing and says what would change, and what to do afterwards:

OpenBI.Server.exe billing domain norwayanalytics.no
OpenBI.Server.exe billing domain norwayanalytics.no --transition-days 90 --apply

• --transition-days: 0 to 180, 90 by default.
• --from <domain>: the domain the licence is for now, when the server has several. It also finishes the change on a cluster’s other nodes (see A cluster).
• The change is in the audit log as the command line’s.

Afterwards, on the server

Billing and the command line list these steps, with your new domain in them. Here with norwayanalytics.no as the new domain, on Windows:

1. DNS: bi.norwayanalytics.no and accounts.norwayanalytics.no lead to this server. For a made-up domain: your router’s local DNS, or each PC’s hosts file.
2. IIS answers for the new names, with certificates for them, then OpenBI Accounts and the sign-in take the new addresses, and the server restarts:

   OpenBI.Server.exe iis setup --host bi.norwayanalytics.no --apply
   OpenBI.Server.exe iis setup --host accounts.norwayanalytics.no --apply
   OpenBI.Server.exe https letsencrypt --host bi.norwayanalytics.no --email it@norwayanalytics.no --apply
   OpenBI.Server.exe https letsencrypt --host accounts.norwayanalytics.no --email it@norwayanalytics.no --apply
   OpenBI.Server.exe accounts setup --public-url https://accounts.norwayanalytics.no
   OpenBI.Server.exe signin use-accounts --server-url https://bi.norwayanalytics.no
   OpenBI.Server.exe service restart
   OpenBI.Server.exe doctor

   For a made-up domain, https local --domain <domain> --apply instead of https letsencrypt, then trust its certificate on each device (see A made-up domain).
3. Keep the old names as they are until the transition ends, their DNS, IIS bindings and certificates, then remove them.
4. Tell people the new address: https://bi.norwayanalytics.no.

Each command says what else it needs, if anything. On a Mac, the same with sudo openbi-server, without the iis lines: the server answers for the new names itself.

The transition

For the days you chose, the old names keep working, as redirects only:

• bi.<old>/… answers 308 Permanent Redirect to bi.<new>/…, and accounts.<old>/… to accounts.<new>/…: the same path and query, and the same method, so a request that sends data stays one. The answer is never cached.
• The old names show nothing else: no page and no sign-in of their own. They need no seats and cost nothing, and they only ever lead to a domain this server is licensed for.
• The licence says it, signed: the old domain and the day its redirect ends, beside the new domain. When the day passes, the old names stop by themselves.
• Billing shows it: “bi.<old> and accounts.<old> lead here until <day>, then they stop”, with End transition now, which stops them at once. On the command line:

  OpenBI.Server.exe billing domain --end-transition
  OpenBI.Server.exe billing domain --end-transition --apply

• With 0 days, the old names stop at once: links and bookmarks to them stop working that day.

Links in e-mails, bookmarks and Teams posts reach the new names through the redirect until the day, and stop after it.

HTTPS for the old names

A redirect is only reached over HTTPS when the old name still has its certificate: keep each old name’s DNS, its IIS binding and its certificate until the transition ends. The server never redirects Let’s Encrypt’s proving files, so their renewals go on: on Windows, win-acme renews the old names’ certificates on its schedule, as long as bi.<old> and accounts.<old> reach this server on port 80; on a Mac, the server renews every name it holds a certificate for, the old ones too. A made-up domain’s certificate from https local lasts 397 days, longer than any transition. When the transition has ended, remove the old names’ IIS bindings, their renewals in win-acme and their DNS.

What follows the move

After the transition, the old names answer nothing, and anything still using them stops working.

A cluster

Change the domain on one node, in Billing or with billing domain … --apply. Then, on each other node, the same with --from and the old domain: the billing service answers that it has the change already, and that node takes the new licence, as the first did:

OpenBI.Server.exe billing domain norwayanalytics.no --from <old domain> --apply

Each node’s own front door needs the new names and their certificates too (see What stays each node’s own).

Frequently asked questions

Does a new domain cost anything?

No. The seats, the plan and the price stay as they are, and the old names cost nothing during the transition.

We started with a made-up domain. Do our devices still need its certificate?

Not once the server has Let’s Encrypt’s certificates for the new names: the devices can then forget the server’s own certificate authority.

Can we change back?

Yes: Change domain again, with the earlier domain as the new one. It is a change like any other, with a transition of its own.

Last updated 6 November 2026 · OpenBI Server 0.1.49