Fixing Up Software Upgrade and Maintenance Line Iems

Maintenance

Software maintenance for Microsoft software under volume contracts is called Software Assurance (SA) and is specified by the contract or the purchase itself, rather than by an explicit software maintenance line item. You may have created software maintenance line items for LA titles before contract support was added; how to handle each one now depends on how they are reconciled. Read on for instructions.

• If it maintains a line item: In this case, the software maintenance line item is equivalent to the original License Analytics purchase having SA, either by the contract or applied directly to the line item. Going forward, you can simply use that mechanism and stop creating maintenance line items; if you want to "clean up" your database, you may choose to ensure that each maintained line item has SA applied to it, and then delete the maintenance line item. If you do not delete the maintenance line item, License Analytics will automatically treat the maintained line item as if SA is applied to it.
• If it maintains software: Software maintenance line items that maintain software are ignored by License Analytics, as there is no way to associate them with a contract. Any of these line items will be shown in the Exceptions tab in License Analytics; to fix them, do the following:
  • Ensure any software purchase line items have SA applied, either explicitly or by the contract with which they are associated.
  • Delete the maintenance line items to remove them from the Exceptions list.

Upgrades

Software upgrades for Microsoft software under volume contracts are typically handled by Software Assurance (SA) and are specified by the contract or the purchase itself, rather than by explicit software upgrade line items. (If you do upgrade purchases, see Best Practices and Purchasing for information on how to enter these.) In Cherwell Asset Management, License Analytics ignores software upgrade line items for LA titles, although they are still used by other Cherwell Asset Management reports. How to handle software upgrade line items for LA titles depends on how you want to keep track of these upgrades. Read on for instructions.

• If you want upgrades to be handled automatically by contracts or by specifying SA for the original purchase of LA titles:
  • Make sure all of your purchases have SA applied to them.
  • Delete all existing upgrade line items for these purchases.

  Note that existing reports will now show license unit counts based on the original purchase versus any influence of upgrades, as they no longer exist.

• If you want to continue to have existing reports show upgraded license unit counts:
  • Continue to enter software upgrade line items as you have done previously. Note again, however, that License Analytics ignores these upgrade line items; you need to make sure the purchase line items themselves are given upgrade rights by contract or by explicitly applying SA.

For information on software upgrades with Microsoft retail or OEM agreements, see the following sections of the Best Practices and Purchasing topic:

• Microsoft retail agreements, software maintenance, and software upgrades
• Microsoft OEM agreements, software maintenance, and software upgrades