License Manager

The License Manager component of Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence enables you to import and visualize your software contracts and licenses, helping you to understand such things as where you are spending money, who is using what software, and where you might have compliance issues.

You access the Spend Intelligence components from the Software section of the left navigation pane. When you click one of the Spend Intelligence components, a Spend Intelligence navigation bar appears that enables you to open each of the pages of Spend Intelligence directly.

Watch a related video (3:31)

License Manager dashboard

To access the License Manager component, click Overview > License Manager in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar. The License Manager dashboard appears, which includes the following tiles:

Licenses: shows the number of available licenses you have, with separate counts for base licenses, subscriptions, and maintenance.
Click this tile to display the Licenses page, which provides more details.
Contracts: shows the total number of contracts and the number of contracts for each of the top 3 vendors.
Click this tile to display the Contracts page, which provides more details.
Spend Year To Date: shows the estimated spend on software from the start of the calendar year, along with the number of transactions that have no pricing information and the spend on software for the previous 365 days.
Click this tile to display the Spend dashboard.
Transactions: shows the total number of transactions and the number of transactions for each of the top 3 vendors.
Click this tile to display the Transactions page, which provides more details.

Beneath these tiles are some charts:

Monthly Spend: a line chart that shows the estimated spend by full calendar month for the previous 12 months. Hover over points on the chart to see more detail. Annual subscriptions are added to the month when they are renewed.
Top Vendors by Contract: shows the top 5 vendors by number of contracts.
Top Vendors by Transactions: shows the top 5 vendors by number of license transactions.

Data grids

Throughout License Manager there are a number of data grids that include pagination controls at the bottom, and icons in the column headers to sort and filter your data. Above the data grid are icons that enable you to export your data to Excel, select the columns you want to appear on the grid, and clear the filters applied to the grid. When a data grid has more columns than can fit the width of the screen, a horizontal scroll bar appears on large screens, or you can click show additional columns icon on smaller screens to see the additional columns.

Many data grids of contracts or transactions enable you to add and edit notes or URL links to the individual records. To do this, select the check boxes alongside the required records then click Edit Notes or Edit URL Link from the Actions menu. You may need to add these columns to the data grid to see them.

Prices, cost, and spend

Software licenses cost money, and one of the key aspects of License Manager is helping you to keep track of this. License Manager isn't a finance package, however, and is not intended to give exact figures – the values you see are indicative and are intended to help you to see the big picture and to get a feel for where your money is going.

Price is the amount of money a vendor advertises the software for, whereas cost is the amount you actually paid. Spend is an indication of how much money you spent on software over a period of time, and may be made up of both costs and prices.

Typically, if you import license transactions or contracts with associated cost values, these values are used in spend calculations. If you import license transactions or contracts without associated cost values, License Manager uses the values from any customer price lists that you have imported, and if it can't find an associated customer price for a SKU, it then looks for a value in your system currency in the Ivanti SKU Library, which contains prices for many software SKUs in some currencies. Any software items where License Manager cannot identify a cost are highlighted on the Spend Year To Date tile on the License Manager home dashboard.

Costs and prices associated with bundles are divided equally between the components of the bundle.

Spend dashboard

Click Spend in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see the Spend dashboard, which includes the following tiles:

Active Contracts Cost: shows the sum of the financial values from all transactions for contracts that have not expired, including values for the top three vendors.
Transaction Spend: shows the sum of the financial values from all your transactions, and also separately shows the values of transactions for Licenses, Subscriptions, and Maintenance.
Renewal Cost: shows an estimate of the cost of renewing licenses that about to expire, based on their original cost.

Below these tiles is a data grid that gives details of the spend on your transactions. The data grid has the following tabs:

Transactions with Costs: lists by SKU the transactions that have cost data, including the source of that cost data (Transaction, User Price, or SKU).
Transactions without Costs: lists the SKUs for the transactions that have no cost data in neither the transactions themselves, nor in a customer price list, nor in the Ivanti SKU Library.
Spend Summary: lists all licenses, subscriptions, and maintenance that you have purchased. This shows you the summary of your entitlements, including the country of usage and cost for those entitlements.
Click the numbers in the Quantity column to see the corresponding transactions.

Specifying your currency

A single currency is used to display all monetary values and for all financial calculations in License Manager. You specify this currency by selecting it from the list of supported currencies on the License Manager Configuration page.

Make sure all monetary values that you import are in the currency that you specify on the License Manager Configuration page.

To specify the currency used:

Click Configuration > License Manager in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar.
The License Manager Configuration page appears.
Click Change, then in the Transaction currency drop-down select the required currency and click Save.

Licenses

Click Entitlement > Licenses in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see a data grid that gives details of your licenses. The data grid has two tabs:

Licenses: displays the licenses that are available to you for each specific combination of vendor, product, edition, version, and metric, with an additional row for unlimited licenses of each combination.
Click the numbers in the license quantity columns to see the corresponding transactions. You use this tab to determine your license availability (see below).
Comparison: helps you to compare your liabilities (the number of licenses you require for a software title) with your entitlements (the licenses and subscriptions that you have for the same title).
Click the numbers in the Licenses in Use column to see the list of devices where this software is installed. For metrics of type Per User or similar you may see more installations than there are liabilities if a user has installed the software on more than one device. You use this tab to balance your installations with your license availability (see below).

CAUTION: Treat the values on the Comparison tab, especially in the Balance column, with great care. This column shows only an indication of your license position. For details about how to use the Comparison tab, see Comparing your liabilities and entitlements.

On each tab you can click the product names to see details for the associated product families, which can provide more context to the data. For more information about product families, see below.

Comparing your liabilities and entitlements

When you have set up connectors (see Setting up connectors) to import your inventory information, and imported your license and contract data (see Import sources), you can use the Licenses data grid to investigate how your liabilities (the software you have installed) compare with your entitlements (the licenses you have).

Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence provides a dynamic summary of your license and install data and DOES NOT provide a formal Effective License Position.

There are two stages to comparing your liabilities with your entitlements: first you determine your license availability, and then you match these available licenses with the installations that have been discovered.

When considering unlimited licenses, remember that they are typically associated with a specific site or region, so confirm their restrictions before using them in your availability calculations.

Determining your license availability

The first step is to use the Licenses tab of the Licenses data grid to calculate the entitlements you have for a product by determining which licenses can be applied to newer versions, and then making a corresponding upgrade adjustment. When you import licenses, the system merges all transactions where the vendor, product, edition, version, and metric are the same into a single row on the Licenses tab. There is also an additional row for unlimited licenses of each combination.

Different vendors use different terminology, but within Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence, the different license types are identified as either base licenses, subscriptions, upgrades, or maintenance. Maintenance is identified as either active or expired and is associated with the latest version of the product that is available in the date range of the license. Think of this as the aggregated summary of your imported license data.

The first stage of comparing your liabilities and entitlements is to determine your optimum entitlement based on the licenses you have imported. Often, your entitlement to use a piece of software is not because you bought a license for that specific version of software. You may have bought licenses for an earlier version of that software title and then bought an upgrade. Or when you bought the software originally, you may have paid for maintenance such as Microsoft's Software Assurance that then provides new version rights that entitle you to use the later version without further purchase.

Example

For example, if the Licenses tab on the Licenses data grid shows that for V1 of a product you have 100 base licenses giving 100 in the Available column and also shows that for V2 of the same product you have 50 active maintenance licenses but 0 in the Available column, you might be allowed to make an upgrade adjustment. After you have confirmed that these active maintenance licenses entitle you to run 50 instances of V2, you can add an Upgrade Adjustment to the two versions to show that you are entitled to run 50 instances of both versions by adding 50 to the V2 row and subtracting 50 from the V1 row.

Version	Base licenses	Active Maintenance	Upgrade Adjustment	Available
V2	0	50	+50	50
V1	100	0	-50	50
			Sum: 0

When you make an upgrade adjustment, make sure you subtract as many licenses as you add. The Sum value beneath the data grid must always read 0.

Setting an upgrade adjustment

It is best practice to set upgrade adjustments for one product at a time. Although you can set an upgrade adjustment directly from the Licenses data grid, it is usually easier from a product family page, because here you see just the products that you are interested in.

To set an upgrade adjustment:

Click Entitlement > Licenses in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar.
The Licenses page appears.
On the Licenses tab, click the Product that you want to set an upgrade adjustment for.
The product family page appears showing a data grid of all products in the family.
Select the check boxes alongside the products you want to adjust.
Remember that for each positive adjustment you make, you must make a matching negative adjustment, so select all of the rows you need to make the adjustments balance. You can repeat this procedure many times, so if required start at the bottom of a renewal stream and repeat the upgrade adjustments to bring the earliest version up to the latest version.
On the Actions menu, click Edit Upgrade Adjustments.
The Edit Upgrade Adjustment page appears.
In the Upgrade Adjustment column, enter a simple calculation using only the + and - operators.
When you move away, the Available column updates.
Repeat as required for each product, making sure the sum of the upgrade adjustments is zero.
Click to add a note that describes your actions for future reference.
Existing notes appear as . Hold your mouse pointer over this icon to see the note in a pop-up.
When you have made all of your adjustments, click Save & Close.
The upgrade adjustments and notes are saved, and the Available column updates.

Matching licenses with installations

When you have determined what licenses you have available for a product, you need to balance these licenses with the products that you have installed. For example, if you are running an earlier version of a product you might be entitled to downgrade later licenses to cover the liability, which you can show by adding a Downgrade Adjustment. You do this using the Comparison tab of the Licenses data grid.

When you make an downgrade adjustment, make sure you subtract as many licenses as you add. The Sum value beneath the data grid must always read 0.

Setting a downgrade adjustment

As with setting an upgrade adjustment, it is best practice to set downgrade adjustments for one product at a time. Although you can set a downgrade adjustment directly from the Licenses data grid, it is usually easier from a product family page, because here you see just the products that you are interested in.

To set a downgrade adjustment:

On the Licenses data grid, click the Product that you want to set a downgrade adjustment for.
The product family page appears showing a data grid of all products in the family.
Click the Comparison tab, then select the check boxes alongside the products you want to adjust.
Remember that for each positive adjustment you make, you must make a matching negative adjustment, so select all of the rows you need to make the adjustments balance.
On the Actions menu, click Edit Downgrade Adjustments.
The Edit Downgrade Adjustment page appears.
In the Downgrade Adjustment column, enter a simple calculation using only the + and - operators.
When you move away, the Balance column updates.

If a row corresponds to an unlimited license, the Balance column displays Unlimited and its Downgrade Adjustment value has no effect and is not saved. Remember that unlimited licenses are often associated with a specific site or region, so confirm their restrictions and use them appropriately in your availability calculations.

Repeat as required for each product, making sure the sum of the downgrade adjustments is zero.
Click to add a note that describes your actions for future reference.
Existing notes appear as . Hold your mouse pointer over this icon to see the note in a pop-up.
When you have made all of your adjustments, click Save & Close.
The downgrade adjustments and notes are saved, and the Balance column updates.

Understanding the balance and taking action

The Balance column on the Comparison tab of the Licenses data grid gives you an indication of your license position, NOT an Effective License Position.

A negative value in the Balance column suggests you have a shortfall: but this apparent shortfall might be covered by a wider subscription or a downgrade path from a later version. Similarly, a positive value in the Balance column suggests you have a surplus: but these additional licenses might be tied to a specific location, or being used to cover an earlier version. Click the product name to see the product family page (see below), which gives more information to help you understand the licenses you have for the product family.

The Balance has values only for licenses where the metric is of type:

Per Device or similar (Per Device, Per Named Device, Per Instance, Per Server, Per Named Server, Per Install, Per Named Install, Per Installation, Per Named Installation, Per Computer, Per Seat) – where a license is required to match each installation
Per User or similar (User, Per User, Named User, Unnamed User) – where a license is required to match each user of the software

For metric types such as Per Core, Per Processor, and so on, the Balance column displays N/A.

Remember that buying additional licenses is only one way of improving the Balance: you may also be able to improve it by uninstalling software that isn't being used (although if you ever installed a piece of software then you needed to have had a license for it, and always check the vendor-specific license rules to understand what conditions need to be met for license reassignment). One of the additional columns you can add to the Comparison tab is Reclamation Opportunities, which shows the number of installations of the software that have not been used recently. Click the numbers in this column to see the devices with a high reclamation chance. For more information, see Software usage and identifying opportunities to reclaim licenses in the Software Insights topic. You can also add the End of Life date for the product to the Comparison tab to further inform your decision-making.

Use the values on the Comparison tab to guide and inform you. The best decisions about your license position are based on a strong understanding of your entitlements and liabilities.

Watch a video that shows you how to interpret the dynamic summary of your license and install data provided in the License Manager component of Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence and so gain an understanding of the current state of your license position:

Watch a related video (4:47)

Watch a video that explains how to use the license alignment feature to help you to determine if you have enough licenses for your IT estate:

Watch a related video (6:58)

Product families

If a data grid includes a product name, you can click the product name to see the corresponding product family page, which combines information about all versions and editions of the product onto a single dashboard. This can help you to gain a better understanding of your license position for a product by showing you the liabilities and entitlements for all versions and editions and so help you to identify if shortfalls in one version could be accounted for by surpluses in another, for example.

Product family pages include tiles that show:

the numbers of each type of license for products in the family
either (for on-premise software) the number of installs and associated reclamation opportunities and end-of-life installations, or (for SaaS software) the number of active and inactive users
an estimate of the total license cost for the family

Below these tiles is the Licenses data grid for the family, with the same tabs as described in the Licenses section above.

Contracts

A contract is the framework that you buy software with, and which governs the terms of use of the software. Contracts are identified by the combination of the Vendor and Contract Number.

Click Entitlement > Contracts in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see the Contracts data grid, which gives details of your contracts, including their Status: whether the contract is Active or Expired.

Click the numbers in the Transactions column to see the transactions associated with a specific contract. From the Actions menu on this data grid you can create further transactions for the contract, or edit or delete the transactions already associated with the contract. See Transactions and Product Types for details.

Creating, editing, and deleting contracts

Most of the time you manage the contracts in the system by importing them as described in Import sources. However, you can also create, edit, and delete contracts from the Contracts dashboard. Changes made in this way are associated with the Manual changes import source.

To create a contract:

On the Contracts data grid, click the Actions menu, then click Create Contract.
The Create Contract panel appears.
Enter a Vendor and Contract Number.
The combination of these fields must be unique.

It is best to enter the vendor name as it exists in the SKU Library. For this reason, as you start to type a vendor name, matching vendors from the SKU Library appear in a drop-down for you to select.
Vendor drop-down

Complete the remaining fields as required.
Hover over the i icon in front of a field label for information about how to complete the field.
Click Create.
The contract is created.

You can edit contracts either individually, or many at once.

To edit contracts:

On the Contracts data grid, select the check boxes for the contracts that you want to edit.
On the Actions menu, click Edit.
The Edit Contract panel appears.
Update the fields as required.
If you are editing multiple contracts at the same time, first select the check boxes alongside the labels for the fields you want to change. The changes you make to these selected fields are made to all of the selected contracts, and the fields that are not selected are left unchanged for all of the contracts. If you select a field and leave it blank, the values for that field are cleared for all the selected contracts. You cannot edit the Vendor nor the Contract Number.
Click Save.
The values are saved and the data grid refreshes.

You can delete contracts that have no linked transactions.

To delete contracts:

On the Contracts data grid, select the check boxes for the contracts that you want to delete.
On the Actions menu, click Delete.
After confirmation, the contracts are deleted.

On the Manual changes tile on the Import Sources page, click to:

remove all manually created contracts and transactions
revert all updated contracts and transactions
restore all deleted contracts and transactions

Transactions and Product Types

Click Entitlement > Transactions in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see the Transactions page, which has a data grid that gives more information about your transactions. The data grid shows each transaction that has been imported, including the product, the quantity, the dates when it is effective, its cost, and the contract the transaction is linked to.

To see more information about a specific transaction, click Details towards the left of the data grid.

To see details of your Microsoft Transaction Summary, click Data Tools > Microsoft Transaction Summary. This page provides an aggregated view of the Microsoft software you have entitlements for, including the quantity for each agreement type and the country of usage.

This information helps you when you are trying to standardize how you purchase software, and when you are trying to ensure you have the most appropriate agreements in place.

Creating, editing, and deleting transactions

Most of the time you manage the transactions in the system by importing them as described earlier. However, you can also create, edit, and delete transactions from the Transactions or Spend dashboards. Changes made in this way are associated with the Manual changes import source (see Import sources). Whenever you create, edit, or delete a transaction, the values on the dashboards in Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence are recalculated. When these calculations have completed, you can refresh the dashboards to see the updated data, including any data from matched items in the SKU Library or Definitive Software Library.

To create a transaction:

On the Actions menu of the Transactions data grid, click Create.
The Create Transaction panel appears.
Enter the Vendor.

Enter the SKU Code if you know it.
If a match for both the Vendor and SKU Code is found in the SKU library, the panel updates with any fields for the matching SKU.
Complete the remaining fields as required:
- If the Product Type has not been completed automatically based on the values in Vendor and SKU Code, make sure you select the appropriate value, as this affects the results you see in License Manager. See Selecting the Product Type below for more information.
- If you select a Cost Recurrence other than One Off, you must set a Coverage Start and Coverage End.
- If you select the Unlimited check box, the Quantity is set to 1 and cannot be changed.
Click Create.
The transaction is created and the data in the system is updated. You are notified when the data processing completes.
- If you specified a Contract Number that already exists, the transaction is linked to that contract.
- If you specified a Contract Number that does not exist, a new contract with no expiration date is created with that Contract Number.
- If you did not specify a Contract Number, the transaction is not linked to a contract.

Selecting the Product Type

The Product Type tells you what type of license you have bought, and is used by the system to determine your entitlement. For example, a transaction could be for a base license that entitles you to use a specific version of a software title, or an upgrade license that entitles you to upgrade to a specific version, or a maintenance license that entitles you to upgrade to any new versions during the lifetime of the maintenance agreement. These different types of license are handled differently in License Manager, so it is important to select the appropriate value. Vendors may use different names for the different types of license available, so if the Product Type has not been completed automatically based on the values in Vendor and SKU Code, you need to select the correct value from the drop-down. Use the table below to help you to determine which License Manager product type best matches the description of your transaction.

Product Type	Description	Examples
Undefined	The default value, treated the same as License.
License	A base license that entitles you to use a specific version of a software title.	Base license, Perpetual license, Evergreen license, Adobe AOO License
Upgrade	A license that entitles you to upgrade from one version of a software title to a specific later version provided you have a base license.	Microsoft Step Up
Maintenance	A license that entitles you to upgrade from the current version of a software title to any new versions that are released during the lifetime of the maintenance agreement, provided you have a base license. Typically, you need to ensure there is no gap between one maintenance agreement ending and the next starting.	Software Assurance, VMware Basic/Production Support, Oracle Software Update & Support
License & Maintenance	A base license with maintenance that entitles you to install a software title and upgrade to any new versions during the lifetime of the maintenance agreement.	Microsoft License & Software Assurance
Upgrade & Maintenance	A license that entitles you to upgrade from an earlier version of a software title to the current version and then to any new versions that are released during the lifetime of the maintenance agreement.	Microsoft Upgrade & Software Assurance, Upgrade Advantage
Subscription	A license to use a SaaS application for a set period.	Cloud license, Microsoft 365, Adobe Creative Cloud, Subscription Renewal
Not a License	For transactions where you do not want to count an additional entitlement, such as where you cannot track the corresponding installation. This enables you to record the transaction but not use it to match against tracked usage.	Work From Home license, Disk Kit, Document Kit

Watch a related video (5:30)

Editing and deleting transactions

You can edit transactions either individually or many at once from either the Transactions dashboard, the Spend dashboard, or from a Contract Transactions data grid.

To edit transactions:

On the Transactions data grid, select the check boxes for the transactions that you want to edit.
On the Actions menu, click Edit.
The Edit Transaction panel appears.
Update the fields as required.
If you are editing multiple transactions at the same time, first select the check boxes alongside the labels for the fields you want to change. The changes you make to these selected fields are made to all of the selected transactions, and the fields that are not selected are unchanged for all of the transactions. If you select a field and leave it blank, the values for that field are cleared for all the selected transactions.
Click Save.
The values are saved and the dashboards update.

When you edit a transaction, the cost values shown on the Edit Transaction panel may differ from those in the Transactions data grid, which may come from the SKU library or a price list if cost data was not included in the transaction itself.

To delete transactions:

On the Transactions data grid, select the check boxes for the transactions that you want to delete.
On the Actions menu, click Delete.
After confirmation, the transactions are deleted.

On the Manual changes tile on the Import Sources page, click to:

remove all manually created contracts and transactions
revert all updated contracts and transactions
restore all deleted contracts and transactions

Expirations

To learn about contracts and transactions that have expired, or are due to expire soon, click Data Tools > Expirations in the Spend Intelligence navigation bar to see the Expirations dashboard. This page includes tiles that show the counts of recent and upcoming expirations for licenses and contracts, along with an indication of the renewal cost. Beneath the tiles is a data grid with two tabs:

Contracts: displays details of contracts that are expiring soon.
License Transactions: displays details of transactions where either the license itself or the parent contract are expiring soon.