License Manager

The best way of managing your licenses, contracts, and price data is to import them using the Import Sources page. When you import license transactions:

• the software titles named in your transaction files are matched to software titles in the Ivanti SKU Library, to provide access to additional information about them, including identifying if they are SaaS subscriptions
• the individual transactions are grouped into a single row whenever the vendor, product, edition, version, and metric match
• product types are mapped to either base licenses, subscriptions, upgrades, or maintenance
• each time you import or delete data, costs are re-calculated

All transactions must be linked to a contract. If you import transactions without a contract, they are linked to a dummy contract that has no expiration date. Whenever required, a separate dummy contract is created for each import instance.

You can create different import sources for different sets of transaction records. Each import source defines a connection to a source of transactions, and also represents those transactions in License Manager.

To view existing import sources:

1. Click Import Sources at the top right of the License Manager dashboard.
   The Import Sources page appears with a separate tile for each existing import source. Each tile has a title and description to help you to identify the import source. If you have manually created, updated, or deleted transactions, these changes are associated with an import source labeled Manual changes.
2. Click the title of an import source.
   The import instances page for the selected import source appears, showing a data grid that reports when the import was run, its status, and who updated the import instance.
3. Click to delete an import instance or click its entry to edit it.

Click to refresh the contents of these pages.

To create a new import source:

1. At the top right of the Import Sources page, click Add.
   The Add import source panel appears.
2. Type a Name for the import source.
3. Click the required Type, then click Add.
   The Import Sources page reappears with a tile for the new import source.

When you have added the required import source, you can use it to import license transactions. You can delete the import source by hovering over the tile then clicking or change its name by hovering over the tile then clicking . Clicking on the Manual changes tile removes all manually created transactions, reverts all updated transactions, and restores all deleted transactions.

For import sources of types Generic License Transaction Import, Generic Contract-Only Import, and Generic Customer Specific Price Data Import, click the Download template file link to download an empty spreadsheet that contains the appropriate columns with the correct names for the import. When you have enabled the downloaded spreadsheets for editing, tooltips become available for each of the column headers to provide more information about the contents of each column.

You can delete ALL of your data in License Manager by clicking Delete All Imported Data on the License Manager tab of the Software component under Admin in the sidebar. Take great care when using this as this action cannot be undone.

To import license transactions:

1. On the Import Sources page, click Import on the source you want to import.
   The import instance page appears with the Create Import Instance panel displayed.
2. Click Choose file and select the file you want to import, then click Import.
   The import starts and the Create Import Instance panel closes. A new row appears in the data grid of import instances showing the current Status of the import and the name of who ran it. When the import completes the status changes to read Completed, Completed with warnings or Failed.

When the import has completed, you can delete the import definition and the data imported by clicking or change the file used in the import by clicking . Click the name of the person who ran the import to see more information about them on their Members page (see Managing members and roles for more information).

Viewing details of the import

When an import has completed, you can view its details by clicking the required link in the Import date and time column to display the import instance details. This page has several tabs, depending on the type of import. The first tab is Summary, which shows creation and update details, the status of the import, and a count of messages generated during the import. There are then tabs that display the data you have imported, which vary depending on the type of data imported. You can page through this data and export it using the Export to Excel button above the data grid.

If the import completed with warnings or failed, then there is a Messages tab that provides information to help you to address any issues encountered during the import.

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 the value in the Ivanti SKU Library, which contains the latest list prices for many software SKUs. 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.

A single currency is used to display all monetary values and for all financial calculations in License Manager. You specify this currency using the Software Configuration page under Admin.

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

To specify the currency used:

1. Click Admin > Software in the left navigation pane.
   The Software Configuration page appears.
2. Click the License Manager tab.
3. Click Change, then in the Transaction currency drop-down select the required currency and click Save.

Click the Licenses tile to see the Licenses dashboard, which provides more information about your licenses. In addition to the counts of your different licenses, you can also see which licenses are approaching their expiry date, and an estimation of your upcoming renewal costs.

Below the tiles is a data grid that gives details of your licenses. The data grid has several tabs:

• Licenses: displays the licenses that are available to you for each specific combination of vendor, product, edition, version, and metric.
  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 the number of installations of a software title with the licenses and subscriptions that you have for the same title.
  Click the numbers in the Installs column to see the list of devices where this software is installed. 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.

• Expiring Transactions: displays details of transactions where either the license itself or the parent contract are expiring soon.

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.

When you have set up connectors (see Setting up connectors) to import your inventory information, and imported your license and contract data as described above, you can use the Licenses dashboard 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.

Determining your license availability

The first step is to use the Licenses tab of the data grid on the Licenses dashboard 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. Different vendors use different terminology, but within Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence, these 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 dashboard, 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:

1. On the Licenses tab on the Licenses dashboard, 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.
2. 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.
3. On the Actions menu, click Edit Upgrade Adjustments.
   The Edit Upgrade Adjustment page appears.
4. In the Upgrade Adjustment column, enter a simple calculation using only the + and - operators.
   When you move away, the Available column updates.
5. Repeat as required for each product, making sure the sum of the upgrade adjustments is zero.
6. 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.
7. 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 dashboard, 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:

1. On the Comparison tab on the Licenses dashboard, 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.
2. 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.
3. On the Actions menu, click Edit Downgrade Adjustments.
   The Edit Downgrade Adjustment page appears.
4. In the Downgrade Adjustment column, enter a simple calculation using only the + and - operators.
   When you move away, the Balance column updates.
5. Repeat as required for each product, making sure the sum of the downgrade adjustments is zero.
6. 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.
7. 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 dashboard 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 the 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) – where a license is required to match each installation. For metric types such as Per Core, Per User, and so on, the Balance column displays N/A.

Remember that buying additional licenses is only one way of improving the Balance: you can also 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 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.

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.

A contract is the framework that you buy software with, and which governs the terms of use of the software. Click the Contracts tile to see the Contracts dashboard, which provides more information about your contracts. There are tiles that show the counts of active contracts along with contracts that have recently expired (in the previous 3 months), and which are expiring soon. You can use these tiles to identify contracts that you may need to renegotiate.

Below these tiles is a data grid that gives details of your contracts. The data grid has 3 tabs:

• Active Contracts: shows contracts that are currently in date, including their license program, type, expiration date, and estimated cost.
• Expired Contracts: shows contracts that have passed their expiration date.
• Transactions: shows all of the contract transactions, including their total cost and country of usage.

Click the numbers in the Transactions column on the Active Contracts or Expired Contracts tabs to see the transactions associated with a specific contract.

Click the Spend Year To Date tile 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 2 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.

Monetary values are displayed in the currency you specify on the Software Configuration page (see Specifying your currency above). For an overview of the cost calculations and terminology, see the Prices, cost, and spend section above.

Click the Transactions tile to see the Transactions dashboard, which includes the following tiles:

• Transactions: shows the total number of transactions, 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 and Subscriptions.

Below these tiles is a data grid that gives more information about your transactions. The data grid has 3 tabs:

• Transactions: details 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. If the imported transaction was not linked to a contract, it is linked to a dummy contract for the import instance.
• Microsoft Transaction Summary: 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.
• 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.

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 dashboard. Changes made in this way are associated with the Manual changes import source. 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:

1. On the Transactions tab of the Transactions dashboard, on the Actions menu, click Create Transaction.
   The Create Transaction panel appears.
2. Enter a SKU Code and Vendor.
   If a match for both of these fields is found in the SKU library, the panel updates with any fields for the matching SKU.
3. Complete the remaining fields as required.
4. Click Create.
   The transaction is created and the data in the system is updated. If you specified a Contract Number that already exists, the transaction is linked to that contract, otherwise a new contract with no expiration date is created with that Contract Number.

You can also edit or delete a transaction from the Transactions tab of the Transactions dashboard, by selecting the check box alongside the transaction you want to edit or delete, then clicking the required item on the Actions menu. When you edit or delete a transaction, the dashboards in Ivanti Neurons for Spend Intelligence update to reflect the updated data.

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.

Clicking on the Manual changes tile on the Import Sources page removes all manually created transactions, reverts all updated transactions, and restores all deleted transactions.