Licensed-software rules overview

DTS uses a EULA-based method for determining which software products actually need licenses in your environment. For example, Microsoft may allow one license for Office 2010 Professional to also cover a copy of Office 2002 Standard, but not Office 2010 Standard. Regardless of how many of these “covered” copies of software exist on a device, you need only one license to be compliant. This is known as “effective licensing”—the number of licenses you need versus what you may have installed. DTS uses a flexible, query-based engine to determine effective licensing.

You can use the Licensed Software folder in the DTS tree view to configure and organize rules that group software products by shared license information. These rules, listed in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder, gather data for auditing and reporting purposes and show how many licenses are needed for compliance.

DTS installs with numerous rules for keeping track of licensed software, but you may want to configure your own rules for specialized software not currently represented. For more information, see Licensed software wizard.

By default, the Data Analytics software-manager service runs nightly to perform software detection and license calculation on all rule configurations in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder. This detection will not occur if you disable a vendor group from being part of the service scan.

You have the option of running these rules on demand or as a scheduled task, either by vendor group or individually. To see licensed software rules specific to a vendor, open the Licensed Software > All Vendors folder.

You can accomplish most tasks related to your licensed software rules by using the various right-click menus.

In the DTS tree view, right-click the Licensed Software folder to access these menus:

  • Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together.
  • Import group: Imports a group folder from an .XML file. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder.
  • New rule: Opens a wizard to create a new licensed software rule.
  • Show all licensed software detected: Shows an up-to-date list of all scanned, licensed software.
  • Add licensed software to SLM: Manually runs the Data Analytics software-manager service to add product license data to Management Suite’s software license monitoring (SLM) console. This action happens automatically each night when the service runs. Do not run this process unless necessary—it’s resource intensive and could take several hours to complete.
  • Delete licensed software data: Completely deletes software data for all devices out of the inventory database. This data won't appear again in inventory until you create a new rule that enables the Data Analytics software-manager service to detect it during a scan.
  • Add additional detection rules: Enables you to assign licensed software either to devices (using previously defined queries) or to LDAP groups, ensuring that those users are counted in SLM license-compliance calculations. By assigning LDAP groups, you have a way to track license usage accurately in a Citrix or Terminal Server VDI-licensing environment where users remotely access software and aren't using a device with the Ivanti agent installed.

    Use these rules in combination with the licensed software rules that ship with Data Analytics—they’re useful when you have unique licensing scenarios not fully covered by the default rules. Unlike modifications you may make to the default rules, these rules will not be deleted with new Data Analytics updates.
  • Assign disposition status: Enables you to indicate if a user is authorized to have this software by setting the database attribute Computer.Software.Licensed Software.Authorized to Yes or No. Disposition status doesn’t affect SLM compliance calculations; it’s meant for reference only and is blank by default. If you assign an LDAP group or query to a software product, those devices that match are set to Yes; those that don't are set to No.
  • Export detection and disposition rules: Exports all detection rules and disposition status information to an .XML file.
  • Import detection and disposition rules: Imports detection rules and disposition status information from an .XML file.
  • Modify approved software: Enables you to choose which products are part of the corporate standard for your network environment. This is a global list that the Data Analytics software-manager service uses to verify that all devices are standardized and running company-approved software.

Open the Licensed Software folder and right-click the All Vendors folder to access these menus:

  • Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together.
  • Add root group: Creates a group folder, at the root of the tree view, that you can use for organizing rules. Drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together.
  • Import group: Imports a group folder from an .XML file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder.
  • Export group: Exports a group folder and its contents as an .XML file, which is useful in a multi-core environment.
  • Schedule: Schedules the rules in All Vendors to run now or at a later time against the inventory database. The task will show up in the Scheduled folder, and a script is created in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks. The script name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify them there. Rules don't have to be active in order to schedule them.
  • Run now: Runs rules for all vendors right now, instead of waiting for them to run during a service scan.
  • Set group run order: This option only appears for vendor group rules that you've created under All Vendors. It sets the run order for rules in a vendor group folder. The top rule runs first, and the others follow in descending order. Use the arrow keys to change the run order.

    Run order is important, because some rules are dependent on other rules for information. For example, if you're interested in obtaining warranty data for your Dell devices, you would first run a Dell Warranty rule to scan the data initially into the database, and then run the Last Warranty End Date rule, which scans more specific data about that warranty.

Open the Licensed Software > All Vendors folder and right-click a vendor group to access a variety of menus (explained above) and this menu:

  • Disable/enable group: Disables a group and its rules from being run as part of the nightly Data Analytics software-manager service scan. When a group is disabled, the service skips that group and doesn’t run its rules.

    This feature is useful if the default rules for a vendor don't represent the specific license agreement your organization has with that vendor. For example, if you have a deal with Microsoft that's different from their standard license downgrade rights, you can disable the Licensed Software > All Vendors > Microsoft group and create a new group called "YourCompany Microsoft." In that group, you would configure new rules that are specific to your organization's use of Microsoft products, reflecting the true nature of your license agreement with that vendor.

Open the Licensed Software > All Vendors > any vendor group folder and right-click a rule to access a variety of menus (explained above) and this menu:

  • Update usage: Manually activates this rule to run.