Configuring license reclamation defaults

While license reclamation is enabled for products individually, you can change the default settings for reclamation in general. The default settings you enter are listed when you enable reclamation for a product.

NOTE: If you’re using the French-language version of SLM, Microsoft has a bug in their regional settings that affects French-language digit groupings. For numbers of one thousand and over, Microsoft has a default setting of a space character instead of a period for the digit-grouping symbol (for example, 1 234 567,00). Because of this bug, when entering numbers in the French-language version, SLM will not allow the period character to be used.

To fix this problem, you must change the setting in the Control Panel > Region and Language applet. Click the Additional settings button, and change the Digit grouping symbol from a space to a period (or whatever other character you want).

To configure reclamation defaults
  1. Click Administration > Reclamation Defaults.
  2. Select a Delivery method for the uninstall package. Click Browse to view the available delivery methods.
  3. Select Distribution and patch settings for the uninstall package. Click Browse to view the available settings.
  4. Select a Reboot settings for the uninstall package. Click Browse to view the available settings.
  5. Specify how long a product has not been used to make it eligible for license reclamation. Enter a number in the Only reclaim if the product has not been used box. The default for this item is 120 days, because many manufacturers consider a product to have been used in a quarter if the product has been run at least once in a three-month period. Software usage reporting is typically counted by the quarter.
  6. Select Start scheduled tasks immediately after creation to automatically start uninstalling products that meet the reclamation criteria.
  7. If you want to reclaim licenses based on the number of days that products haven't been used, select Reclaim from all machines that have not used the product...
  8. If you want to use license reclamation to always have a certain number of available licenses, select Reclaim to maintain a set of free licenses. Specify a lower threshold for the number of available licenses that triggers reclamation. Specify a higher number that represents the number of licenses you want to make available.
  9. Specify how often you want license reclamation to run. Enter a number in the Run reclamation process every ... days box. If you select 0 in this box, reclamation will run daily. By default, reclamation runs at night every 14 days.
  10. If you want to include certain computer groups in license reclamation, select Include and click + to add computer groups to the list. Only the devices in the groups you list here will be included in license reclamation; all other devices will be ignored. The groups you can select are defined on the Administration>Computer Groups page.
  11. If you want to exclude certain computer groups, select Exclude and click + to add groups to the list. Select groups that should be excluded from license reclamation. Reclamation will include all monitored devices except those in the groups you select.
  12. If you want to send an email to any administrators or other users informing them of a reclamation task's progress, select Enable email notification and type one or more email addresses in the box. Separate multiple addresses with a semicolon (;) or comma (,).
  13. When you've finished configuring the license reclamation settings, click Save.

NOTE: Remember that the groups you include or exclude, and the email settings you select, will be applied by default to all reclamation settings. As you create reclamation settings for individual, custom, or normalized products, you can change any of these items.

Configuring email setting defaults

On the Administration>Email Settings page, you can specify which email account will be used to send email notifications when product licenses are reclaimed. Emails are typically sent to administrators or other users who need to know when software has been reclaimed.

To configure email settings for reclamation notification
  1. Click Administration > Email Settings.
  2. Type the name of the SMTP server that will send the emails.
  3. Type the Sender email address.
  4. Click Save to apply the settings.