Import licenses

In this section, we are going to import our Microsoft licenses from a Microsoft License Statement (MLS). There are two options when you import your MLS data, and which you choose depends on what you are trying to achieve:

If you import using the MLS Transaction Data License Type, the data is taken from the Transaction Data worksheet in your MLS. This worksheet includes a lot of information, but also includes an entry for each purchase you made. This means that if you bought 50 licenses for Office 2013, then later bought an additional 25 licenses for Office 2013, and then later still bought an upgrade for all 75 Office 2013 licenses to Office 2016, there would be three sets of license data for you to match and work with going forward.

If you import using the MLS License Summary License Type, the data is taken from the License Summary worksheet in your MLS. This worksheet includes much less information, but consolidates all of your license purchases into a single row. This means that for the example given above, instead of there being three sets of license data for you to work with, there is just a single set of 75 Office 2016 licenses. Moreover, this set of 75 Office 2016 licenses definitely correspond to the licenses that Microsoft expects you to have – there is no chance of ambiguity.

The decision you need to make is whether you need all of that additional information from the Transaction Data worksheet and the complexity that goes with it, or whether the much simpler License Summary worksheet, which contains all of the information you need to complete your Microsoft Effective License Position, is sufficient.

In the example below, we are going to use the simpler License Summary option.

To import your Microsoft licenses:

1.On the Data Import page, under Import Types, click the License tile.
The License Sources page appears, showing a data grid of existing license data sources that you have set up.

2.Click New License.
The Create New Inventory Import page appears.

3.In the Import Name box, type a name for the data source, then select MLS License Summary.
The Select your sources section appears.

4.In the Select your sources section, select the check box alongside MLS File, then click Save.
The data source is saved and the MLS File page appears.

5.Browse for and upload your MLS file, then click Next.
The Settings page appears. (The columns in an MLS file are known, so the mapping stage of the data import is completed automatically.)

6.In the Import Method drop-down, choose Overwrite or Append.
If this is the first time you have imported licenses using this data source, it doesn't matter which option you choose.
Typically, you would choose Overwrite, which deletes any existing licenses associated with this data source and replaces them with the licenses from the new MLS.
If you choose Append, the licenses in the new MLS are added to the existing licenses already associated with this data source. This is useful if you have found an additional set of licenses that you want to add – but you need to be careful not to import duplicate licenses.

7.In the Business Unit drop-down, select the business unit that you want these licenses to be allocated to. If your licenses are available for your entire organization, select the top level.

8.Select the Run recognition after import check box.
This means that any software mentioned in an imported license record is automatically matched with items in the Definitive Software Library. If you don't select this check box, you will have to run recognition manually when the import completes.

9.If required, select the Run reconciliation after import check box.
This means that after the recognition has run, a reconciliation runs. We are going to run a reconciliation manually in the next section, but if you want a reconciliation to run automatically each time you re-import this data source, select the check box.

10.Type your email address in the Email address for notification after import box.
This data import is likely to import a large amount of data, and take some time. Rather than keep checking back to see if it has finished, get the system to tell you.

The final section on this page enables you to specify a recurrence schedule for the import. We are not going to use that in this example.

11.Click Save & Test Import.
The import configuration is validated and the Test Import page appears, reporting Import Files Validated OK or debug information if there was a problem.

12.Examine the test data and then click Queue Import.
As in the earlier Import inventory topic, when you receive an email telling you that the import has completed, you can see its details on the License Sources page.

What next?

Like we had to match software to items in the Definitive Software Library (DSL), so we now need to match any unrecognized software titles on our licenses to software titles in the DSL: License matching.

More information

Importing data – further information about importing data