License validation

Only valid licenses can be used in reconciliation, so we need to make sure that all of the licenses that we have imported and matched are valid. We can do this from the Licenses page. Once more, we are going to target our work at a specific scope; in this instance, we are going to validate our Microsoft licenses.

To validate your licenses:

1.On the menu bar, under Entitlement, click Licenses.
The Licenses page appears. Initially, unmatched licenses are shown. The first step is to apply a filter to show just the licenses for our selected scope.

2.We want to focus our initial investigations on Microsoft, so we are going to use the filter bar towards the top of the page to select just software from Microsoft. Click Vendors/Products.
The Select Vendors, Products and Editions dialog appears.

3.From the tree on this dialog, select the check box alongside Microsoft, then click Apply Now.
The list updates to show only licenses from Microsoft.

Towards the left of the data grid is a column called Status. This shows whether a license is suitable for use in reconciliation. Before any imported licenses can be used by reconciliation they must include mandatory details such as a valid metric, entitlement type, maintenance end dates for maintenance licenses, and so on.

appears in the Status column for any license where any of the required details are missing or .

appears in the Status column for any license that has all its required details.

You can filter this column to show only invalid licenses, which you need to fix.

4. In the filter drop-down on the Status column select Invalid.
The list updates to show only invalid licenses.

5.Hover your mouse over the icon to display a tooltip that describes the problem with the license record.

6. Click the license to edit it and fix the problem.
When you save the updated license record, the list of licenses refreshes to show your changes.

Common problems

Below are described some of the more common reasons for license records being marked as invalid. Sometimes, you will need to go back to the original license to identify the missing information, or you might need to add further columns to the data grid to provide you with the required information. You can add and remove columns using the menu.

No metric configured – all licenses require a metric, which defines how a license is measured as being used. For example, a license could be used Per Install or Per User. You need to identify the missing metric and record it on the license record. Often, there will be only one metric possible for a license record, so opening the record will populate the Metric field with the only available option. In this instance, you just need to open and save the license record.

You can update the same field on multiple records to the same value by selecting the check box alongside the record, then clicking Quick Edit from the gears menu. You can then select the required metric for all of the selected licenses.

Invalid metric configured – sometimes a license record will be configured with a metric that is not valid for that product. For example, Microsoft SQL Server cannot have a Per Install metric. If this is set to this metric, you need to examine the original license or contract to identify and correct the metric appropriately.

Missing User configuration for User license – some licenses, such as MSDN licenses, are associated with a specific user. You need to open the license record and click Search User to associate a user with the license.

What next?

Now that we have all of our inventory, and all of our licenses are valid. we can investigate creating our initial estimated license position: Reconciliation.

More information

Licenses – further information about licenses