Previous updates

Previously, virtual machines on a host machine were imported only if the parent host was also imported as part of the same import.

You can now choose to import virtual machines if their hosts are not imported in the same import by selecting the Import virtual machines when parent is not included in import check box under Options on the Data Source page of an Inventory import.

IMPORTANT: Take great care when selecting this check box. Licensing metrics often depend on the hardware that the software is installed on (Per Core, Per CPU, and so on), so if this information is missing, your reconciliation for software on these devices could be inaccurate.

For more information about importing data, see Importing data and identifying software titles

A new report, ELP VMware, has been added to the Static Reports page.

For more information about static reports, see Static Reports.

You can now add your own categories to entries in the software library, in addition to UNSPSC values.

Custom categories enable you to add site-specific categories to help you to identify the purpose of the software you have installed across your site. You can then sort your software by these categories to identify where you have multiple software titles on your estate performing the same function. This then helps you to make decisions about where you can consolidate software titles to cut costs and reduce security risks.

To create custom categories:

1.On the Software Library page, click Manage Custom Categories.
The Custom Categories dialog appears.

2.Click Add.

3.In the Category Name field, enter the name of your custom category, then click Save.
The category is added to the list on the dialog.

Click to edit the category, or to delete it. If you delete a custom category, it is also removed from any software library entries that you associated it with.

To associate a custom category with an entry in the software library:

1.Open the required software item in the Software Library.

2.In the details panel, click the Categories tab.

3.In the Category drop-down, select the custom category you require.
Custom categories appear at the top of the drop-down list with (Custom) after their name. UNSPSC codes appear lower in the list, with their code in brackets after their name.

4.Click .
The custom category is added to the software item. You can remove the category from the item by clicking .

For more information about categories in the Software Library, see Software Library page: Categories tab.

You can now specify expiry date reminders as part of a general license import using two new columns that have been added to the General License import template:

• Renewal Event Reminder – how long before the renewal date you want to be reminded. This value appears in the Task and Event Reminder - License Renewal? field on the License page.
• Email Ids for Reminder – the email addresses to send the reminder to. This appears on the corresponding Calendar event. You can enter multiple email addresses, separated by commas.

For information about importing data, see Importing data. For information about licenses, see Licenses.

We have simplified the Data Import page by removing the Connector Types section. This section contained a single tile that opened the Sign in to Ivanti Neurons page in a new window, so that you could set up connectors in the Ivanti Neurons platform for use in License Optimizer. This tile was added when the Ivanti Neurons platform was new and provided only these connectors, but now that the Ivanti Neurons platform contains many more features and is much more widely used, it makes sense to tidy the Data Import page as most users now log in to the Ivanti Neurons platform directly.

For information about importing data, see Importing data. For information about setting up connectors in the Ivanti Neurons platform, see Setting up connectors in the Ivanti Neurons help.

Ideally, you want to minimize the number of entries in you local Definitive Software Library, and use the global Definitive Software Library that is maintained by Ivanti as much as possible. To support this, you can now delete entries from your local DSL, provided the entries have no children and are not being used by License Optimizer (for example, you cannot delete a vendor that has products, and you cannot delete entries that are added to an OSI).

You will want to delete items from your local DSL if they are better presented in the global DSL, no longer needed, or if they contain errors. You can delete Items (editions/versions), Products, and Vendors.

To delete a local DSL entry:

1.In the Software Library, find the item that you want to delete, and select it in the Items panel.

2.On the Recognition Phrases and Recognition Files tabs in the details pane, delete all of the recognition phrases or files for programs or licenses by clicking alongside the entries.

3.On the General tab, click Delete at the bottom of the page.
The Item is deleted.

4.Repeat for any other items you want to delete from your local DSL.

Sometimes you may find that the DSL entry is used somewhere that you cannot delete that usage, and so you will not be able to delete the DSL entry itself. In this situation, you need to contact support.

For more information about the DSL, see Software Library. For more information about the Recognition tabs, see Software Library page: Recognition tabs.

Previously, you could set the business unit that imported licenses were associated with on the Settings page of the data import wizard for the General license type. That option has now been removed, and instead you specify the business units that the licenses are associated by setting the Valid For column of the import spreadsheet to BusinessUnit and then specifying the names of the business units in the Valid For Names column.

You can associate a license with multiple business units in the spreadsheet by separating their names with a comma. If you do not specify a business unit, it is associated with the top level in the business unit structure.

For more information about data import, see Importing data.

You can now add the column Cost Per Year to the data grid on the Licenses & Contracts page using the menu.

A new blog post about License Optimizer has been added to the Ivanti web site, which discusses how to use the data you have in License Optimizer to identify opportunities to uninstall unused software and so save money.

Sometimes, your named user data can include duplicates – for example, if you have imported user data from separate data sources that contain the same user. You can remove duplicate users (see Removing duplicate users) so that they are not included when calculating liability.

Now when you remove duplicate users, the aggregate data from all user records appears on the primary user row on the Named User Management page, with any data from secondary records highlighted in italic font. If you export named user data from this page, the aggregated data is exported. It is this aggregated, primary user that appears in the User Name drop-down on the Add Resource Usage Details dialog (see Software Users).

The data source for each secondary user is now reported when you expand the row to see the secondary users.

When you click a row in the Named User Management page to display the Edit User dialog, OSIs that appear on the OSIs tab now include links that open the corresponding Edit OSI page in a new browser tab.

For more information about named users, see Named User Management.

A check box labeled Perpetual License has been added to the Availability section of the Edit License page. If you select this check box the license will never expire even if it is associated with a contract that has expired, and will continue to be used in reconciliations.

For more information see Editing licenses.

The Calendar page, which was available from the Business Intelligence section of the classic menu bar, is now available by clicking Calendar above the data grid on the Licenses & Contracts page.

For more information about Calendars, see Calendar.

A new blog post about License Optimizer has been added to the Ivanti web site, which discusses an apparent paradox in your Effective License Position.

The Japanese Yen is now available as a currency in License Optimizer.

A new video has been created that describes the best practice for getting your inventory data into License Optimizer. What are the three methods available to you, and what is the best strategy to use?

License metrics can be based on a number of different measurements, for example the number of installations, details of the processors on the server where the software is installed, or the number of users of the software. In the case where license metrics are based on the number of users of the software, you need to set the appropriate usage values on the Software Users page for License Optimizer to use during reconciliation.

If you select a metric on the License page that requires usage configuration, a link appears that opens the Software Users page in a new browser tab so that you can set the number of users of the software.

For more information about setting usage values, see Software Users.

The toggle for the new menu bar has been removed from the title bar and replaced with a check box Use New Menu on the My Account tab of the Preferences page.

For information about the Preferences page, see Preferences.

You can now import contracts into License Optimizer using the License import tile, then selecting Contract in the License Type drop-down on the Data Source page. You can download a template spreadsheet from this page that has the required columns with tooltips to describe the usage of each column, and drop-downs in the first row that have the allowed values for the Contract Type and Currency Code columns.

To help you to identify opportunities to reclaim licenses, a new column has been added to the Software page called Reclamation Chance. The value in this column is calculated based on how long it has been since the software item has been used:

LOW – between 30 and 60 days

MEDIUM – between 60 and 90 days

HIGH – over 90 days

When you create a new user account, you can now specify an Expiry Date after which the account is deleted. The user is informed of the expiry date for their account when it is created, a day before the expiry date, and when their account expires.

The Policy Management page, which was available from the Configuration section of the classic menu bar, is now available by clicking Policy Management to the left of the gears menu on the Software page.

For more information about Policy Management, see Policy management.

Best practice: a summary of the high-level strategy that has given the best results when importing data from the Ivanti Neurons platform.

You can now see more information about the current import, recognition, or reconciliation that is in progress by holding your mouse over the message that appears in the title bar at the top of the page.

We've redesigned the structure of this help to make it more task-focused rather than it covering each page of the user interface separately. This work has just begun, and will continue for a while as we work through each section to make it cover tasks that you do rather than the pages you use – so please bear with us. Do, however, help us by providing constructive feedback using the section at the bottom of each page.

Schrödinger's licenses – how can I have a surplus AND a shortfall for the same product in my Effective License Position?

Sometimes, you want to identify when software that does not require a license has been installed in your estate. For example, you might want to discover when certain unlicensed software that you consider to be a security risk has been installed, or you might want to ensure that freeware that is not allowed to be used in a corporate environment has not been installed.

The filter bar at the top of the Software page now has a filter called License State, which you can set to Licensed, Unlicensed, or Both. The default setting is Licensed, which is also the value that is set if you click Clear All on the filter bar.

For more information about the Software page, see Software.

We have continued our on-going improvements of the clarity of log file messages.

We have simplified the way in which you work with SKUs in the Software Library.

Previously, SKUs that did not have an associated metric did not appear on the data grid on the Licensing tab on the Software Library page. A No Metric group has been added to this data grid to display these SKUs.

Also, you previously needed to add a metric to a software release before you could select it when adding a SKU to a release. Now all metrics are available in the Metric drop-down on the Add SKU dialog.

For more information about SKUs, see Software Library page: Licensing tab.

You can now add the Data Source column to the data grid on the Software page using the menu. This enables you to identify the original source of any erroneous data so that you can correct it appropriately.

For more information about the Software page, see Software. For information about using the data grids, see Viewing pages of data.

The icons on the new menu bar have been updated.

Previously, the import service was polling very frequently to see if there were any new imports queued. This was causing a performance problem for the entire system, so the polling frequency has been reduced to improve it. This does, however, mean that there might now be a short delay between requesting a data import and it starting.

Creating an inventory data import using Ivanti Data Services has been simplified. You now need to specify only whether you want to import hardware, software, or both, and the recognition, reconciliation, and scheduling options.

Two new tabs have been added to the data grid on the Software page: Assigned to Server OSIs and Assigned to Client OSIs. The Assigned to Server OSIs tab shows software on OSIs that have an operating system that has the Server Software check box selected in the Software Library, whereas the Assigned to Client OSIs tab shows software on OSIs that have an operating system that DOES NOT have the Server Software check box selected.

For more information about the Software page, see Software.

You can use this feature to identify places where you can reclaim licenses and save money.

To help you to analyze the data import log files, the Log File and Exception File that you can download by clicking on the Data Import data grid are now interactive web pages.

For the log file, toggle buttons enable you to show or hide Info, Warning, or Error messages. You can search the log files by clicking the header of the column that you want to search, and then using the Search box.

The Canadian Dollar is now available as a currency in License Optimizer.

You can now search the Software Library without having to select the vendor, then the product title, and then the item.

To quickly search for an item in the Software Library:

1.At the top of the Software Library page, click Quick Search.
The Quick Search dialog appears.

2.Type part of the name of the item you want to find in the box, then click Search.
A data grid appears showing matching items.

3.Use the data grid controls to find the item you require, highlight it in the data grid, then click Select.
The Quick Search dialog closes and the Software Library page updates to show the details for the selected item.

For more information about the Software Library, see Software Library.

Two new tabs have been added to the data grid on the Hardware page: Servers and Clients. The Servers tab shows OSIs that have an operating system that has the Server Software check box selected in the Software Library, whereas the Clients tab shows OSIs that have an operating system that DOES NOT have the Server Software check box selected.

For more information about the Hardware page, see Hardware.

There can be only one import, recognition, or reconciliation in progress in your License Optimizer at the same time. For example, if you are importing data and start a recognition, reconciliation, or another import then the new request is queued until the original import has completed. Because these processes can take a significant amount of time to complete, we have added a message to the title bar at the top of the page informing all users logged in to the system that one of these processes is in progress, so that they are aware that any new process they start will initially be queued.

The feedback provided when you delete a data source has been improved.

A toggle has been added to the left of the account details at the top of License Optimizer that enables you to switch between the classic menu and a new, simplified menu that is designed to make it easier for you to find the most commonly used pages.

Select Try New Menu to change to the new menu. Some less-used items have been removed, and some pages have been consolidated into a single menu item.

For details of the changes, see New menu bar.

Overwrite has been removed as an Import Method for inventory imports, and you can now choose only Merge.

Overwrite deleted all data in the selected data source, and replaced it with the data from the new import file. This is a very drastic action that people sometimes used in error, so we have removed this option to stop people from making this mistake. Any imports you had that used Overwrite will now be set to Merge.

If you really do want to overwrite the data in a data source, you must now delete the data source and then re-create it using the new file.

The available audit tools available to import inventory from has been simplified. The Ivanti Discovery option has been renamed Ivanti Data Services, and the Core Control Generic option has been renamed to General. The available inventory data import audit tools are now:

•ADDM (Oracle)

•General

•Ivanti Data Services

•SCCM

More information has been added to the details of individual data imports on the Data Import data grids to help you to estimate how long an import will take. The Import Created column has been replace with the Import Started value (to show the time when the import started, rather than when it was added to the queue), and a Time Taken column has been added.

To see these values, click the icon to the left of the data source you are interested in to see the Imports Expansion pane.

You can now import a spreadsheet that maps your OSIs to specific business units. The mapping uses the Business Unit Code and the OSI Name, so you can use this method to map your OSIs to business units only if you have specified unique business unit codes for your business units.

To import Business Unit to OSI mappings:

1.On the Data Import page, under Import Types, click the Batch Processing tile.
The Batch Processing Sources page appears.

2.Click + New Batch Processing.
The Data Source page appears.

3.Type an Import Name, then in the Batch Processing Type drop-down, select Business Unit to OSI Mapping.
The Select your sources section appears.

4.Click Download Template if you want to download a spreadsheet that has the required columns for the import.

5.Select the Business Unit to OSI Mapping check box, then click Save.
The Choose data sources page appears.

6.Complete the mapping spreadsheet with the required Business Unit Code to OSI Name mappings, then close the spreadsheet.

7.On the Choose data sources page, click Select, browse to and select your spreadsheet, then click Upload.
The spreadsheet is uploaded.

8.Click Next.
The Map Business Unit to OSI Mapping page appears. If you have used the template file, this is set correctly.

9.Click Next.
The Settings page appears.

10.In the Import Method drop-down, select Merge, clear the Run recognition after import check box, enter the Email address for notification after import, then click Queue Import.
The import is queued. When the import has completed, your OSIs will be mapped to the appropriate business units.

When you have set a business unit to OSI mapping, re-importing the original inventory data source with blank business unit mappings does not reset the existing business unit to OSI mappings but leaves the mappings that you have previously set.

The Ivanti Discovery data source for inventory now imports the following software metering information into License Optimizer:

•Last Used – the date when the software item was last used on the particular OSI

•Launch Count – the total number of times that the software item has been started on the particular OSI

•Minutes Used – the total number of minutes the software item has been used on the particular OSI

These fields are available as columns in the data grids on the Assigned to OSIs tab of the Software page and on the Installed Software tab of the Edit OSI page under Hardware. The Last Used column is visible by default, the others you can add from the Columns item on the menu.

A number of changes have been made to help you to import data successfully using the General license template.

For information about data import, see Importing data. For more information about licenses, see Licenses.

A Download Template link has been added to the Data Source page for all import types, to make it easier to access the template spreadsheets.

The spreadsheet that you can download for a General license import has been updated to include tooltips that describe how to use each column. Also, those columns that require specific allowed values now include those values in drop-downs to help you to avoid entering incorrect values.

To see a tooltip describing the use of a column, hover your mouse pointer over the column heading.

Expand to see the tooltips for the columns

AvailableStartDate – The date that the license is available from (DD/MM/YYYY), if perpetual leave blank

Business Owner – The business unit that purchased the license

Contract Description – The source of the entitlement e.g. OEM/FPP, Oracle ULA, Microsoft ELA, IBM Passport Advantage

Contract Number – The contract/agreement policy number

Cost – The cost of a single license

Cost Per Year – If subscription/term/maintenance-based, enter the total yearly cost

Currency Code – The currency code

Downgradable – Does the license have rights to cover older versions?

Email Ids for Reminder – Provide the email addresses for the persons you wish to be notified with the reminder

EntitlementType – The type of entitlement: Base = License Only, Maintenance = see Maintenance Type, Upgrade = for an upgrade from an earlier version

ExpiryDate – The date that the license is no longer available to use (DD/MM/YYYY), if perpetual leave blank

Is Level License – The license can be applied only to a parent Business Unit and cannot be used by any subsequent child business unit

License Location – The Business Unit that can use the license; if global enter the company name as shown in License Optimizer, otherwise enter the Business Unit(s) separated with ';'

MaintenanceEndDate – If the Entitlement Type is Maintenance, enter when the maintenance/support expires (DD/MM/YYYY)

MaintenanceStartDate – If the Entitlement Type is Maintenance, enter when the maintenance/support starts (DD/MM/YYYY)

MaintenanceType – Base = license with maintenance, Renewal = maintenance/support only renewed, qualifying maintenance base must be in License Optimizer for a renewal to be applied

Metric – Select the metric that the license is calculated on e.g. Microsoft - Per Core

MS Software Assurance – Is this license is covered with Microsoft Software Assurance?

PO Number – The purchase order number for this license

PurchaseDate – The date the license was purchased

PurchaseDescription – Free text describing the license purchased e.g. Office 2016 Professional Plus

PurchaseQty – The number of licenses purchased, if unlimited leave blank and complete the column Unlimited Qty

Renewal Event Reminder – State when you would like to be reminded that the license is due to expire and may require renewal

SKU – If available, enter the SKU or Part Number for this product

Supplier – The supplier of the license e.g. Microsoft, IBM, Adobe

Total Cost – Cost multiplied by Purchase Quantity

Unique ID – Free text field, give the license(s) a unique ID to enable you to search and perform batch processing in the future

Unlimited Qty – Do you have an unlimited quantity of this license?

Valid For – Who has the right to use the license(s): BusinessUnit, User, OSI

Valid For Names – User = User names, OSI = Device names, BusinessUnit = Business Unit names

Expand to see the columns that include drop-downs of allowed values

Metric

Maintenance Type

Currency Code

Entitlement Type

License Type

Valid For

The drop-downs of allowed values are available on the first data row only. Drag the bottom right corner of the cell down the column to copy the drop-down to your other rows, then use the drop-down control to select the required value.

A new check box that enables you to configure reconciliation to run automatically after the import completes has been added to the Settings page in Data Import for both Inventory and License imports.

On the Data Import Settings page, if you have selected Run recognition after import, then also selecting Run reconciliation after recognition configures the system to run recognition and then reconciliation automatically when the import completes. A benefit of this is that it ensures that the Estate Overview dashboard that appears as the home page always displays the latest information.

You can now import user data from Ivanti Data Services into License Optimizer, in a similar way to how you can import inventory data. Before you can import user data from Data Services, you need to have configured a connector; for more information on this, see Ivanti Data Services.

When you have a connector to Data Services, you can import inventory data from there.

To import user data from Ivanti Data Services:

1.On the menu bar, expand Data Management, then click Data Import.
The Data Import page appears.

2.Under Import Types, click the User List tile.
The User List Sources page appears, showing a data grid of existing data sources that you have set up.

3.Click New User List.
The Create New User List Import page appears.

4.In the Import Name box, type a name for the data source, then in the User List Type drop-down select Ivanti Discovery User.
The Select your sources section appears.

5.Select the check box alongside the User List File row, then click Save.
The data source is saved and the User List File page appears.

Although these pages often refer to "files", we are not going to use files when we import using the Ivanti Discovery User type, but are going to import directly from the Data Services database using an API.

6.On the User List File page, in the Select the file to import from uploaded files drop-down, select Ivanti Discovery API, then click Next.
The Map User List File page appears.

7.Complete the remaining pages of the wizard and then queue the import as for other data sources.

A new check box, Server Software, has been added to the General tab on the Software Library page, to enable you to identify server software.

For information about the General tab on the Software Library page, see Software Library page: General tab.

When you buy licenses, you usually know the vendor SKU (stock keeping unit) that you used. This SKU identifies exactly what it is you have bought. You can now use SKUs to help you to enter license records more easily.

To add a license using a SKU:

1.Under Entitlement on the menu bar, click Licenses.
The Licenses & Contracts page appears.

2.On the gears menu, click Add New License.
The Add New License page appears.

3.Alongside SKU Number, click Look up.
The SKU Search dialog appears.

4.Enter the SKU in the SKU Number box, then click Search.
The data grid updates with details of the selected SKU.

If you complete the Product field on the License page before you click Look up, the data grid shows all SKUs for the selected product:

5.Select the required SKU in the data grid, then click OK.
The SKU Search dialog closes, and the Add New License page updates with all of the information available from the SKU.

6.Complete the remaining fields on the Add New License page as required, then click Save to save the new license.

For information about licenses, see Licenses.

More fields have been added to the Add New License and Edit License pages:

•License Agreement​

•Organization Type​

•Level (Microsoft only)​

•Pack Size​

•Cores (Microsoft only)

You can also add these columns to the Licenses tab of the Licenses & Contracts page.

For information about licenses, see Licenses.

The Getting Started help, which gives a quick description of how to determine an initial estimated license position, and then discusses what that means, has been incorporated into this help, and is now available from here: Getting started.

Some changes have been made to the Software Library page.

On the General tab, two new fields have been added. You can now record the End of Support Date, and select a Pool to categorize the purpose of the software at a very high level.

On the Licensing tab, where you can add SKUs (stock keeping units) to metrics, you can now record the following additional information for a SKU:

•License Agreement – the name of the license agreement, linked to the vendor

•Pack Size – the number of licenses in the SKU

•License Type – select from Base, Upgrade, or Maintenance

•Cores (Microsoft only) – the number of processor cores covered by the license

On the Categories tab, the list of categories now includes UNSPSC (United Nations Standard Products and Services Code) values. UNSPSC is a universal classification framework for products and services. You can type in the Category drop-down to search either for the UNSPSC value or the corresponding category name. The column UNSPSC Code has been added to the data grid on this tab.

When you add a price list on the Pricing tab, Polish Zloty is now available as a currency.

For information about the Software Library page, see Software Library.

For information about UNSPSC values, see https://www.unspsc.org/.

A new dashboard called Estate Overview has been added under Business Intelligence > Dashboards on the menu bar and is now the page that appears when you log in or when you click the Ivanti logo at the top of the page. This dashboard provides you with useful information about your IT estate as soon as you have completed your first inventory import.

The dashboard shows:

•OSI Count

•End of Life Installs

•Unmatched Software

•Upcoming End of Life Installs

•Overlapped Install Count

•End of Life Install Count

•Operating System Count by Vendor (top 5)

•Install Count by Vendor (top 5)

•Install Count by Title (top 5)

•End of Life Installs (180 Days) by Vendor

•OSI Count by Partition Type

•Operating System Count by Title

•Category Breakdown

•Operating System by Vendor

For more information about dashboards, see Dashboards.

A number of short videos about improving and understanding your license compliance have been added to the Ivanti Help YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/IvantiHelp)

There is a License Optimizer playlist: View the playlist

Recently added videos include the following topics:

•Improving SQL Server license compliance by setting the edition
Watch the video (6:09)

•Improving license compliance by setting hardware specs
Watch the video (5:31)

•Using business units
Watch the video (4:17)

•Deciding which option to choose during software teaching
Watch the video (5:34)

Microsoft provides information about your Microsoft licenses in a spreadsheet called a Microsoft License Statement, or MLS. This spreadsheet includes a number of worksheets, two of which you can use to import your Microsoft licenses from: Transaction Data and License Summary. The ability to import from License Summary was temporarily removed in V2018.7, but has now been improved and restored to the License Type drop-down on the Data Source page for License Imports.

Which of these two options you choose to use 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.

There are two sets of filters on the Licenses page:

•the filters towards the top of the page (labeled Business Units, Vendors/Products, Licenses, and Categories) enable you to specify which licenses you want to display initially.

•when you have set one or more of these filters, the corresponding data grid appears. This data grid has another set of filters above each column that enable you to filter the displayed list.

Your selections in both sets of these filters now remain until you change them or log out. Previously, the filters were reset each time the page loaded.

For more information, see Licenses.

A new column, Quality, has been added to the data grid on the License Matching page.

This column indicates the quality of the potential match that License Optimizer has made for an unmatched license. You can filter the list based on the values in this column, so that you can focus your teaching on those items that have been more confidently identified.

For more information, see License Matching.

There are two sets of filters on the Software page:

•the filters towards the top of the page (labeled Business Units, Vendors/Products, Licenses, and Categories) enable you to specify which software items you want to display initially.

•when you have set one or more of these filters, the corresponding data grid appears. This data grid has another set of filters above each column that enable you to filter the displayed list.

Your selections in both sets of these filters now remain until you change them or log out. Previously, the filters were reset each time the page loaded.

For more information, see Software.

From the Business Units page, you can now delete any number of Business Units at a time (including entire branches) by selecting the check boxes alongside the Business Units you no longer require and then clicking Deleted selected. Click Delete All at the top of the page to delete all of the Business Units in your system.

For more information about business units, see Business units.

From the Business Units page, you can now delete up to 200 Business Units at a time (including entire branches) by selecting the check boxes alongside the Business Units you no longer require and then clicking Deleted selected. The Delete option has been removed from the in-line gears menu for Business Units. This feature is extended in 2018.9.

For more information about business units, see Business units.

When you apply filters to the Hardware page or License Matching page, the filters now remain until you change them or log out. Previously, the filters were reset each time the page loaded.

When you import entitlement data, License Optimizer tries to match license records to a product entry in the License Optimizer Software Library, and any imported licenses that it does not recognize you can then teach it. Sometimes, however, you will make mistakes when teaching license recognition phrases to License Optimizer. From this release, you can remove these mistaken license recognition phrases by clicking alongside the mistaught row on the Recognition Phrases tab on the Software Library page.

After you have removed the mistaken license recognition phrases, you need to re-import the license file that contains the licenses that you mistaught with the Import Method set to Overwrite. When you re-import this file, License Optimizer automatically recognizes all of the licenses that you correctly taught it and displays on the License Matching page any licenses that you removed the recognition phrase for, so that you can teach it the correct phrase.

For more information, see License Matching and Software Library.

You can now automatically match licenses to contracts during license import. A new mandatory field, Contract Number, has been added to the Contract grid and form. You can map the Contract field on the license record to the Contract Number field on the contract.

During the upgrade, a default Contract Number is applied to each of your contracts. Change this default to the value you want to use. Each contract must have a unique Contract Number.

To help you to automatically match licenses to contracts during license import, two new columns have been added to the import template that you can download from License Optimizer: Contract Number and Contract Description. Use these fields in your license import file to specify the contract that a license is linked to.

When you are importing an MLS Transaction Data spreadsheet, the Authorization / Agreement Number column on the Transaction Data worksheet is mapped to the Contract Number, and the Customer Name on Agreement column on the Transaction Data worksheet is mapped to the Contract Description.

When you import a General license spreadsheet, if a license record has:

•no Contract Number specified, it is imported and not linked to a contract

•a Contract Number specified that exists in your system, it is imported and matched to that contract

•a Contract Number specified that does not exist in your system, a new contract is created using the Contract Number and Contract Description and the license is imported and linked to this new contract

When you import an MLS Transaction Data license spreadsheet, if a license record has:

•no Authorization / Agreement Number specified, it is imported and not linked to a contract

•an Authorization / Agreement Number specified that exists in your system, it is imported and matched to that contract

•an Authorization / Agreement Number specified that does not exist in your system, a new contract is created using the Authorization / Agreement Number and Customer Name on Agreement and the license is imported and linked to this new contract

In the Parent Contract drop-down on the Contract form, and in the Contract drop-down on the License form and License Quick Edit dialog, contracts are no longer identified by the Contract Description only, but by both the Contract Number and the Contract Description combined.

Only valid licenses can be used in reconciliation, so one of the tasks that you need to complete is to supply the missing details for any invalid licenses. Previously, you had to look through the entire list of matched licenses to find the invalid licenses. There is now a filter on the Status column on the list of matched licenses that enables you to display All, Valid, or Invalid licenses.

A number of improvements have been made to the data import logs. The logs now include the number of:

•records in the source

•records imported into License Optimizer for each object type

•rejected and skipped rows

Also, the logs enable you to identify each record that failed to import along with a reason for the failure and a suggestion for resolving the issue.

MLS Transaction Data imports include a pre-processing step that applies business logic on the records to remove some of them. The logs for MLS Transaction Data imports now provide additional information about licenses rejected as part of this pre-processing to help you to understand the reason for their rejection.

A number of other enhancements have been made to the Data Import pages for this release.

Pending and scheduled imports

To help you to estimate how quickly your imports will take to run, the current total number of pending and scheduled data imports appears in a banner at the top of the Data Import page. The current number of pending and scheduled data imports for each Import Type is shown as an icon on the corresponding tile, with the number of pending imports displayed on a red circle, and the number of scheduled imports shown on a blue circle.

two imports are pending, and one import is scheduled

Obsolete license types removed from the Create New License Import page

Some import options are no longer available for new data imports and have been removed from the License Type drop down when you create a new license data import.

Improved import reliability

Previously, there were times when the import service could become blocked if there were problems with a data import. Now any imports that become stuck are marked with Failed in the Import Status column of the Data Import list along with a reason for the failure, and removed from the queue. This means that the following data imports can start immediately and you are provided with information about why your import failed.

Column mapping removed for inventory imports of type Ivanti Discovery

The mappings provided for inventory imports using the Ivanti Discovery import type are correctly set by Ivanti, so the column mapping pages have been removed from the Data Import pages for this import type, as they are not required.

Cluster data from Ivanti Neurons Discovery

Cluster data is now imported through the Neurons Discovery data source and can be viewed on the Hardware page

For more information about Data Import, see Importing data.

Previously, when using the Ivanti Neurons Discovery Services that you configure using the Configure Connectors tile on the Data Import page, License Optimizer could identify a single instance of software as two separate software instances. Software information is collected from both Add\Remove Programs and from Products, which sometimes contain the same software instance but with the version number recorded with different levels of detail. For example, an instance of software with version 13.0.10.0.1 in Add\Remove Programs is the same as an instance of software with the same name in Products that has the version number 13.0, but License Optimizer was identifying them as different versions.

The more detailed version number is now trimmed to match the shorter version number so that the two software instances match and are considered a single software product by License Optimizer.

When you import data, some columns require specific values. For example, if you import Business Units, then the value in the Business Unit Type column must be set to one of: COMPANY, REGION, COUNTRY, SITE, DEPARTMENT, DOMAIN, ROOM, COSTCENTRE, or OTHER. If you use any values other than these, then the associated record is not imported.

For this reason, it is very important that you take care when entering values into these lookup columns. To help with this, the Data Import page now enables you to copy the accepted lookup values for a data source to your computer's clipboard, so that you can paste these values into your source file.

To copy the accepted lookup values:

1.Under Data Management on the menu bar, click Data Import.
The Data Import page appears.

2.Click the appropriate Import Types tile, then edit or create a new data source.

3.Progress to the Data Source page.
In the Select your sources section, there is a column called Lookup Values. If a File Type includes columns that have lookup values, a link appears in this column.

4.Click the link in the Lookup Values column.
The Lookup Values dialog appears. Default values appear in bold.

5.Click Copy to Clipboard alongside the required column.
The contents of the Available Values column is copied to your computer's clipboard, from where you can paste it into your data source file to ensure you use the correct allowed values.

For more information, see Importing data.

The License Matching page under Entitlement lists all license records in your system that are not matched to a product in the License Optimizer Software Library. The Recognised Product column for each license record suggests matching products in a drop-down list, with the better matches appearing at the top of this drop-down. You can then select the product that matches the license from this drop-down, and select Commit Matches from the page gears menu to teach this match for existing and/or future entitlement data import records.

From V2018.5, the Recognised Product column includes a match value in square brackets before the product name. Higher match values, which appear first in the list, represent a higher confidence in the product match.

More columns, including those related to entitlement, are available to add to the data grid. Use the column menu to add them to help you to identify licenses more easily. Conversely, you can remove columns from the grid to increase the width of the remaining columns so that you can more easily read the details of, for example, the Recognised Product column.

You can also match licenses with products by searching for them and committing the match.

To search for a matching product for an unmatched license:

1.On the License Matching page, click Products above the list of unmatched licenses.
The Search Product panel appears.

2.Type the product name you are searching for in the Search Product field, then click Search.
A search results list appears.

3.Select the handle alongside the license you want to match, and drag it onto the matching product in the search results list.
The Accept Matches dialog appears, asking how you want to accept the match.

4.Select how you want to save the match. You can:

•Assign product to selected entitlements only – assigns the selected license to the product

•Assign product to selected entitlements and all similar descriptions – assigns the selected license and any similar license in the system to the product

•Assign product to selected entitlements and all similar descriptions, and also for future entitlement with these descriptions – assigns the selected license and any similar license in the system to the product, along with any similar licenses that are imported in the future

For more information, see License Matching.

Files and Paths under the Tools on the menu bar provides a useful way of teaching License Optimizer to recognize imported data and match it to a product listed in the Definitive Software Library (DSL). For this release, the speed and accuracy of the software library search has been improved.

The DSL is in two parts: a global DSL maintained by Ivanti, and a custom DSL maintained by you that stores software that is specific to your organization. You can use the Software Teaching page that you access from the Files and Paths menu item to add new items to your custom DSL if you cannot find an appropriate record that already exists in the global DSL.

To add an item to your custom DSL:

1.Under Tools on the menu bar, click Files and Paths.
The Software Teaching page appears. listing all software records that have not been matched to an item in the DSL.

2.Click an item in the list of unmatched software records.
The right-hand pane updates to show potential matches from the DSL.
If you find a match in this list, click the inline gears menu alongside the match, then click Match Program (Any Version) or Match Program & Version as appropriate to match the software record to the corresponding entry in the DSL.

3.If you cannot find a match, you can create a new DSL record and associate the software record with it by clicking either Create New DSL or Create DSL From Selected.
Clicking Create New DSL opens an empty Create New DSL dialog, clicking Create DSL From Selected opens the same dialog with DSL Title field populated with the value from the Title column for the software record.

4.Complete the Vendor Name field and the DSL Title field, then select either Licensable or Non-Licensable alongside State.

5.Complete the other fields as required, then click Save.
The new record is saved to your custom DSL and the selected software record is matched to it.

For more information about the Definitive Software Library, see Software Library.

You can now map the user location for a User List data import. If the location in the User List data does not already exist in License Optimizer, it is created as part of the data import.

For more information about Data Import, see Importing data. For more information about locations, see Locations.

Department and Job Title have been added to the data grid and dialogs on the Named User Management page.

You can now edit the Location field on an OSI even if the Lock to Audit Tool check box is selected.

You can now remove the location assignment for OSIs and Named Users by selecting the Unassign Location check box on the Edit OSI or Edit User window. This check box is also available on the Hardware and User Quick Edit dialogs, enabling you to remove the location assignment for multiple records at the same time.

A new data series called Top X by Location is available to add to a dashboard tile, which you can find under the OSI Count folder of the Hardware series. This series enables you to add a chart to display the top x locations that have the most OSIs associated with them.

For more information about configuring tiles on dashboards, see Viewing and configuring dashboards.

Shutdown time

Previously, you could set only a date when you configured a shutdown time for an agent on the Agent Settings dialog. You can now also specify a time.

Agent download and configuration

The separate downloads for the import agents that you use to configure your data import from Ivanti Discovery Services have been combined into a single installer, which you can download from the Agent Management page.

For more information about Agent Management, see Agent Management. For more information about Ivanti Discovery Services, visit https://help.ivanti.com.

To install the Core Control Agent Tool and the Import Agent:

1.Click Agent Management under Configuration on the menu bar.
The Agent Management page appears.

2.Click Download Import Agent at the top of the page.
The file CoreControlImportAgent.zip is downloaded.

3.Extract the files from CoreControlImportAgent.zip.

4.Run Setup.exe from the AgentTool folder.
The Core Control Agent Tool is installed.

5.Run Setup.exe from the ImportAgent folder.
The Import Agent is installed.

When you have installed the Core Control Agent Tool and the Import Agent, you can configure the agent to connect to your Discovery Services. We recommend that you create a new user account to use as the import agent user. For information about creating user accounts, see Managing users.

To configure the Import Agent:

1.Create a new import agent user in License Optimizer, and log in as this user to fully activate the user account.

2.Open the file bootstrapImportData.config from the download folder in a text editor and change the <UserName> and <Password> values to match the credentials for the new import agent user that you created above.

3.Save this file to the folder \Core Control Import Agent\Templates where you installed the Import Agent.

4.Start Core Control Agent Tool from the Start menu using Run as administrator.
The Core Control Agent Tool dialog appears.

5.Click Load data from config file, and open the bootstrapImportData.config you edited above.

6.Complete the fields in the Discovery Datasource group with the API for the Discovery endpoint and the Discovery Services Credentials.

7.Set the Schedule as required, then click Save datasource changes to config file.
The agent is configured.

8.From the Windows Services applet, start the Core Control Import Agent service.

A new tile, Organisational Data, has been added to the Data Import page that enables you to import business units and locations from a spreadsheet. For more information about business units, see Business units, for more information about locations, see Locations.

Watch a related video (6:08)

Your business units spreadsheet can include the parent business unit for each business unit that you import, so that you can build a business unit structure. You can also specify a Business Unit Code, and a Business Unit Type. Available Business Unit Types are limited to Company, Region, Country, Site, Department, Domain, Room, and Other.

For example, this spreadsheet:

gives the following:

Business Unit and Location imports have to use the Merge import method, which means that you can maintain a spreadsheet of your business units or locations and when you re-import it, changes are merged into the values stored in License Optimizer. If a row in the data source has no parent, it is added at the top level of the business units hierarchy.
In your data import file use Site to indicate business units that you want to appear with the Business Unit Type set to Office/Site on the Business Units page.

For more information, see Creating a new data source.

In this release, the Delete item on in-line gears menu for a business unit deleted the business unit and its children business units, provided they did not have data associated with them. This functionality has now been superseded by the check boxes and Delete buttons introduced in versions 2018.8 and 2018.9.

You can drag and drop business units to move them between parents in the business unit hierarchy.

You can create a hierarchy of locations and associate hardware and named users with these locations. You can add locations at the top level of the hierarchy, or as a child of an existing location. You can also move a location to a new parent location if required and delete locations that have no data associated with them. For more information about locations, see Locations.

If a user enters their password incorrectly too many times, their account is locked for 30 minutes. Previously, the user had to wait for 30 minutes before they could log in. Now, License Optimizer administrators can unlock any locked accounts from the gears menu for the affected user on the Manage System Users page.

For more information about user accounts, see Managing users.

Gap Analysis - Hardware and Potential Hardware Duplicates Review Report have been added to the Static Reports.

For more information about static reports, see Static Reports.