Software Asset Management

With the Clientele ITSM 2022.2 release we introduced a lot of new functionality to help support your Software Asset Management process. On this page you will find more information , explaining what SAM is and how to use the new functionality introduced in Clientele ITSM 2022.2.

As stated earlier, SAM stands for Software Asset Management and its main purpose is to properly manage your software assets. When you properly manage your software assets you ensure that you are aware of your contract terms, and compliance which ultimately aids in becoming more cost effective and minimizing audits findings.

Info

Please take into account that Software entitlements and Software Normalization are only available if you have a software asset management user license.

Lansweeper Import

Software discovery is the process of identifying all the installed software and hardware within an organization. This allows for the customer to be aware of what hard and software is used in their IT landscape . Subsequent to identifying an organizations IT assets it is crucial to maintain an up to date inventory management. Continuously monitoring these IT assets is an important factor to secure compliance. A reliable and efficient SAM tool that can assist with software discovery and inventory is Lansweeper.

Clientele ITSM already has a lot of sources it can utilize to import information from various sources and now in Clientele ITSM 2022.2 we included lansweeper as well. When you set up an import, using the import agent, you select lansweeper as indicated in the screenshot below.

Lansweeper cloud URL

The Lansweeper cloud URL is required in order for you to be able to create a connection and retrieve data.

Authorization scheme

By default "Token" is selected as this is most commonly used.

Authorization token

The token to authorize to Lansweeper cloud, this token can be obtained by generating it in Lansweeper.

Default site

The default website to use in the import. You can select the website by clicking the "load sites" button. The id of the selected site becomes a replaceable tag with the name "{siteid}" in the graphQL of the import task item.

Import Task Item

In here you will be able to configure which data you would like to retrieve from Lansweeper.

The following importmanagers have been added in this release to support the SAM process.

• ItemSoftwareBundleImportManager
• ItemSoftwareUpgradeDowngradeImportManager
• SoftwareEntitlementImportManager
• SoftwareEntitlementMaintenanceImportManager
• SoftwareItemsImportManager
• SoftwareItemNormalizationImportManager
• SoftwareItemProductNormalizationImportManager
• SoftwareItemsImportManager

In the Main GraphQL tab you will be able to specify the fields you want its contents to be returned using GraphQL which is a query language for APIs. At the bottom of the form you have the Bulk Export, JSON Root path and the Next cursor path.

You can use the bulk export when you are loading in a lot of data (bulk) or trying to access specific data which is only available in bulk export. See the next paragraph for additional information on bulk exports.

In the JSON Root path you specify where the data can be found. The next cursor path contains the path to the cursor needed to support paging.

Bulk Export

When you decide to enable Bulk Export the export itself can take up quite a lot of time, this is because it requests the data, waits for a reply and then actually downloads the file. And only then you are able to query the data.

Tip

When you get a timeout previewing or configuring a bulk export you can try to increase the value of the moduleoption MaxAmountofExportStatusChecks.

Main GraphQL Tab

When selecting the bulk export you will notice that an additional tab called, Export status GRAPHQL, appears and the bottom field changes to JSON ExportID path. In the JSON ExportID path you put the path which points to the exportid of the related bulkexport.

For more information regarding bulk export in lansweeper, click here.

Export Status GraphQL Tab

The Export Status GraphQL is needed to check the status of the file that is being generated. It will produce a url where the export can be downloaded.

At the bottom of the form you will see a field called JSON Status URL path which you will need to request the status.

In the screenshot below you see the siteid and exportid mentioned, the siteid will be automatically replaced with the siteid you selected when you configured the source connection. The exportid is automatically replaced with the exportid that will be retrieved using the JSON ExportID located on the first tab.

For more information on checking the status of the export, click here.

SQL Tab

The SQL Tab is used if you want to modify the data which was retrieved, for example maybe you want to combine two fields or make a specific calculation.

For more information on how to query this data you can click on the following topics.

• JSON Value
• JSON Query
• OpenJSON

Software Normalization

Software normalization is the process of converting the raw discovered data while also removing unnecessary information to unify the data. This normalization helps in the mapping of software items to entitlements entered into Clientele ITSM. This will allow for incoming data to automatically be categorized in the same manner.

You can access the Software Item Normalization form by selecting it using the Manage > Software > Normalization menu item.

All discovered Software will be listed here but for our example we will use Clientele ITSM 2022.2 as being discovered by Lansweeper.

The following columns are displayed in the grid

Column	Additional information
Discovered Name	Populated automatically by the Import manager.
Discovered Publisher	Populated automatically by the Import manager.
Discovered Version	Populated automatically by the Import manager.
Normalization Status	This will automatically be set when you import or normalize a record.
Item	The item you are linking the discovered record to.
Manufacturer	The manufacturer you are linking the discovered record to.
Name	The name you are linking the discovered record to.
Version	The version you are linking the discovered record to.
Edition	The edition you are linking the discovered record to.
Licensable	Set this value to true is the related item will be licensable.
Release Date	Set the release date of the item.
Last Changed By	Displays the user who normalizes or changes the record.

Working with the normalization table.

Whether you want to link a discovered record to an already existing item or to a new item you are going to use the normalization table. In our example we will be using clientele ITSM software as being discovered

Because we have added in grid editing you can now directly add or edit in the find normalization table. By clicking inside the item field and typing Clientele, it will automatically look for already existing software items present in Clientele.

Now when you select Clientele ITSM 2022.2 SAM it will link the discovered software to this software item. You will see the status change to Manually normalised. When you now double click the record it will open a detail form and you can see on how many and on which hardware the software is discovered on. These are hardware products already present in Clientele ITSM.

In the previous example we linked the discovered software to an already existent item, however it is also a very common scenario that the software item does not exist yet in Clientele. In this case you can press the plus icon in the control to automatically add the software item and it will prefill the name, manufacturer, edition and version if it can.

If the manufacturer already exists it will link to this manufacturer, however if it does not it will create the manufacturer as an organization.

Generating Software Products

To prevent the automatic import of hundreds of software products when you are normalizing we added the option for the user to choose the moment of import themselves. The Generate products button which is located on the normalization find form will fore an agent task to run who will make sure that the normalized items will be correctly imported as software products. An example product generation import task item can be downloaded below. You can import it in your clientele itsm environment, do not forget to set the moduleoption to this import.

• Product Generation example

Software Items

Software items have been added to be able to distinguish between regular items, which were too generic, and software items specifically. Software items will have additional properties and tabs which only apply to software and are needed for Software Entitlements. As you can see in the screenshot below you will see that the following sections are newly added. You can access the Software Item form by selecting it using the Manage > Software > Software Item.

When creating a new software item you will notice that both the Software Name and the Manufacturer are required fields. When you fill out these fields the display name will be automatically filled with the information you enter in the software group. For instance if you fill out the software name, manufacturer, version and edition, the Display name will be displaying the following information, Manufacturer, Software name, Version, Edition as seen below.

Also on the right side new tabs have been added.

Tab Up & Downgrade

In this tab you can specify to which version the current software is allowed to upgrade to or to downgrade to. This is particularly important for your stock reports and get insights in your compliance. You can manually add them or use the import manager to populate the list.

Bundle

In this tab you can add software which is part of the current software selected, for instance if you have Microsoft 365 and you want to be able to see what other software is part of Office 365 (for example Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc).You can manually add them or use the import manager to populate the list.

Software Entitlement

The foundation of Software Asset Management is License Entitlement Management. Software Entitlements can give you a level of transparency into your purchased software licenses. This makes you aware to all the risks associated with audits, budget overrun, and security. Because Clientele ITSM is able to monitor and measure all the imported information and provide you with alerts pertaining the current status of the contracts and licenses.

Software Entitlement Details

Here we will discuss some of the new fields which are displayed in the form.

Software item

This is the software item this software entitlement is about. Once you select the software item it becomes read only. When you edit a software entitlement you will not be able to change the software item it is referring to.

Quantity

The total number of licenses this entitlement has.

Metric

This is where you select what type of metric you are using to count the number of licenses in use. You are able to choose from the following metrics.

• Per Installation
• Per User
• Per Processor (Selecting this option will enable the Product Hardware Tab)
• Per Processor Core (Selecting this option will enable the Product Hardware Tab)
• Concurrent
• Other

License Type

Here you have the option to choose between perpetual and a subscription license type. Depending on the value the first tab will change to either Maintenance & Notes or Dates & Notes.

Upgrade rights

Displays if with this entitlement you will have upgrade rights or not, this is always the case in a subscription license type and that is why it is automatically set to true and disabled for editing.

License is valid

This displays if the license is valid or not. Perpetual usually is valid but with a subscription it depends on the dates you enter in the Dates & Notes tab.

Dates & Notes / Maintenance & Notes Tab

Depending on the license type you selected either the Dates & Notes tab (for Subscription license type) or Maintenance & Notes will appear (Perpetual license type). With the perpetual license type you are allowed to add multiple date ranges to reflect the various maintenance periods there were.

Product Hardware

This tab will only be displayed if you have the Per Processor or Per Processor Core metric selected. You will be able to view or a list of product hardware that directly impacts this entitlement. You can manually add products or have the import manager do this for you.

Software Product vs regular Product

When the Software item was created it was only logical to also make a software product. In our regular product there are a lot of fields that are directly related to hardware and seemed useless to be displayed on the software product detail form. In the software details we removed the entire hardware groupbox and some fields from the additional information group like can be loaned, quantity and location.

However in the hardware section for the regular products and which we advice to use for hardware specific products we added the following fields.

Hardware Information group

• Processor
• number of processors
• number of cores/processor

System Information group

• Additional info - This will only be displayed if the import provided an url to the asset. You can click it to go directly to the external page of an asset.
• operating system
• last logged in user - read only as this will be automatically set by the related import manager
• last scan date - read only as this will be automatically set by the related import manager
• is virtual - enabling this will allow you to pick a physical host. If this is disabled so will the physical host field be.
• physical host - Here you can select the actual physical host of virtual machine