April 2023
Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.
Automation
Flexera One added the following new Automation feature in April 2023.
Budget Alerts policy replaced the Budget Alerts (Legacy) policy
This feature is available with Automation.
The Budget Alerts policy has been enhanced to leverage the cloud budgets to configure alerts for a budget based on a desired threshold, actual, or forecasted spend. This policy triggers an incident when the cloud spend for the selected budget exceeds the threshold or the defined budget. The incident provides the details on the budget group that triggered the incident.
For more information, see Budget Alerts in Flexera One Help.
Cloud Cost Optimization
Cloud Cost Optimization added the following new feature and enhancements in April 2023.
Rule-Based Dimensions billing center support
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Rule-Based Dimensions (RBDs) can now be used to manage the allocation rules for billing centers. When using RBDs for cost allocation, you have more complex and time-based allocation rules to support your unique business needs.
For more information, see Rule-Based Dimensions in the Flexera One Help.
Support for rule-based dimensions in Cloud Cost Anomaly Alerts
This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
The Cloud Cost Anomaly Alerts policy now accepts the use of rule-based dimensions, in addition to standard dimensions, to define specific spend groups for analysis. Additionally, the targeted spend groups can be refined further by providing specific dimension values—making it easier for you to focus on the areas of spending that matter most. In the policy, you specify the spend groups to group data for cloud cost anomaly analysis with the Cost Anomaly Dimensions parameter.
Along with the new support for the use of rule-based dimensions in the Cost Anomaly Dimensions parameter, the default for the Cost Metric parameter has been changed from Unamortized and Unblended to Amortized and Unblended.
For more information about these changes, see the details about the Cost Anomaly Dimensions and Cost Metric parameters in Cloud Cost Anomaly Alerts in the Flexera One Help.
New Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA) bill-based data dimensions
This feature is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.
Microsoft introduced the new commerce experience for Azure (Modern Commerce). With the new commerce experience in Azure CSP program, the license subscription costs (such as Office 365) are now included in the Azure bill. Cloud Cost Optimization uses Azure bill data to provide an accurate view of your costs across accounts and services. With this new feature, users can choose to view only the cloud spend and exclude the license spend in the Azure bill.
The following dimensions are added:
- Service Family—The Azure service family (Compute, Office 365, and so on).
- Product Order Name—The product that was purchased (Azure plan, Microsoft 365 E1, and so on).
The new dimensions have been added to facilitate the removal of the Azure license charges. These dimensions can be used in the Cloud Dashboard, Billing Centers, and Bill Adjustments. For more information, see Microsoft Azure Modern Commerce Agreement (MCA) Bill-Based Data Dimensions and Bill Data Adjustments.
Flexera One ServiceNow app
Flexera launched a new Flexera One ServiceNow app in April 2023 that supports IT Visibility.
New Flexera One app available now in the ServiceNow Store
This ServiceNow app supports IT Visibility.
The new Flexera One ServiceNow app for IT Visibility is the next generation of our ServiceNow integration apps.
The Flexera One app is a scoped app that allows you to link the IT Visibility data in Flexera One to your ServiceNow environment using fully modern ServiceNow architecture and standards. This app uses out-of-the-box ServiceNow features, tables, and columns to integrate Flexera One and ServiceNow in a way that delivers a best practice, multi-source CMDB environment.
This new integration app brings exciting new features—such Delta data loads, robust scheduling controls, and enhanced logging capabilities—to allow you to integrate with Flexera One in a way that more closely aligns with your business needs.
The initial release of the Flexera One app includes the following key features:
- Integrate enriched, normalized IT Visibility data from Flexera One into your ServiceNow CMDB.
- Run efficient delta jobs to load data changes from Flexera One to ServiceNow.
- Schedule data load jobs to run on demand or periodically (daily, weekly, monthly, or at custom intervals).
- View application logs and job trackers to quickly resolve errors or performance issues.
Comparing the existing Flexera Integration app with the new Flexera One app, the matrix below shows the key differences between these apps.
| Feature | Flexera One app v1.03 | Flexera Integration app v5.11 |
|---|---|---|
| Supports IT Visibility integration | yes | yes |
| Supports Data Platform integration | yes | |
| Supports IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite integration | yes | |
| Has delta data loads | yes | |
| Supports "standard" transform maps | yes | |
| Supports Robust Transform Engine (RTE) | yes | |
| Supports Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) | yes | yes |
| Supports out-of-the-box table integration | yes | Somewhat |
| Able to store data in custom tables | yes | |
| Scheduling control for Data Platform | yes | |
| Scheduling control for IT Visibility | yes | |
| Scheduling control for IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite | yes | |
| Detailed logging available in ServiceNow | yes |
IT Asset Management
IT Asset Management added the following new features and enhancements in April 2023.
Citrix Cloud adapter enhancement
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The Citrix Cloud adapter released in November 2022, has been enhanced to allow for importing streamed applications and corresponding delivery groups from Citrix Cloud into IT Asset Management. After a successful import, Citrix virtual application data will be visible in the following areas of IT Asset Management: Citrix virtual apps installer evidence report, installer evidence, unrecognized evidence and remote devices.
Key information
- Installer evidence is created based on the imported streamed application name, and will display as recognized or unrecognized.
- Recognized applications are automatically assigned to an application with an Access Mode marked as Citrix Virtual App. If the installer evidence is not recognized by the Application Recognition Library (ARL), a new raw evidence type called StreamedApplication is created, which can be manually assigned to an application.
- For any end-user who is not a primary user of an inventory device, a remote device will be created for them, and the installer evidence will be mapped to that device.
- Citrix Cloud virtual application data can now be reported on by running the Citrix Virtual Apps Installer Evidence Report.
Consider the following:
- Only delivery groups that exclusively stream applications will be imported. For example, delivery groups streaming both desktops and applications are not imported.
- Only applications assigned to users at delivery group level will be imported.
- Unrecognized installer evidence has to be mapped manually.
- File evidence for streamed applications is not collected - files path, file version, publisher and so on.
Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The following operating system version has been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet inventory agent:
- Oracle Linux 8.7 and 9.1 (x86 64-bit only)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.7 and 9.1 (x86 64-bit only)
The following product versions have been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:
- BMC Discovery (previously ADDM) 23.1
- IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on IBM DB2 9.2.31
For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.
VMs Inventory Gaps report enhancement
This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.
The former VMs Inventory Gaps From vCenters report has been renamed to VMs Inventory Gaps report with broadened scope.
Previously, this report only returned and displayed virtual machines (VMs) and corresponding inventory status from a vCenter import. From this release, this report collects and displays all VMs as well as their inventory status, not only from the vCenter import but also from other virtualization technology imports.
A new Status column has also been added to the report in the Host group.
For more details, see VMs Inventory Gaps Report.
AWS Config adapter
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The new AWS Config adapter provides an alternative method for establishing a connection to Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (AWS EC2), and allows you to create an integration to query your AWS resources by means of an AWS aggregator. Compared to previously released AWS connections, this new adapter has less setup steps.
To use the AWS Config adapter, AWS Config needs to be enabled on all the relevant AWS accounts that resource data is to be collected from.
When enabled, AWS Config stores configuration data for your resources in AWS. The aggregator is then created to pull the data from selected or all AWS accounts into a single account. From this single account, the FlexNet Beacon will query the aggregator and import the data into IT Asset Management.
After a successful data import: EC2 instances, dedicated hosts, Oracle RDS databases and account details with account names will be visible in IT Asset Management.
For more details on configuring the AWS Config adapter, see Managing AWS EC2 Connections.
Least privilege operation mode for FlexNet Inventory Agent on Unix platforms
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
Previously, when the FlexNet inventory agent was installed on a Unix-like system, the entire agent had to run as root and requires full root access. This could cause traceability issues or security issues to some users.
From this release, you can choose to install the FlexNet inventory agent into either of the following two operation modes:
- Default operation mode—The installed agent will run as the root user and requires full root access.
- Least privilege operation mode—The installed agent will run as the
flxrasvcstandard user.
This feature is only available for the third-party deployment but not for the adoption case.
For more details, see Agent Third-Party Deployment: Configuring the Operation Mode on UNIX in Gathering FlexNet Inventory.
Microsoft Intune adapter (Beta Release)
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The Microsoft Intune adapter, provided by Flexera, collects inventory from Microsoft Intune and imports it into IT Asset Management.
The data collected gives you visibility of managed devices, user data, and managed and unmanaged applications installed on corporate owned devices in your Microsoft Intune estate.
IT Asset Management uses the imported data collected from Microsoft Intune to calculate license consumption.
For more details on how to configure the adapter and what data is retrieved, see Microsoft Intune Adapter in Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference.
This Microsoft Intune adapter release is only capturing Microsoft Windows devices with an ownership type of Corporate. Personal, Apple and Android devices are not retrieved.
Oracle Inventory Troubleshooting report
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The Oracle Inventory Troubleshooting report provides inventory troubleshooting details for Oracle servers along with issues analysis and related error logs.
The report aggregates data from multiple resources (logs, Oracle Instances Inventory, Oracle discovery information and so on) to provide a single insight on Oracle issues. To limit the quantity of data and false positives, the report focuses on the following:
-
Discovered devices with both an Oracle Inventory history and errors.
ORA01 errors in the last 90 days are considered. Warnings pertaining to powered off instances at the time of inventory are ignored.
-
Active Servers with an “unspecified” edition of Oracle Database installed with an agent inventory less than 90 days.
Such “unspecified” installations can be a sign that Oracle Database is installed, but the instance has not been fully inventoried. This can happen if the instance is not mounted or is powered off (fail over node in an Oracle cluster).
For more details, see Oracle Inventory Troubleshooting Report.
Oracle Java Worksheet report
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The new Oracle Java Worksheet report provides detailed information about all your instances of Oracle Java published by Oracle or Sun Java, whether installed on server or desktop devices. The report is presented in the spreadsheet template provided by Oracle and provides you with much of the information that you provide to Oracle during a license true-up, or whenever you are audited. The report can also help you identify the installation instances that have potential risks.
For more information, see Oracle Java Worksheet.
SAP Systems Inventory Details report
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The new SAP Systems Inventory Details report provides a great deal of details about SAP systems inventory.
SAP data needed for compliance and optimization is usually complex because it includes various types of information, such as account information, SAP transaction history, engine measurements, and so on. Having accurate and up-to-date information is critical for trusting the consumption and optimization calculations.
This report retrieves information from all SAP systems that are authorized for the operator to help the user better understand the SAP systems inventory status. Some examples of the detailed information are:
- Default license type
- Number of active user accounts per system
- Number and dates of transaction history records
- Number and dates of engine consumption records
For the full list of available detailed information, see SAP Systems Inventory Details Report.
SAM Operations Hub
This feature is available with IT Asset Management.
The SAM Operations Hub is the second SAM Hub to be released for IT Asset Management and addresses the fundamental question: “Am I performing well in my SAM process?”
It does this by surfacing important metric data by means of a KPI Dashboard tool, providing links to detailed reports and laying out a stepped approach along with explanations articulating critical items such as how to fix issues and enhance SAM data quality. Following the steps documented in the SAM Operations Hub will ultimately lead to accurate inventory data that can be trusted.
For more details, see SAM Operations Hub.