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March 2023

Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization added the following new beta feature in March 2023.

Cloud Budgets feature (Beta Release)​

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Cloud Budgets is a beta feature available with Cloud Cost Optimization. Customers interested in early access to Cloud Budgets can contact their account manager or Flexera support to enroll in the beta.

Flexera One users can track their actual cloud spend against a cloud budget with Cloud Cost Optimization’s budget capabilities.

Budgets allow users to create a budget for a set period of time and see their cloud spend (as defined by a dimensions hierarchy) against that budget. Areas where budget does not exist for spend or where overspend exists are highlighted in the Budget Dashboard. Users can define one or more budgets, customize a budget’s date range to match their own fiscal calendar, and specify dimensions to use to group and structure how the budget data is shown.

For more information about creating, viewing, and editing budgets, see Cloud Budgets in Flexera One Help.

Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow​

The Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow supports Data Platform, IT Asset Management and IT Visibility and the following new version of the app was added in March 2023.

Flexera Integration app version 5.1.1 now available in ServiceNow Store​

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The Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow supports Data Platform, IT Visibility, and IT Asset Management.

The latest version of the ServiceNow Flexera Integration app (v5.1.1) is now available in the ServiceNow Store. This version includes some performance improvements for IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite as well as other important changes. The Flexera Integration app is now fully compatible with Utah, and the changes that came with it, and was just recently certified by ServiceNow. On top of supporting Utah, it also supports ServiceNow versions Tokyo and San Diego. A full list of what’s changed can be found below for v5.1.1.

IT Visibility and Data Platform integration​

Platform support​
  • Now supporting the Utah release of ServiceNow.
General improvements​
  • Option to set the user for Flexera data imports.
  • Read access to Flexera custom tables.
  • Improved logging and details related to fix scripts.
Resolved issues​
  • Fixed a potential issue that might cause records to be incorrectly created in the hardware category if a certain combination of properties was selected.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause imports to get stuck in the rare case where ServiceNow would skip updating the state of a record.

IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite integration​

Platform support​
  • Now supporting the Utah release of ServiceNow.
Performance improvements​
  • Significant performance improvement for the import of data from IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite to ServiceNow.
General improvements​
  • Option to set the user for Flexera data imports.
  • Read access to Flexera custom tables.
  • Improved logging and details related to fix scripts.
  • New time and volume measurements.
  • New performance summary and performance metrics for IT Asset Management/FlexNet Manager Suite imports.
Resolved issues​
  • Fixed a potential issue that might cause records to be incorrectly created in the hardware category if a certain combination of properties was selected.
  • Resolved an issue that could cause imports to get stuck in the rare case where ServiceNow would skip updating the state of a record.
  • Fixed an issue that might cause computers that have the same serial number to get matched to the wrong configuration item (CI).

See the following list for the v5.1.1 documentation:

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management added the following new features and enhancements in March 2023.

Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products​

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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:

  • Ubuntu 22.10 (x86 64-bit only)

The following product versions have been added to the compatibility list of IT Asset Management with other products:

  • HCL BigFix Inventory on Microsoft SQL Server 10.0.11
  • HCL BigFix Platform (previously Tivoli Endpoint Manager and IBM BigFix) on Microsoft SQL Server 10.0.8

For the full lists, see Prerequisite Software and Compatibility with Other Products in System Requirements and Compatibility.

Price per Right attribute added to optimization reporting objects​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

A new Price per Right attribute has been added to the optimization reporting objects. The logic of this attribute is to use any possible financial information to reflect the license consumption cost.

The Price per Right attribute is the unit cost of one entitlement (or point, depending on the license type). This cost is taken from the first available of the following data points, from highest to lowest priority:

  • The Amount field on the Financial tab of the license properties.
  • The Override unit price on the Purchases tab of the license properties.
  • The Quantity amount at unit price field on the Financial tab of the properties of the purchase most recently linked to the license.

Licenses Issues Analysis report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The new Licenses Issues Analysis report provides details on licenses and looks for potential issues.

Licenses are the “heart of the reactor” in IT Asset Management. They contain all the logic to calculate license consumptions for various license types. While it can be easy to create a license, a license is a sophisticated object that has many attributes and can be incorrectly configured. And incorrect license configurations can cause issues, such as product versions not being correctly monitored.

This report provides helpful data for transparency of the created licenses, such as covered products, other overlapping licenses, restriction details, when and by whom the license was lastly modified, and so on.

The report also checks inconsistencies that previously could take hours to identify, such as whether the license has downgrade rights, whether the license has inconsistent upgrade and downgrade rights across its covered products, whether the license covers applications that have high numbers of unlicensed installations, and so on.

For more details, see Licenses Issues Analysis Report.

Possible Options False Positives From Oracle Enterprise Manager report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The new Possible Options False Positives From Oracle Enterprise Manager report collects all Oracle options that consume from licenses and have no corresponding Oracle database instances. The usage of these options might have been incorrectly reported by Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM).

OEM provides precious information about activated packs on the “target” instances that are managed by OEM. However, sometimes when old targets have not been removed from an OEM configuration, false positives can happen. Reversely, false positives can also happen when OEM reports usage of packs for the Oracle instances that have not been inventoried by the Flexera agent or the beacon.

This report provides a list of the instances that show consumption against an Oracle option license but have no corresponding Oracle database instance with the same name on the same device.

For more details, see Possible Options False Positives From Oracle Enterprise Manager Report.

Unrecognized Installer Evidence Analysis report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The Unrecognized Installer Evidence Analysis report retrieves all unrecognized installer evidences and returns prioritized mapping suggestions to existing applications or to be created applications in the Application Recognition Library (ARL).

Installer evidence is generally the most reliable way to recognize installed applications. In an IT Asset Management environment, the number of unrecognized installer evidence can be in the thousands, either because the evidence has no interest (for example, drivers), the evidence is the result of renamed packages, or because the ARL is lacking signatures of applications worth being recognized.

From the report, you can open the installer evidence and do the following:

  • Ignore it if there is nothing of interest.
  • Modify it and link it to an existing application in the ARL.
  • Modify it and link it to a previously created application not in the ARL. Ensure to pay attention to the application version numbering and be consistent with already existing applications.

For more details, see Unrecognized Installer Evidence Analysis Report.

vCenter Inventory Issues Analysis report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The vCenter Inventory Issues Analysis report addresses the challenges of troubleshooting the vCenter inventory. It does this by retrieving all discovered virtualization hosts and relevant analysis with regard to possible inventory issues and logs.

For analysis, the report collects data from discovered devices (VMWare inventory dates, discovery dates and logs), and aggregates data from various screens. The following data is collected:

  • vCenter Inventory dates.
  • Discrepancies between VMWare Discovery dates and Inventory dates.
  • Log errors.
  • Operator-created rules and automated rules are analyzed separately for vCenter host per vCenter host. Reason being, automated rules (such as the “PVU frequent scan”, which is performed every 30 minute on discovered devices once classified as a “Virtualization Host”), can create a lot of irrelevant logs that may obscure the data.
  • Discrepancies within vCenters or within clusters for ESX servers that host active VMs. For example, if an IT Asset Management environment has an inventory date older than the other ESX servers in the same cluster, it shows it has been decommissioned (and is no longer reported by vCenter). As a consequence, the VMs in the decommissioned ESX will have obsolete information and need to be ignored.

For more details, see vCenter Inventory Issues Analysis Report.

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following new feature in March 2023.

Embed IT Visibility dashboards into ServiceNow and other web-enabled solutions​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

Integrate IT Visibility dashboards directly into your organization's workflows and systems for live, virtually instant access to your technology asset data in Flexera One. IT Visibility dashboards can now be embedded as live insights into your ServiceNow instance or other web-enabled solutions. This feature makes it easier than ever to access and interact with the insightful data that Flexera provides.

For more information see Embedding Dashboards in the Flexera One Help.

SaaS Management​

SaaS Management added the following new features and enhancements in March 2023.

Installing SaaS Management Data Ingestion Utility application as a Microsoft Windows service​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

You can now install the FSM Data Ingestion Utility application as a Windows Service. Installing an application as a Window Service provides greater security by starting automatically at boot without anyone having to sign in. Windows Services also run continuously as they will not stop or exit when a user signs out.

Download and installation instructions​

To download the utility’s MSI file, see the attachment in the Flexera Community Knowledge Base article Flexera SaaS Management Data Ingestion Utility.

After clicking Install to open the MSI file, an InstallShield Wizard opens. In the Setup Type window, select the Advanced option. The FSM Data Ingestion Utility features are installed along with Flexera One's SaaS Management Data Ingestion Service. This option is recommended for advanced users who wish to schedule CSV and API tasks using Windows Service.

Flexera One Help resources​

For further details, refer to the following Flexera One Help topics.

Greater security for Microsoft 365 certificate-based authentication integration for SaaS Management​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Over time, Flexera One’s SaaS Management team has developed increasingly more secure integrations with Microsoft 365. Its first Microsoft 365 integration required the OAuth2 with authorize flow authentication method. Next came the Microsoft 365 Client Credentials integration requiring the OAuth2 with client credentials authentication method.

Now SaaS Management offers even greater security with the Microsoft 365 certificate-based authentication integration. This integration features Azure Active Directory (AD) certificate-based authentication to enable your organization to allow or require users to authenticate directly with X.509 certificates against your Azure AD for applications and browser sign-in. When certificate-based authentication is enabled, you can adopt a phishing resistant multifactor authentication.

Flexera One Help resources​

Integrating Salesforce, AppExchange, and Marketing Cloud data within one SaaS Management workspace​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera One’s SaaS Management integration with Salesforce now offers you the ability to track and optimize your entire organization’s Salesforce spend, contact consumption, license activity, and user activity within one central dedicated workspace for Salesforce, AppExchange, and Marketing Cloud. This trifecta of Salesforce applications within SaaS Management’s Salesforce Workspace represents another achievement towards Flexera One’s “be the best” vision for Salesforce.

When you navigate to SaaS > Managed SaaS Applications and open one or all or your organization’s Salesforce applications, the resulting Salesforce workspace opens and includes new dedicated AppExchange and Marketing Cloud tabs.

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If you have existing SaaS Management integrations with Salesforce and AppExchange, you need to reauthorize the integrations to enable the Salesforce workspace features.

Highlighted features​

More user data included​

On the Salesforce All Orgs view that appears if you select all Salesforce applications from the Managed SaaS Applications page, the Orgs tab now displays a meter chart for Data Used/Data Total (GB) and File Used/File Total (GB). Community Logins (30 Days) can be filtered by number.

Managing AppExchange packages​

At the Salesforce All Orgs rolled up view, you can manage the AppExchange package data that displays within the AppExchange tab.

Tracking user, license, and spend data​

You can track user, license, and spend data on the AppExchange tab. The AppExchange tab displays when at least one individual Salesforce org has enabled the AppExchange integration task when integrating Salesforce with SaaS Management.

Tracking AppExchange package data per user​

AppExchange package data per user can be tracked:

  • Within the Users tab of the Salesforce All Orgs view
  • When drilling down to an individual Salesforce org’s Users tab.

In both Users tabs, the AppExchange column lists the managed AppExchange packages in a single row for each user. Multiple packages are separated by commas. Unmanaged AppExchange packages are not displayed. To update your organization’s list of managed AppExchange packages, see the AppExchange Tab for the Salesforce All Orgs View.

Tracking Marketing Cloud contact consumption​

Within SaaS Management’s Salesforce workspace, the Marketing Cloud tab offers you the ability to view your entire organization’s Salesforce Marketing Cloud contact consumption. The Marketing Cloud tab displays after enabling at least one stand-alone integration with Flexera One’s SaaS Management.

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The Salesforce Marketing Cloud tab is not available at the Individual Salesforce Org view.

Flexera One Help resources​

For complete details, refer to the following sections of the Flexera One Help:

Self-service management of ServiceNow subscription license assignment and usage​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera One’s SaaS Management now offers the following insights into your ServiceNow account to optimize ServiceNow spend and to ensure users have the correct licenses, roles, and role types to be successful with ServiceNow.

  • Total annual spend of ServiceNow managed in SaaS Management
  • User and license activity
  • Consumption of capacity and other licensed products
  • Management of subscriptions and allocations
  • Relationships between users, roles, role types, subscriptions, and allocations
  • User details such as roles and role types assigned to subscriptions and allocations

In SaaS Management, these insights are displayed for your ServiceNow managed application on the Managed SaaS Applications page within the Overview tab as well as the Users and Licenses tabs.

Flexera One Help resources​

See either the ServiceNow OAuth2 Subscription Licensing or the ServiceNow Subscription Licensing integration instructions for further details about the following topics.

  • Existing ServiceNow integrations with SaaS Management require enabling the new Application Access, Product Consumption, and Reclamation integration tasks. To enable these tasks, navigate to the Flexera One SaaS menu and select Managed SaaS Applications. On the Managed SaaS Applications screen, select the appropriate ServiceNow instance. The Overview tab opens by default. Navigate to the ServiceNow instance’s Integration tab. In the Integration tab’s Integration Tasks table, click Disabled in the Action column to enable the new tasks.
  • The SaaS Management License Information integration task automatically retrieves every 24 hours the ServiceNow license information to display in the SaaS Management Licenses tab. For details, see the Auto-Populated ServiceNow Subscription Licensing License Information section.
  • ServiceNow insights displayed on the Managed SaaS Applications page within the Overview tab and in the Users and Licenses tabs are further described in the Analyzing User and License Activity Data for ServiceNow Subscription Licensing section.
  • The Application Task Tracking chart now includes the Application Access, Product Consumption, and Reclamation integration tasks for the ServiceNow OAuth2 Subscription Licensing and the ServiceNow Subscription Licensing integration instructions.

Tracking usage of installed managed packages for Salesforce AppExchange​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera One’s SaaS Management integration for AppExchange (Salesforce) now tracks usage of installed managed packages purchased through the Salesforce AppExchange store.

With this iteration, the new SSO Application Access integration task API endpoints pull in the following installed managed package information into SaaS Management:

  • User ID
  • Created or Last Modified Date
  • Object Name

With this information, you will now know whether a user has or has not actively used and installed the managed package. A user who may not actively use an AppExchange package could be a potential candidate for AppExchange license optimization and rightsizing. In a future iteration, user activity for installed managed packages will display in the AppExchange (Salesforce) Users tab of SaaS Management. For further details, refer to the Salesforce integration instructions.

Technopedia​

Technopedia added the following new feature in March 2023.

New Technopedia dashboards in Flexera One​

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This feature is available with Technopedia and IT Visibility.

A new Technopedia menu item, available to Flexera One customers with entitlements to IT Visibility or standalone Technopedia, provides Hardware and Software dashboards.

About the new dashboards​

The new, read-only dashboards for Hardware and Software contain a complete taxonomy of hardware products, hardware models, software products, and software releases from the Technopedia catalog. These new dashboards support forward-looking planning efforts for enterprise architecture planning, hardware and software approvals, product/category ownership, and more by delivering the following capabilities:

  • Filter dashboard data and drill down from hardware products to hardware models or from software products to software releases.
  • View all lifecycle dates associated with the hardware models or software releases as part of the Enrichment Pack.
  • Show a detail view that consolidates all attributes of a hardware model or a software release in one comprehensive page.

About Technopedia​

Technopedia provides a single, consistent, accurate version of the truth to align all IT technology, processes, and decisions—from finance and procurement to operations and compliance—around immediate and actionable data. It is the de facto catalog that powers various Flexera solutions.

We have been making Technopedia available to our customers through Flexera One Technopedia API as of last year. (See the announcement, The New Public-Facing Flexera One Technopedia API is Now Available, from February 2022.) This announcement marks general availability of Technopedia in the Flexera One UI to all Flexera One customers whose entitlements include Technopedia.

For more information about these new dashboards, see Getting Started with Technopedia in the Flexera One Help.