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April 2024

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

Automation​

Automation released the following feature in April 2024.

Support for cursor-based API pagination now available with relative path​

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This feature is available with Automation.

Policy designers can now use the policy template pagination functionality to paginate through the API response that contains links to the next page as a relative path. This enhancement was introduced as most of the Flexera One APIs and the third-party APIs now provide a relative path instead of a full URL for pagination.

To enable pagination for APIs providing either a relative path or full URL as link to the next page, set the uri attribute as true in the pagination block.

pagination "flexeraOne_pagination” do 
  get_page_marker do 
    body_path jmes_path(response, "nextPage")
  end 
  set_page_marker do 
    uri true 
  end 
end

Previously, only full URL was supported.

For more information, see Pagination in the Flexera One Help.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management released the following features and enhancements in April 2024.

Changes to supported operating systems and compatibility with other products​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

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

  • HCL BigFix Platform (previously Tivoli Endpoint Manager and IBM BigFix) on Microsoft SQL Server 11.0.0.175

  • HCL BigFix Inventory 10.0.15 on Microsoft SQL Server.

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

New columns added to the VMware Inventory page​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The VMware Inventory page lists VMware vSphere and vCenter application inventory detected in your organization. As per recent VMware licensing changes (VMware now only offers core-based subscription based licensing), four new columns have been added to provide relevant insights into the new licensing model and to better track ESXi machines and vCenters that are no longer reporting.

The following fields have been added:

  • Cores per CPU —The total number of processor cores per CPU running a VMware application.

  • Inventory date —The date when inventory information was last collected for VMware applications installed on this device.

  • Number of core licenses —The number of core licenses required as per the total number of processor cores or a minimum of 16 per CPU.

  • vCenter version —The vCenter version number of the vCenter computer managing this appliance.

For more information on what properties are listed on the VMware Inventory page, see VMware Inventory Listings Property Reference in the Flexera One Help.

The Kubernetes agent has been enhanced to provide discovery and visibility of Red Hat OpenShift operators​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

In this release, the Kubernetes agent can now recognize Red Hat OpenShift operators installed on all worker nodes in a Kubernetes cluster(s) in your environment. When inventory is collected by the Kubernetes agent, information will be mapped over to IT Asset Management and installer evidence created for each worker node in a Kubernetes cluster.

This enhancement is supported by the Standard Flexera Kubernetes inventory agent (often referred to as the "full" Kubernetes inventory agent), and the Lightweight Kubernetes inventory agent. Installer evidence will be updated to reflect new inventory, and inventory that is no longer present will be removed each and every time the Kubernetes agent collects inventory from a Kubernetes cluster(s) in your environment.

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Installer evidence will be created per each worker node for all the installed operators in the Kubernetes cluster, and is not restricted to only Red Hat OpenShift operators. However, only Red Hat OpenShift operators will be added to the Application Recognition Library (ARL). For customers that may get value from collecting information on other operators different to Red Hat OpenShift, these customers may need to map the evidence over to the responsible application(s) locally in their instance if they want to make use of it, or submit unrecognized evidence.

Red Hat Openshift subscription levels​

At the time of writing, there are three subscription levels available for Red Hat OpenShift operators:

  • Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

  • Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine.

Each level gives access to various different components, and can be licensed in two ways:

  • Core-based (2 cores or 4 vCPUs). This is based on the aggregate number of physical cores or virtual cores (vCPUs) across all the Red Hat OpenShift worker nodes running across all Red Hat OpenShift clusters.

  • Bare-metal socket pair (1-2 sockets with up to 64 cores). This subscription is available only for x86 bare-metal physical nodes where Red Hat OpenShift is installed directly to the hardware, with the exemption of IBM zSystem and Power architectures, which must use core-based subscriptions.

For customer subscriptions, customers pay for cores across all the worker nodes within their Kubernetes cluster. Cores belonging to control plane or infrastructure hosts do not contribute to consumption.

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This release only covers recognition of Red Hat OpenShift subscription components in your Kubernetes cluster environments, functionality to calculate license consumption for Red Hat OpenShift operators will come in a future release.

What changes have been made to the Kubernetes agent​

To implement this enhancement, two changes were made to the Kubernetes agent:

  • A new class called MGS_KubernetesOlmSubscription was added to the k8s-inventory-clusterId-timestamp.ndi file, to collect installed Red Hat OpenShift information from all worker nodes in your kubernetes cluster(s).

  • A new property called Roles was added to the MGS_KubernetesNode class, to identify which of the nodes in a Kubernetes cluster are worker nodes.

This information is then uploaded as part of the primary Kubernetes resource inventory. For more information on the new MGS_KubernetesOlmSubscription hardware class, see Kubernetes Inventory Uploads in the Gathering FlexNet Inventory user guide.

Viewing Red Hat Openshift operator installer evidence in IT Asset Management​

After inventory has been collected by the Kubernetes agent, subscription component data is mapped over. In IT Asset Management, the Cluster ID and Host name can be viewed from the All Containers page (Inventory > All Containers). The Cluster ID is the unique ID of the cluster containing the worker node where the pod runs the container instantiated from the image. The Host name is the name of the Kubernetes worker node. To view installer evidence, click the container host link to open its Inventory Device Properties page, and then click Evidence.

For any Red Hat operator publishers, associated data is specifically mapped across to the publisher Red Hat. For any nodes that have not been identified as a worker node, operator installer evidence is not displayed, but other installer evidence may be displayed.

The following information is mapped over:

  • Operator name —The name of the Red Hat OpenShift operator.

  • Installed cluster service version —The cluster services version of the Red Hat OpenShift operator.

  • Red Hat or the catalog source —The publisher for the installer evidence. In this case, "Red Hat" if the catalog source is "redhat-operators", otherwise the publisher will be whatever the catalog source is.

View software SKUs with the new SKU Browser​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

This new feature functionality will be made available for customers by way of a staged rollout which will gradually increase over the upcoming weeks. For now, the SKU Browser is only available for a limited number of customers.

In this release, IT Asset Management procurement and SKU Library capabilities have been extended to allow customers to view decrypted software SKUs using the new SKU Browser accessible in IT Asset Management under Procurement > SKU Library > SKU Browser.

The SKU Browser displays any software SKU which is recognized and populated in the IT Asset Management SKU library. On accessing the SKU Browser, you can enter a SKU number and browse publishers, applications and their extended descriptions. You can also search by publisher and product to return a list of SKUs along with additional information to help you choose the most relevant option.

The new SKU Browser is a great source of SKU information available at your fingertips, and will help to reduce time and effort when creating purchase orders.

For users who need to view SKU information, a new role called SKU Library has been introduced in the Creating a Role page and must be assigned to them in order to view SKU information. Three privileges are available in the drop-down: Read only, None, and Custom.

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By default, users with administrator rights are given the Read only privilege. Users (including administrators) cannot create, delete or modify SKU records. SKU information is read-only.

A new sub-task called Software SKU and License Definition Updates has also been introduced in this release and added to the ARL Import task. This new sub-task is responsible for populating the SKU Browser with updated SKU information. After the ARL Importing sub-task has finished running, the Software SKU and License Definition Updates sub-task will automatically run. Note: The Software SKU and License Definition Updates sub-task is not visible under System Tasks in a multi-tenanted environment.

For more information on this feature, see SKU Browser in the Flexera One Help.

FlexNet Inventory Agent version 21.4.0 changes​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

See FlexNet Inventory Agent version 21.4.0 changes

Inventory Beacon 21.4.0 changes​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

See Inventory Beacon 21.4.0 changes

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following new features in April 2024.

Improvements to IT Visibility dashboards​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

We have released improvements to the IT Visibility dashboards: Software Version, Software Lifecycle, Software Installations, and Deployed Software Inventory. These changes add new columns to existing tables or new tables to the dashboards:

DashboardImprovement
Drilldown/Software VersionNew table added: What are the Lifecycle Dates of my deployed Software Versions?
This new table provides insights for lifecycle dates for a given application from the Software Version dashboard.
Technology Currency/Software LifecycleNew table added: What are the Lifecycle Dates of my deployed Software Versions?
This new table provides insights for lifecycle dates for a given application from the Software Lifecycle dashboard.
Drilldown/Software InstallationsNew columns added to the Devices that the selected Software is installed on table: Last Hardware Inventory Date and Software Install Date .
Search/Deployed Software InventoryNew column added to the Devices that the selected Software is installed on table: Install # .
This new column shows the number of installs for devices with one or more installs of the selected software.
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These dashboard improvements are for all Flexera One customers with IT Visibility. Customers who have not upgraded to the latest version of IT Visibility will not see any data from the Hardware Specifications, Open Source, and Software Vulnerability content packs.

For more information about IT Visibility dashboards, see Managing IT Visibility Dashboards.

Configuring the Private Catalog for software releases​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

It is important for customers to manage software that is not part of the global Technopedia catalog; for example, in-house software, custom third-party software, and software that is inappropriate or of too low priority to be included in the global Technopedia catalog.

Now, with the introduction of the IT Visibility’s new dedicated Private Catalog Releases page (Applications & Evidence > IT Visibility Software > Private Catalog Releases), customers can effectively manage software releases within their Private Catalog with no evidence mapped to it. On this page, you can:

  • View an overall count of manufactures, products, and releases in your Private Catalog.

  • View, create, update, and delete custom releases in your Private Catalog.

  • Check whether the release is created in the global Technopedia catalog or your Private Catalog.

  • View software evidence linked to a Private Catalog release.

For more information about using this new functionality, see Working With the Private Catalog.

SaaS Management​

SaaS Management added the following new features in April 2024.

New fromDate parameter for API calls to filter SaaS user activity data​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

The FSM Data Ingestion Utility now provides a fromDate parameter into an API call to filter SaaS user activity data. This fromDate parameter enables you to retrieve user activity events starting from a designated date and time. As a result, only relevant and up-to-date SaaS vendor information is integrated into your managed SaaS applications with Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution.

For more information, see Adding a New API Job in the Flexera One Help.

Adobe Creative Cloud integration now requires OAuth 2.0 authentication​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Adobe has deprecated the use of JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication. In response, Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution now provides a more secure OAuth 2.0 authentication method for its Creative Cloud by Adobe integration. The following sections provide details for existing and new Adobe Creative Cloud integrations.

Existing Adobe Creative Cloud Integrations With SaaS Management​

Existing Adobe Creative Cloud integrations with the JWT authentication will no longer work in SaaS Management. You must reauthorize the integration to implement the OAuth 2.0 authentication method. Data from existing integrations will be preserved. For more information see, Integrating Adobe Creative Cloud With SaaS Management in the Flexera One Help.

New Adobe Creative Cloud Integrations With SaaS Management​

All new Adobe Creative Cloud integrations with SaaS Management implement the OAuth 2.0 authentication method.

Universal API for ingesting SaaS data from cloud access security brokers​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution now offers a universal API that seamlessly integrates with the FSM Data Ingestion Utility. This API facilitates the extraction of data from various Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs), enabling organizations to comprehensively analyze and gain insights into Shadow IT activities across their SaaS landscape. This data can be provided in CSV or API format.

For more information, see the following resources:

Preview data import for additional SaaS vendors​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

The FSM Data Ingestion Utility now provides a workflow to preview SaaS vendor data prior to importing for both the CSV and API ingestion methods. To ensure data accuracy, SaaS vendor data can now be validated for the correct attribute mapping before the data is imported into Flexera One’s SaaS Management solution.

The following Flexera One Help topics provide further details.