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November 2024

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

Automation​

Automation released the following enhancement in November 2024.

Configuring Skip Action Approvals for policy templates​

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This enhancement is available for Automation.

Policy designers can now control the visibility of the Skip Action Approvals checkbox for policy templates. To suppress Skip Action Approvals, in the info section of the policy code add hide_skip_approvals: "true". The check is case insensitive. The Skip Action Approvals option is tied to only those policy escalations that are explicitly marked to request an approval. For more information, see the Flexera One Help topics Applying Policies and Metadata.

Incident Action Log tab now provides failure details​

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This enhancement is available with Automation.

Flexera One Automation uses policies to automate governance across your multi-cloud environment to increase agility and efficiency while managing security and risk in your organization. The Automation capability leverages an intelligent policy engine that lets you enforce rules and best practices to help you achieve your business outcomes like saving time, cost reduction, increasing utilization, and rightsizing your cloud environment.

Policy managers and designers have the ability to apply policies in any account they have permissions to. When one or more resources fail the check that the policy performs, the policy triggers an incident. To remediate or report on an incident, actions are initiated. The status of each action is recorded in the Action Log tab. To access the Action Log tab, go to the Automation Incidents page (Automation > Incidents) or the Applied Policy page (Automation > Applied Policies) and select the incident.

With this enhancement, you can now review the action item failure details by clicking the failed status in the Action Log tab. This enhancement improves policy management by providing information about the action item failure including the error message, summary of the error, suggested resolution, and other relevant details.

Previously, in case of action failure, no details or reasons for the failure were provided to the user.

For more information about handling incidents, see Handling Incidents in the Flexera One Help.

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization released the following enhancements in November 2024.

User settings saved across sessions​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization and Automation.

With this enhancement, user settings are now saved in the backend. This means that the next time you log in to Flexera One, using the same or a different device or browser, these settings will be available. This enhancement improves user experience and saves both time and effort as you do not have to reapply the same settings every time you access the Cloud Cost Optimization and Automation pages.

As part of this enhancement, the following specific functionality is retained on the Cloud Cost Optimization and Automation pages:

  • Table column visibility—You can set the columns that are visible in the table.

  • Table column order—You can set the order in which these columns appear in the table.

  • Table column filter state—You can set the filter settings to be applied to the columns.

  • Table column sort state—You can sort the columns in ascending and descending order.

  • Table column width—You can adjust the width of the columns in the table.

  • Table column pinning—You can pin certain columns to make them visible at all times.

  • Dashboard settings (date range and amortization)—You can set the date range and amortization options.

  • Dashboard and Tabular View widget settings—You can set the group by, show spend by, metrics availability, and expand/collapse group by rows.

This enhancement is implemented on the following pages:

  • Cloud Cost Optimization pages

    • Dashboards (Dashboards > Cloud)

    • Tabular View (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Tabular View)

    • Optimization (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Optimization)

    • Commitments (Cloud > Commitments > Reserved Instances) and (Cloud > Commitments > Savings Plans)

  • Automation pages

    • Applied Policies (Automation > Applied Policies)

    • Automation Incidents (Automation > Incidents)

Kubecost Exporter Now Supports AMD64 and ARM64 Architectures​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Kubecost Flexera Exporter is a utility to collect cost allocation data for Kubernetes clusters through integration with Kubecost and OpenCost. It automates the transfer of Kubernetes cluster cost allocation data to Cloud Cost Optimization.

Kubecost Exporter now supports both AMD64 and ARM64 architectures. This enhancement gives you the flexibility to deploy Kubecost Exporter in your Kubernetes clusters regardless of the underlying CPU architecture, including in heterogeneous environments where multiple architectures are used simultaneously.

For more information, see Installing Kubecost Flexera Exporter Tool in the Flexera One Help, or see the Kubecost Exporter readme.

IT Asset Management​

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

View inventory beacon operational health status issues​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

From this release, active inventory beacon issues and relevant details will be reported in the new Issues tab accessible from Beacon Properties when an inventory beacon becomes non-responsive or is operating not as expected for 24 hours.

As well as possible issues displayed in a numbered list at the top of the page, you can view active inventory beacon issues from the Inventory beacon issues grid, and subsequently communicate these issues to the relevant stakeholders to resolve the issue without the need to access the inventory beacon itself. Once the issue is reported as resolved by the inventory beacon, the issue is automatically removed from the Inventory beacon issues grid.

Example inventory beacon issues:

  • Active Directory import —Active directory import failed for following scans: Connection Name: [connection_name], Server: [server_name]

  • Package download —Failed to download packages: [package_name]

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An inventory beacon is a computer with FlexNet Beacon software installed. It gathers hardware and software inventory and other information from your network and uploads the resulting files in date/time order from oldest to most recent to IT Asset Management.

Prior to this release, customers were not notified of non-operational inventory beacons. Subsequently, this resulted in hardware and software inventory not being reported for days. You can now quickly diagnose issues pertaining to a non-operational inventory beacon, and swiftly take the appropriate action to get the inventory beacon back into a healthy operational status.

In addition to reporting beacon issues after 24 hours of non-activity, a number of new metrics have been added to the Beacons page and Upload Status Tab to provide better insights into how a inventory beacon is operating.

Three new columns have been added to the Beacons page:

  • Last Status Update —The creation date of the inventory beacon status file that was last imported. The rest of the columns are accurate as of this date.

  • Files received (last 24 hours) —The number of inventory/usage files received by the inventory beacon in the last 24 hours.

  • Files uploaded (last 24 hours) —The number of inventory/usage files uploaded from the inventory beacon in the last 24 hours.

The Files received (last 24 hours) and Files uploaded (last 24 hours) columns and a series of bar charts have been added to the Upload Status tab accessible from Beacon Properties. The Beacon statistic (last 7 days) bar chart shows the total number of files received and uploaded over the span of the last seven days. The other bar charts are specific to a particular file type showing the number of files received and uploaded each day, over the span of the last seven days for that specific file type.

For more information on viewing inventory beacon operational health status issues, see Issues Tab in the Help. For more information on how to view details for inventory beacons installed in your network and identifying issues with the upload of files from an inventory beacon to a central server, see Beacons and Upload Status Tab in the Help.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) adapter (beta)​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) adapter, provided by Flexera, allows you to collect Oracle Autonomous Database inventory from Cloud Infrastructure and Exadata Cloud@Customer and import it into IT Asset Management.

After collecting the inventory, IT Asset Management automatically creates discovered devices, inventory devices, database instances and database option records.

The OCI adapter gathers information for every Oracle Autonomous Database accessible to the querying user, though it will only import those databases configured to use the Bring your own license (BYOL) model. This means all databases using the License included model will not be shown in IT Asset Management.

The OCI adapter gathers a snapshot of your Oracle Autonomous Database inventory at the moment of the scan, including stopped instances. Autonomous database instances terminated before the scan will not be returned.

For more details for how to configure the OCI adapter, see Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) adapter in the Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference.

For step-by-step instructions for configuring the connection to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and choosing the correct connection method for your business processes, see Managing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Connection in the Help.

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The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) adapter functionality is a beta release and only available for a limited number of customers.

New Oracle Autonomous Databases BYOL Summary report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

The Oracle Autonomous Databases BYOL Summary report gives you full visibility of Oracle Autonomous Databases running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) or Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer using the bring your own license (BYOL) licensing model. Key data fields help to understand base configuration (size), and whether auto scaling is enabled for all BYOL instances.

This report will help customers who have migrated Oracle databases from on-premises to a cloud-based approach using Oracle Autonomous Databases. Each record in the report represents an Oracle Autonomous Database instance running on OCI or Exadata Cloud@Customer.

For more details, see Oracle Autonomous Databases BYOL Summary Report in the Help.

Further increased security for downloading the FlexNet Inventory Agent​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

From this release onwards, similar to the security enhancement previously released for downloading and installing self upgrade packages, the InventorySettings.xml file will also be delivered with digital signatures to verify integrity and ownership, with the purpose of providing enhanced security measures for data obtained by an agent for inventory purposes.

The FlexNet Inventory Agent will only download the InventorySettings.xml file from the FlexNet Beacon where the digital signature can be successfully verified. InventorySettings.xml files with invalid signatures will be rejected and an existing InventorySettings.xml file will continue to be used if a previous copy is available. InventorySettings.xml will also be verified at each run of inventory collection.

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In order to take advantage of this new security enhancement for verifying digital signatures of the latest released InventorySettings.xml file, you must enable the Enable signing of Inventory settings rules and require Inventory agent to verify signature before running a rule check box in the Inventory extensions version section on the Inventory Settings page. The check box can only be enabled if all installations of the FlexNet Beacon in your technology estate have been upgraded to version 23.0.0 and later.

For FlexNet Inventory Agent version 23.0.0 and later, the minimum supported version of InventorySettings.xml is version 78. Unsigned copies of InventorySettings.xml will be rejected.

For information on how to download the InventorySettings.xml file, see Downloading and testing InventorySettings.xml in the Help.

Communication libraries updated on the FlexNet Inventory Agent​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The FlexNet Inventory Agent has been upgraded to use the libcurl library for the UNIX platforms and WinHTTP for Windows. This enhancement ensures that the FlexNet Inventory Agent remains up to date with modern network standards and protocols. As a result, the SSLOCSPCacheLifetime and SSLOCSPPath settings are no longer needed and have been removed. Additionally, the PrioritizeRevocationChecks setting has been updated.

For more information, see PrioritizeRevocationChecks in Gathering FlexNet Inventory.

Full support for TLS 1.3​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

With the increasing adoption of the FlexNet Inventory Agent, maintaining strong security protocols is essential. In previous releases, the FlexNet Inventory Agent did not support TLS 1.3 and the FlexNet Beacon did not fully support TLS 1.3 in some cases.

In this release, both the FlexNet Inventory Agent and the FlexNet Beacon have been enhanced to provide full support for TLS 1.3. The FlexNet Inventory Agent can seamlessly integrate with FlexNet Beacon configured for either TLS 1.3 or TLS 1.2. This enhancement offers both flexibility and stronger protection for your infrastructure.

Jamf Pro Adapter Integration With IT Visibility​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

For Flexera One users with both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility, you can now utilize the out-of-the-box Jamf Pro Adapter in IT Visibility to collect inventory data for Apple devices. You can create multiple connections for Jamf Pro, and the inventory data will be available in IT Asset Management.

This enhancement provides a comprehensive view of Apple device inventory and helps to improve data accuracy.

For more information about how to create and manage Jamf Pro connections, see Managing Jamf Pro Connections in the Flexera One Help.

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 versions have been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet Inventory Agent:

  • Debian 12.7

  • macOS 15

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15.6

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

  • BMC Discovery (previously ADDM) 24.2

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

FlexNet Inventory Agent version 23.0.1 changes​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

See FlexNet Inventory Agent version 23.0.1 changes

Inventory Beacon 23.0.2 changes​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

See Inventory Beacon 23.0.2 changes

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility released the following enhancement in November 2024.

Enhanced Vulnerability Prioritization and Device Protection Visibility​

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This enhancement is available with IT Visibility and Technology Intelligence Platform.

An enhancement has been made for users to quickly identify some of the riskiest issues in their environment. User are now able to see which vulnerabilities in their environment had been exploited in the wild (EITW) and which devices lack protection from security software.

To accomplish this, the Software Vulnerability Insights report introduces the following updates:

  • Exploited in the Wild (EITW) —You can use this new filter to find all installs with vulnerabilities that are known to have been exploited in the wild in the past.

  • Potentially Unprotected Device —You can use this new column on the Device Details drill-through page to find the devices that do not have functional security software such as antivirus, antimalware, or Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions.

This enhancement helps IT admins and security personnel prioritize remediation efforts and address potential security gaps more effectively.

For more information about how to work with the Technology Intelligence Platform reports, see IT Visibility With Technology Intelligence Platform Reports in the Flexera One Help.