Flexera Inventory agent for Microsoft Windows has a plugin that was built to track Citrix VDI-End-Point usage to understand who has spun up a Citrix VDI. VDI technology has evolved over time and VDI usage tracking is not relevant anymore, As access to software and software usage itself is the most important from visibility and licensing point of view.

Flexera will be deprecating the VDI-End-Point usage tracking plugin (only) as part of the Flexera ITAM/FNMS 2023 R1 release. It means Flexera inventory agent 2023 R1 and later for Microsoft Windows would not have this limited capability.

Note: This would not have any impact on Citrix integration to identify software, access and usage. Flexera Citrix integration will keep on providing visibility, and licensing.

We are pleased to announce that with the ARL Update 2702 Flexera's Agent inventory capabilities have been extended. Our agent can now  detect different Adobe Acrobat DC editions, such us Professional, Standard and Reader for the Acrobat DC unified installer versions 2021 (or later) on desktop machines.

We have seen a high demand among our customers to enhance Adobe Acrobat DC edition recognition.

The existing identification methods (e.g. swidtag information) do not work for the Acrobat DC unified installer versions 2021 (or later) and cannot distinguish between the Standard and Professional installations. With the content change in July 2022 , we have unlinked and remapped Acrobat DC installer evidence to Acrobat Reader. However, we have received feedback from many customers that the edition is needed to get better transparency.

This new functionality is only available for the Flexera Agent on Windows 10 and Windows 11 desktops. The enhancement has been added to the InventorySettings.xml file, which will be delivered to all customers by means of an ARL release. An agent update is not required.

To take advantage of this enhancement, navigate to Data Collection > IT Assets Inventory Tasks > Inventory Settings, scroll down to the Inventory Extensions Version and select Always use the latest version (currently xx). This will automatically deploy the latest InventorySettings.xml file to the agent.

The editions are determined from the logged-in user in Adobe DC. The agent generates extra installer evidence, which shows the specific Adobe Acrobat DC edition (Professional, Standard or Reader) in the NDI. In a scenario, where multiple users are sharing a desktop machine to run different Adobe Acrobat DC editions from the same installation, each edition of Adobe Acrobat DC will be recognized. If the file-based usage data for Arobat.exe is processed, this also will be displayed for the recognized editions. 

Back to Start: Introduction to Series

Readers  

• Location: C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Compliance\ImportProcedures\Inventory\Reader 

Readers are located on the batch server component. Depending on the inventory source, it will depend on what variant this will run.   

Compliance "Readers" collect data that has been uploaded to the central Application Server and write it into Staging Tables within the Operations Databases.  

For devices coming from our Agent, this will take the data from the IM (Inventory Manager) tables and put them into the Imported Tables on the Compliance. 

NOTES: 

• IM is also known as FNMPIM or FNMSInventory 
• Imported Tables are tables within the compliance DB with the prefix "imported" in fronts such as ImportedUser or ImportedComputer. 

Writers 

• Location: C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Compliance\ImportProcedures\Inventory\Writer 

Compliance "Writers" take the data from the Staging Tables, normalizing it where required, and write the results into the Operational Tables in the Compliance Database. They perform recognition of newly-inventoried evidence against the ARL (Application Recognition Library) and evaluate any pending automated purchase processing. After that, they recalculate license consumption (or 'reconciliation') using the most recently updated data. 

Matchers 

• Location: C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Compliance\ImportProcedures\Inventory\Matcher 

These happen during the writer process, these match computer records from the staging (imported) tables and merge them into a single record. Such as devices within the importedcomputer table, will sometimes have multiple records, depending on if multiple inventory connectors are used. This is to make sure that there are no duplicate devices are shown within the FNMS UI

Back to Start: Introduction to Series

Data Imports (One off uploads)

These one-off uploads are initiated from within the application UI. These records go directly to the database and can be org, inventory, and purchase order imports that are usually either CSV, or xlsx data files.

You will usually see the data straight away.

Business Adapters (BAS)

This article will cover business adapter imports, which will be written in due time

Active Directory Import

This part of the series will start looking into the more intricate parts of FlexNet Manager Suite, This is also the same for Flexera One.

First we start on the beacon, there has to be an active directory import already configured. If you are looking how to do that then please view our online docs page https://docs.flexera.com/FlexNetManagerSuite2022R1/EN/WebHelp/index.htmltasks/ImportingFromActiveDirectory.html

The First part of the journey s when the beacon runs the active directory import. This can be found within the beacon UI under active directory

When this process runs, this uses LDAP to connect to the configured domain controller. The connector will pull the information from the domain controller, and place all the information from it into a XML file within the temp directory. We can see this within the logs located C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Compliance\Logging\ActiveDirectoryImport

After the file has been generated and all of the data has been entered into the XML file, the next step of the process is to move the file from temp to your allocated incoming directory under the activeDirectory folder. This is usually C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Incoming\ActiveDirectory. This usually prefixes the file with the domain that it has come from so in my instance it would be named

One_Actual_10ed7130760444e4814432f329cf0191_20220527010034315

Once the file has been moved to the Incoming ActiveDirectory folder, the usual beacon process takes over and the scheduled ndupload task runs (by default every minute) to move this file from \Incoming\ActiveDirectory to the Application (or Inventory server, if you are using a split server layout)

When the file enters the Inventory server, it is handled by IIS under the web resolvers. Which calls the DLL directly depending on the file type. This is usually shown within the dispatcher log located C:\ProgramData\Flexera Software\Compliance\Logging\WebResolvers

Note: *If for some reason this import fails, there will be an entry within the dispatcher log, and the file will end up within the Incoming\ActiveDirectory\Badlogs*

During this import process, the data is taken from the actdir file and put into the Inventory database usually prefixed with AD*

After AD tables are populated in IM database, the AD importer calls EXEC ReconcileDomain which calls ReconcileComputers and ReconcileUsers. This also populates the dbo.User and dbo.Computer table. This is why you get users in the UI after importing AD data. This step also deletes users/computers if they are removed from AD.

Back to Start: Introduction to Series

Architecture Overview

In this part of the series, we will look at what the complete picture looks like from an overview point. This topology is the same regardless if you are a cloud customer or an on-premise customer 

The diagram above shows the complete overview of where the files go, using the knowledge of what is above it is easy to see the flow of data. This shows the complete path of each of the individual files along their journey from start to finish. However for more information you can view my later posts in what each of those files are, and what they contain.