Contextual Data Store

Business Services Contextualization via Contextual Data Store (CDS) feature

Release Summary

We’re introducing the ability to contextualize Business Services data using the Contextual Data Store (CDS) APIs and UI. This enhancement allows customers to upload contextual information against Business Service IDs through the CDS UI and leverage the contextual data in IT Visibility and Power BI hardware/software reports.

Before Scenarios

• With the migration from GoodData into PowerBI Reporting, business service contextualization was not natively supported in PowerBI.
• Business Services could not be enriched with additional attributes or visualized alongside hardware/software data.

Negative Consequences

• Limited ability to contextualize Business Services within Flexera One
• Customers struggled to maintain their existing Business Services dashboards in Power BI

After Scenarios

• Customers can upload CSV files containing Business Service IDs and contextual attributes directly from the CDS UI.
• Validation ensures Business Service IDs exist in the org before ingestion.
• Attributes are auto-detected, data types auto assigned, and schema conflicts flagged during upload or update.
• Contextualized Business Service data becomes available in Service Data Model (SDM) and can be visualized in Power BI hardware and software reports.

Positive Business Outcomes

• Improved Business services reporting for customers transitioned from GoodData to Power BI.
• Greater flexibility in creating contextualized dashboards by enriching Business Service data.
• Stronger governance with schema validation and access controls.

Enhancements to Device & Software Contextualization

Overview:

Enhancement to streamline CDS contextualization by:

1. Making Domain optional when in case of device contextualization using Name and Serial Number

2. Allowing blank/“Unknown” values for the contextual attributes in CSV uploads

3. Blocking contextual attributes named “ID” in the CSV being uploaded into CDS, to prevent disruption in the downstream dataflow into PowerBI

Whats New?

Domain now optional: Uploads succeed when Name + Serial Number are provided. Hence, Domain may be blank or “Unknown.” in the CSV being uploaded

Graceful handling of blanks/“Unknown”: CSVs with blank/“Unknown” values for contextual attributes are now accepted with valid attributes processed and invalid ones being skipped.

“ID” attribute disallowed: Users cannot create contextual data sources with an attribute named “ID”. This check is enforced in API and UI to maintain data integrity and prevent downstream issues.

Documentation URLs:

• Feature announcement: https://docs.flexera.com/flexeraone/EN/WhatsNew/FeatureList/ITV-August-2025-CDSdomain.htm
• Help topic: https://docs.flexera.com/flexera/EN/ITVisibility/CDS-overview.htm

Contextual Data Mashup Enhancements in Flexera One IT Visibility

We’re excited to share the next wave of improvements coming to the Contextual Data Mashup for Flexera One IT Visibility, has been released on Jun 17th. These enhancements are driven directly by feedback from enablement teams and customers who adopted the initial version of contextual data mashups and will make contextualizing—and governing—your inventory data even simpler.

What’s New

• Dataset Schema Visibility: You can now view the full schema of any uploaded data set, including column names, data types, and key attributes—directly within the UI. This eliminates the need to use external tools such as Postman or Altair to invoke the CDS public APIs for schema information, accelerating pre-validation before you upload a dataset and ensuring the data is accurately structured for downstream use.
• Comprehensive Audit Details: Every create or update action now records who performed it (whether a user or a service account) and when it occurred. This end-to-end traceability is particularly valuable for automated scripts running under service accounts, enabling quick investigation in case of incorrect contextual data feed into the lake house.
• Improved Error Handling: A new “Uploaded with Errors” status distinguishes partial failures from full failures. Row-level error logs clearly identify which records require attention, allowing teams to correct and re-upload only the failed rows. This targeted remediation reduces rework, shortens resolution times, and maintains data quality.

Impact - These updates provide:

• Greater Transparency – On-demand schema views help ensure data is correctly structured before any updates to existing datasets
• Improved Governance – Clear audit trails simplify investigations and support compliance efforts.
• Faster Remediation – Granular error reporting reduces the time required to correct and re-upload data

Coming Soon: Contextual Data Mashup UI in Flexera One IT Visibility – Launching March 13th

We’re pleased to give you an early look at the upcoming Contextual Data Mashup UI for Flexera One IT Visibility, scheduled for release on March 13th. This feature will significantly simplify how you contextualize your inventory data (device/software).

Previously, adding business-specific context to your inventory data required creating scripts with Contextual Data Store (CDS) APIs, demanding specialized technical knowledge and considerable manual effort.

Now, this powerful capability is available through an intuitive user interface, empowering more users across our customers` organization to quickly and efficiently add critical context to their inventory data.

Key Functionalities:

• Easy CSV Upload: Quickly upload your business context against devices or software inventory via CSV files. The CDS user interface automatically detects reference/key and attribute columns and assigns data types to your contextual information, reducing manual intervention and errors.
• Flexible Data Updates: Seamlessly update existing contextual information or delete outdated data directly through the user interface, ensuring your inventory context stays current and accurate.
• Automatic Normalization: Attributes added as part of the contextual information are checked for duplicates with conflicting datatypes and thus simplifying data management for downstream applications.
• Customizable Attributes: Easily rename contextual attributes directly in the UI to align with your organization's terminology. These datasets can then be conveniently downloaded for offline use and sharing.
• Service Account Access: The CDS APIs were previously accessibly by Admin users only. However, with this release, the CDS APIs and UI can be accessed by service accounts and non-admin users who have the Manage Contextual Data access broadening accessibility and operational flexibility.
• Enhanced Device contextualization:
• Devices can now be matched using a combination of Device Name, Domain, and Serial Number, in addition to the HardwareID. Previously, matching by HardwareID alone required significant manual effort to pull data externally and perform VLOOKUP operations before uploading. With this release, you no longer need to do that extra preparation, further simplifying and accelerating your data contextualization.

The enhanced contextualization capabilities significantly reduce manual intervention, ensure data consistency, and deliver visibility through integrated Power BI reports, empowering users to make faster and more informed decisions across their organization.

Release Version: N/A

Release Date: 13th March 2025

Some customers may have a need to add custom contextual data to their IT Visibility devices (for example, you might want to associate the assigned user to each of your inventory devices) or to Software Products in Technopedia (for example, you might want to label specific applications as being "preferred" or "prohibited", etc.). To enable this, Flexera has a Contextual Data Store API. However, this may not be the easiest API to use, especially if you're just starting out. To try to make this easier to use, I have created a PowerShell script and a couple modules that wrap this API into simple cmdlets and a basic guided user experience. It can be run interactively with some basic UI or completely automated for scheduled uploads using command line parameters.

I'm still working on the comment-based help and some more detailed instructions, but I've had a few people asking for this, so I wanted to get it posted in its current state, so others can use it. I welcome feedback and contributions from the community, so please feel free to make suggestions for improvements. At some point, I hope to get this published in GitHub to make it easier to share updates and allow the community to contribute their own enhancements, but for now, here it is.

Instructions:

You'll need to download the attachments into a folder and modify the Upload-ContextData.config file with your own settings. Specifically, uncomment the appropriate RegionTLD setting (stands for Region Top Level Domain) that matches the region where your Flexera One org resides (com for North America, eu for EMEA, or au for APAC). Simply remove the # in front of the setting you want to use and make sure the other RegionTLD lines have the # in front of them. For example, if my Flexera One org resides in EMEA, my settings would look like this...

#RegionTLD=com

RegionTLD=eu

#RegionTLD=au

Next, make sure you update the OrgID to match your organization ID. This is the numeric value that appears in the address bar after /orgs/ like this...

https://app.flexera.au/orgs/12345/landing

All other settings in this config file are optional. Here is the full list:

• DebugLogging - not really implemented
• FileRetentionDays - Each run of the script creates a new log file. This setting controls how long to retain those logs. A negative value will retain all logs indefinitely. A value of 0 will remove all previous logs each time you run the script. A positive value will delete any previous logs older than the specified number of days each time you run the script.
• RegionTLD - already discussed above. Either com (North America), eu (EMEA), or au (APAC)
• OrgID - already discussed above. Needs to match your Flexera One org ID
• MaxRetries - specifies the number of times to retry an API call if it fails
• RetryIntervalSeconds - specifies how many seconds to wait in between retries if MaxRetries is greater than 0
• SmtpServer - specifies an SMTP relay server that can be used to send email messages
• SmtpPort - specifies the port number to be used for sending email through the SMTP relay server
• UseSSL - specifies if SMTP communication should enforce SSL (TLS) encryption
• MailFrom - specifies the sender email address
• MailTo - specifies one or more email addresses to send email messages to (semi-colon delimited)
• EnableFailureEmail - Boolean value specifying if an email message should be sent when a failure occurs
• EnableSuccessEmail - Boolean value specifying if an email message should be sent when the script runs successfully without errors

Note: the Send-Email function only works if you have an internal SMTP relay that supports basic authentication. However, the Send-Email function does not currently support M365/Exchange Online with its recent requirement for modern authentication.

After you've configured your settings, you can run the Upload-ContextData.ps1 script. Running it without any command line parameters will prompt you for the needed information and guide you through the process to create a new contextual data source or to upload a contextual data file. The first time you run the script, you'll also be prompted to enter your Refresh Token for authentication with Flexera One. If you don't already have a refresh token, you'll need to generate one. This token will be encrypted and stored in a file in the same folder with your script and will be used to automatically authenticate on subsequent runs of the script. This encrypted file is specific to the user running the script and the system on which the script is being run. It cannot be used or decrypted by any other user or on any other system.

Note: This PowerShell module was written to support either user-based Refresh Token authentication or service account-based Client Credential authentication; however, the API does not currently support the service account-based Client Credential authtentication. This is being worked on in Q1 2025, and once the API supports it, the script will be able to use it without modification. You'll just need to delete your CRED file and run the script again to choose the Client Credential option.

That's it for now. I hope you find this useful.