Flexera Beacon

North America Organizations: Inventory Beacon Release 25.4.0 - Conversion of FlexNet Beacon to a 64-bit application - Action needed!

The April 2026 update for North American organizations changes FlexNet Beacon from a 32-bit to a 64-bit application. Version 25.3.0 that included the 32-bit to 64-bit change was released to organizations in other regions but skipped in North America. For organizations with automatic upgrade of the Beacon turned on, Flexera One will bump the version to the latest available automatically – 25.4.0. Version 25.3.0 will however still be available for download from the Beacon Versions page in Flexera One.

If your organization has automatic Beacon upgrades active, or if you want to manual upgrade your Beacons to the latest version, please first refer to our previous post about the version upgrade and the required steps to ensure that you don't have any breaking changes.

Flexera Beacon support for Self-Hosted/Embedded Web Server

Overview

We are pleased to announce the release of the Flexera Beacon version 24.2.0. This release introduces support for secure communication protocols for self-hosted/embedded servers, strengthening data security and enabling a smoother migration path for customers from Snow Extenders to the Flexera Beacon. Along with this enhanced functionality this release also addresses important bugs and technical debt items.

What’s new?

Previously, the Flexera beacon had very limited support for self-hosted or embedded web servers. This made it difficult for customers who want to have more flexibility in ensuring secure communication between the inventory agent and the beacons.

The Flexera Beacon now fully supports key protocols and authentication methods - including Basic Authentication, HTTPS, and mTLS for self-hosted/embedded servers. These features add an extra layer of security in the Flexera Beacons, ensuring safer data transmission and reducing vulnerabilities for Flexera customers. This will also enable smoother migration of all existing Snow Atlas customers that currently rely on the embedded server functionality in Snow Extenders.

Release Version: 24.2.0

Release Date: AP/EU: 2025-08-20, NA: 2025-08-27

Product Documentation: FNMS/ITAM, Flexera One

Unified Beacon Onboarding and Configuration

We are excited to announce the unification of the beacon onboarding and configuration process for beacons across IT Visibility and IT Asset Management customers within the TI Platform. This is a significant milestone towards enhancing the user experience and reducing the time required to set up inventory collection. Going forward, customers can download a single unified beacon installer and follow a single standard process to configure it for collecting inventory.

What is unified beacon onboarding and configuration?

Previously, customers with both IT Asset Management and IT Visibility would have to download the configure their beacons in separate places. We have unified and simplified the beacon onboarding process as part of a multi-phase effort to combine and improve the functionality for inventory collection across capabilities.

What has changed in the existing functionality?

There is a ‘Common Beacons’ page under ‘Data Collection > Common Inventory Tasks’ which has a new ‘Create Beacon’ page which allows you to create and register both ITAM as well as ITV beacons. If you have both ITAM and ITV capabilities, you should chose the ITAM option from the dropdown. If you just have ITV, then you should chose the ITV option from the dropdown.

The unification is currently limited to beacon onboarding but will be expanded in the near future to the end-to-end beacon management functionality.

Important Notes:

• ITAM and ITV customers will now be led to the same installers page for the beacon installer.
• ITAM and ITV customers will use the same 'Create Beacon' workflow (in both online and offline beacon configuration scenarios)
• The 'IT Visibility Inventory Tasks' menu group has been renamed to 'Common Inventory Tasks' to indicate that it has common tasks and will now be visible for ITAM-only customers as well
  • The following menu items under ‘Common Inventory Tasks’ will be common to ITAM and ITV customers: External Inventory Connections, Common Beacons, Beacon Versions, Installers.
  • The following menu items under ‘Common Inventory Tasks’ will be useful only for ITV customers for now: Inventory Targets, Inventory Groups, Tasks Lists, Agent Configurations
• The 'IT Visibility Beacons' page has been renamed to 'Common Beacons' since it will contain both ITV and ITAM beacons
• The 'Beacons' page under 'IT Assets inventory Tasks' will co-exist with the 'IT Visibility Beacons' page till we merge the beacons lists and properties in a subsequent phase of the project.
• ITAM customers should continue using the existing 'Beacons' page to manage their ITAM beacons and properties (including ‘upgrade mode’ and ‘enable/disable’).
• ITAM customers will be able to reconfigure (rotate password for) their beacon using the new beacon properties page.

Release Date: July 07, 2025

Product Documentation: https://docs.flexera.com/flexeraone/EN/WhatsNew/FeatureList/ITV-ITAM-July2025-beacon.htm

Update to ‘Create Beacon’ workflow for IT Asset Management and Visibility 

In the 23.3 version of the Flexera Beacon, we have removed the 'Download configuration' button in order to unify and simplify the configuration process for both ITAM and ITV beacons. The button highlighted in the screenshot below is not part of the UI and the workflow anymore.

The new Beacon creation workflow involves copying the Beacon UID that is displayed in the beacon UI and pasting it in the ‘Create Beacon’ workflow for both ITAM and ITV. 

For creating an ITAM beacon, use the existing interface to paste the beacon UID and create beacon configuration.

For creating an ITV beacon, use the ‘Create Beacon’ button which brings up a popup. You can paste the beacon UID on the field provided in the popup and click ‘Proceed’.

You will then be taken to the details page of the beacon where you can enter the rest of the details before completing the configuration of the beacon.

A single unified beacon configuration page for both ITV and ITAM is being worked on and coming soon which will altogether eliminate the need to create the beacon for ITAM and ITV in separate pages.

Flexera Beacon Configuration Workflow Known Issue and Upcoming Change for ITAM Cloud Customers

In versions 23.1 and 23.2 of the Flexera Beacons, you will notice that the ‘Download Configuration’ button under ‘Download and Import Configuration file’ (screenshot below) does not redirect you to a Flexera URL properly. This is currently a known issue due to inter-release dependencies but has an easy workaround with an existing alternative method (described below with link to documentation).

We will be addressing this issue in version 23.3 with a change to simplify the configuration workflow. The ‘Download Configuration’ button will be removed completely to avoid having two different methods of configuring and simplify the process. The streamlined single method to configure the beacon after the change will be as follows. Since it's an existing method, we advise customers to use the same workflow for 23.1 and 23.2 beacons till the 23.3 beacon becomes available at the end of March 2025 and the ‘Download Configuration’ button no longer exists.

1. Use the ‘Configure a Beacon’ (ITAM) option in the Flexera One web UI on the beacons page
2. On that page, enter the details to configure a beacon, including pasting the Beacon UID from the beacon server, which is now made visible with a copy button
3. Complete the configuration process and download the configuration from that page
4. Import that configuration file into the beacon server using the ‘Import Configuration’ button as shown in the screenshot above. 

As mentioned earlier, this is an existing method which has been documented in the following page: Creating and Registering an IT Asset Management Inventory Beacon

The 23.3 change to the beacon, the removal of the 'Download configuration' button, will be applicable to both ITAM and ITV going forward and will be in line with ongoing efforts to unify the beacon processes for both products.