[Update: Please Use Ideas Portal Beginning December 2020] Have an idea for changing FlexNet Manager? The product team wants to hear it

[abideaua]

[IMPORTANT UPDATE: 9 December 2020] Great news - Our Flexera customer and partner community now have a direct opportunity to share ideas and participate in future feature planning.   Learn more and add your ideas via the Ideas Portal moving forward. Please note if you have added an idea to this discussion, we will migrate the idea to the new portal and notify you once it's been done. Thank you to everyone for active participation! 

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You can help shape Flexera's future by sharing ideas for improving FlexNet Manager solutions. We know you work with this product, probably every day. Not only see how well it works now, but you also have ideas for making it better.   

Your feedback is essential to informing product decisions and shaping how FlexNet Manager and other Flexera solutions will evolve.  The Ideas board is gone. But, don’t worry. Ideas you submitted to the Idea board are not lost. And a new spot for collecting ideas will find a permanent place on the Flexera Community in June.  

In the meantime, we still want to hear your suggestions.    

The comments below this article are your spot to offer ideas. Flexera’s product team will regularly review the ideas you post.  The product team primarily is watching for ideas that gain traction among members of the community.  That’s why it’s important for you to both leave your ideas but also support other excellent product ideas you see.   

How it works:    

1. You’ll need to register with and log in to the community. Click “Sign In” in the upper right-hand corner. If you don’t have an account, create one by clicking “Let’s go!’ on the sign in page. Or log in if you already are registered.   
2. Check if your suggestion already is posted in the comments below. If it is, click the thumbs up to give it a kudo. More likes will increase the visibility and help us prioritize.   
3. Submit your idea for a product change, if it isn’t there.   

One more thing: You don’t need to mention bug fixes or other issues that Flexera’s Support team could handle.  

You can open a support case by clicking on “Get Support” drop-down menu at the top of the page if you have a maintenance plan.   

Thank you for your help. 

[mag00_75]

Hi

An out of the box inventory adapter for AWS Systems Manager would be great. These adapters should be downloadable separate from FNMS version upgrades. 

In general all cloud integrations will be really important if we shall keep FNMS on the edge.

[tbesse]

Hi Magnus, Thank you for the suggestion. What would be the information you are after when connecting to AWS Systems Manager? And are you aware of the existing AWS integration FNMS provides? It collects the relevant specifications for all cloud instances with a qualifying Operating System. It is definitely our strategy to make adapters available independent of FNMS releases; one example is already the ServiceNow adapter. Also, the Azure adapter released with FlexNet Manager 2019 R1 is backward compatible with FNMS 2018 releases. I hope this helps, Thorsten

[SMC_CIT_Alex]

Hi,

Some ideas:

 - Link to download the inventory of each agent.

 - Number of agents and agent name per beacon.

 - Graph of the reconcile time.

 - Easy way to schedule the inventory time.

 - Specify log folders to isolate the the full reconcile or least be able to change the name of the log.

It would really help sysadmin

Rgds,

Alexandre

[adrian_ritz]

Hi, Would be nice if FNMS have a mechanism to check if batch processor services are running or not and announce if they are stopped, because some time I found the services stopped and reconcile and other tasks are not running.

[rachel_stanley]

Will there be the same for FNMEA? I have MANY ideas for improvement to the tool as I use it all day every day and have for almost 20 years.

[mfranz]

General email alert & reporting functionality.

The contract management portal thread (https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-forum/The-future-of-the-Contract-Management-Portal/m-p/96071) shows how much this is requested.

Beyond Contracts, this could be useful for Licenses (e.g. change in compliance status, exceeding xx% of existing entilements, maintenance expiry), for Applications (e.g. new unauthorized installations found).

I think, this would be a chance integrate FNMS into existing responsibilities and workflows.

[mfranz]

New object in FNMS to distinguish between users and accounts.

As mentioned in the forum before (https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-forum/User-vs-Account/m-p/95994), please consider changing the data schema to differentiate between Users (natural persons) and Accounts (e.g. Active Direcory, SAP, Azure, ...). Predefined account roles (e.g. Tech account, Admin account, Dev account) might also be helpful in this context.

I imagine this to work a bit like VM-Host relationships in host licensing scenarios. VMs do have the application, but the host consumes. Accounts are related to an aplication, but the person consumes.

Existing license types, like Microsoft User CAL, require a properly filtered user list because they will simply take every user. So potentially, there goes a lot of extra work into managing users in FNMS. Also customers running multiple domains/environements or just wanting a reliable overview, could benefit from this.

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about getting rid of all alert messages for all inventory devices, as soon as their status was being set to ignored?

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

one customer was asking Flexera to please support for our non-Windows FlexNet Inventory Agent a proxy configuration where a dedicated user account and password can be used.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver 

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about including in this thread the JIRA number from Flexera product management to all this good ideas from everybody as a give and take or in some cases the answer that it will not be considered within the next couple of years?

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about optimizing the parallel installation of our FlexNet Inventory Agent together with FlexNet Manager Suite or with FlexNet Inventory Beacons, so that there are no error messages in the Windows event logs anymore and that there are no interference within the registry entries that could cause any issues.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[JensWalton]

Software Recognition

In WebUI being able to load an device .ndi and seeing the output of recognised and unrecognised application evidence.

I originally posted this idea in 2013 when I first started to use v9.2 of FNMS.

Other SAM tools provide this capability....why doesn’t Flexera?

It can help and speed up the teaching process of unrecognised evidence.

[JensWalton]

Expanding Restrictions to more than just Enterprise Groups

 Being able to configure license restrictions on categories other than Location/Corporate Unit or Cost Centre will helps improve managing the complex license scenarios most customers face.

e.g by Device types, device categories or even make and model 

[vmnzspark]

Would be good to have: 1) Configurable Notification and subscription emailing from FNMS 2) Merging inventory records based on selectable multiple criteria, not just on Serial Number 3) Using configurable/selectable Evidence parameters for matching (i.e. MSI GUID instead of Product name) 4) Ability to use multiple Beacon URIs in the bootstrap files when deploying Agents by 3rd party 5) VMware adapter (ESQuery-like) with logging functionality and status viewable on the System Tasks page

[mrichardson]

@JensWalton ,

On your Software Recognition suggestion, we are introducing a new tab for Inventory devices in the June release of the cloud that exposes the raw inventory evidence from all data sources and then displays what application / suite is shown as installed as a result.

We will also be creating a hotfix for On-Premises 2019 R1 and 2018 R2 for this feature at around the same time.

Would this help?

[Tooling42]

System Health Dashboard as overwiew about Beacon status and System Tasks for all tenants

Hi,

we are using a multi-tenant FNMS with about 15 tenants. More tenants are planned.

At regular intervals we check the beacon status and system tasks of every tenant.
Unfortunately I have not found a way to configure a mail alert to inform me when
a beacon server has an issue or a system tasks failed.

It would be very helpful to get a System Health Overwiew Dashboard for that.
The columns should be contains:

- Tenant Name
- Beacon status: Number of beacon server with issues
- System tasks: Number of failed, timed out or other not working tasks in the last 7 days

Perhaps a link in the columns for the redirection to the tenant is possible.

Not sure, what also will helpful for other FNMS admins. But I'm sure we need it,
because 50 tenants or more are possible.

Thank you.

[johnwee_lee]

Hi, How about showing us (Your customers) as to what is FlexNet Manager's Suite road map itself? All other major publishers do share with their customers as to what to expect in the next up coming revision of product release.

[ChrisG]

@johnwee_lee - try registering for the event at https://community.flexera.com/t5/Learning-Labs/Upcoming-From-Clarity-to-Certainty-Meet-Flexera-s-Product/bc-p/98655#M39 and see if that gives you to a recording of a roadmap review session that was done earlier this week. If it doesn't give you a recording, add a comment on that thread and we can look at alternates.

[ebushby]

@rachel_stanley, This is the FlexNet Manager blog, which includes FNMEA. This is the place to post your ideas so we can hear them. 🙂

[Natalie]

@rachel_stanley  I and other FNMEA specialists are standing by! 

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about including the description field from the beacon details into the beacon list overview, because sometimes only the cryptic hostnames or something else was taken for the beacon name and information about the beacon functionality or purpose from the description field would be very helpful in most cases.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi, how about providing the functionality to active the replication folder to keep one copy of each scan *.ndi file in a dedicated folder on each beacon as it is possible on the application server already? Thanks & best regards Oliver

[sinage]

The improvement points I feel while using FNMS are as follows: 1) View the device on which it is installed from application evidence. FNMS can refer to the installed device from the identified application, but as it can not be done with the raw application evidence. This will help to identify unrecognized evidence. 2)Graphical history of software installation and compliance status.etc There is no other way to refer to the history of data collected in FNMS except by storing it in an external system, so if it can be done with FNMS alone, it will be useful for trend analysis from software installation situations in a large-scale client environment. 3)Logoff function In FNMS on premises, our customers say that it is inconvenient because we need to close all our browsers to log off.

[dsalter]

Service Now Discovery Inventory Import

Would like a inventory adapter for ServiceNow discovery.

[dsalter]

Citrix XenApp Adpater Compliance Process Changes

Help customers using Citrix XenApp by changing the Compliance Import process to use any related EXE file evidence regardless of the Recognition rule.

Inventory imported from Citrix XenApp is 100% dependent on File Inventory because Citrix XenApp adapter provides no installation evidence.

If there is file evidence for the application deployed through Citrix, consumption is only applied for the application if the File Evidence Recognition Rule is set to "Required"

Today, users are required to either create a custom application with evidence set to Required to see the Citrix consumption but this has the unintended consequence of counting installation anywhere the executable file is found.  To solve this customers either need to review and manually exempt these un-intended installation or not use the Citrix adapter.

Since Citrix only provides file evidence it is safe to consider the resend of all file evidence regards of the Recognition Rule as a Installation of the software for Citrix XenApp only.

My suggestion to improve the product would be to apply this separate logic for Citix XenApp inventory only by default.

[dsalter]

Add Group Assignment Grid to the License Management View

My customers would like to see a read-only grid of the group assignment tab on the default license management view to quickly see who has entitlement available and who exceeds.

[thompsd]

I'm new to FNMS, from other tools, but it seems to me that Flexera should be using the community to improve the ARL - Does Flexera do any federation of added 'Software evidence'. It seems that if we want to submit something to be added we have to wait for the team to prioritise it, but if we need it now (which is the norm) then it just remains local to ourselves - Surely there is power in the community helping each other identify and standardise?

As mentioned above it would be useful to be able to see which inventory devices 'Unrecognised evidence' belongs to (so the devices can be interrogated directly), and likewise the reverse of that -  what 'unrecognised evidence' has been found on a specific inventory device.

Lastly when looking at Applications that are defined as suites, it is possible to see the components that make up that suite, but it does not seem possible when looking any one of the those 'component applications' that they belong a suite.

[Natalie]

@thompsd greatly improved visibility of evidence found on a given device, both recognized and unrecognized, is coming very soon to FlexNet Manager (no later than Q3 for those of you who are On-Premises, much sooner in Cloud). I'm really excited this one is happening! 

[oqueck]

Hi, how about changing the Flexera installation procedure in that way that there's really nothing being installed on the C drive anymore, even not in some hidden folders like programdata. Thanks & best regards Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about adding, aligning the official FlexNet Manager version descriptions with the internal development versions like 2018 R2, 2019 R1 and so on with 13.2, 13.3 and so on.

Or at least add the official version behind the internal versions?

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about including the ability to delete also disabled accounts from the all accounts view and not only disable those.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[Tooling42]

Hi Oliver,

Flexera told me that there is a SQL script DeleteOperator.sql for using the stored procedure dbo.ComplianceOperatorDeleteByOperatorIDs.

I have used the script on our test environment, it work's . But I also requested a button in the GUI for removing an operator.

Best regards,

[Sergey_V]

It would be great to have the capability to batch HW Assets upload from web-interface available out-of-the-box.

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-forum/Batch-upload-of-HW-assets/m-p/101902#M1088

[Sergey_V]

It would be great if changes of some fields (like "assigned user") of Master Asset could affect on same fields of Sub-assets.

[rwiltshire]

Flexera Agent Inventory Time Reporting

I like to see the elapsed inventory time reported for Flexera agents. A duration or start/stop time . This will help identify long running inventory tasks on servers.

[rwiltshire]

Inventory Time Scheduling

I'd like the ability to set inventory schedules by groups of targets. We have a mix of local time and UTC time in the environment so it can be difficult to schedule a single time for inventory to run.

[rwiltshire]

Inventory of domain on Unix machines

I'd like to see domain collected on Unix machines via the /etc/resolv.conf file when it exists.

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about fixing the issue with user's full name, because for some users out of the box the sam account name is filled in the full name field instead of first name and last name. And on top of this even if a business import corrects this behavior with the next import everything is overwritten again and the sam account name shows back up again in the full name field of the users.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about extending our active directory import with fields like mail, status, etc. because this information is obligatory for all Cloud integrations like O365, SalesForce, etc.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver 

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about re-designing our vCenter Discovery & Inventory in that regard, that only the dedicated beacon should be targeted and not all beacons to avoid showing this process being in progress in the task overview most of the time?

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[oqueck]

Hi,

how about changing our Flexera site & subnet view to include the option to see a tree hierarchy with all the entries within the element searched for and not only the one line with the result, because normally someone wants to know all this information too.

Thanks & best regards

Oliver

[pavol_holes]

Hi, could you please add managing Flexera Agent Usage collection Manual mapping using policy from central application server? Now we have to use 3rd party application to distribute registry entries to all machines scanned by Flexera Agent.

Thanks.

Pavol

[pavol_holes]

Flexera Agent - rename all Managesoft folders and registry entries to Flexera

[RobertH]

Provide an integration to Microsoft Remote Desktop Services that pulls in the access control entries, populates the virtual desktop templates and uses the information to compute compliance for software that require licenses for access on the RDS VMS in addition to licenses required for installation on users machines; e.g., Microsoft Project.

[kathy_allen]

Expand the Under Consumed License dashboard tile data to include  the individual dollar amounts per license that contribute to the global amount.  Or create a report that can be run to pull this information.

[krasmussen]

When specifying  a FQDN or IP on a Beacon (Adjust Beacon settings ) The Network Name gets adopted into the policy system and distributed to agents and other beacons.. But the name is not visual on beacon record in the WEB UI - it is stated in the documentation that is not displayed, Please make that visible.

[kathy_allen]

Provide a searchable catalog where you could type in software detail and it would tell you possible sku(s) for the product.  Today you type in a recognizied sku and it populates software license info so there has to be a 'catalog' somewhere of this information, just no way to easily search within it.

[mfranz]

Lock licenses.

It would be great to be able to decide, if FNMS could add devices to a license, or not. Like "Node Locked" but with other license types, e.g. "Microsoft Server/Management Core".

I started a discussion: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Improving-FNMS-Locking-licenses/m-p/112569

[adrian_ritz1]

Agent installation:

Would be nice to have the option to insert in mgssetup.ini multiple bootstrap servers, in large environment with multiple beacon servers, you need to create a lot of packages.

Beacon Server:

Option that a beacon server can receive communication on multiple ports, like the same beacon server to receive data on port 80 and 443, in the current configuration only one port is allowed.

Agent installation on beacon server:

When you install a agent on beacon server to not broke the beacon server, if you install on a beacon server the agent, the original beacon server software will be uninstalled.

Agents and subnets:

When you assign a subnet to a beacon, agents should receive only that beacon information, and not the entire fail over list, can be confusing for OS team as the agent will generate error when he try to upload to a beacon that is not reachable, also to have option to use beacon as fail over, something like: Do you want to include this beacon on fail over list or not.

[pavol_holes]

Hi @adrian_ritz1,

regarding the first point - there is an undocumented solution for this, see  second post on page 4 here: https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/FNMS-Inventory-Agent-Deployment/td-p/96439/page/4

I tested it and it works.

Hope it helps 😉

Pavol