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ARL updates for FNMS cloud - what is your experience

bmaudlin
By Level 9 Champion
Level 9 Champion

Hi Guys,

As per this link, I am receiving some conflicting views on how ARL updates should work, and the timescale for these updates, so I am interested in other users experiences also.

As per this link:

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Knowledge-Base/How-to-Suggest-Changes-to-the-ARL-SKU-Library-or-PURL/ta-p/2087

Updates are stated to be completed circa around 1>2 weeks - in my experience it's normally a few months. How in your environment would you normally deal with this scenario as the current timescales do not really fit our processes.  

Also the documentation references that as a Cloud customer the Unrecognised Evidence is automatically uploaded and processed by the ARL team. However I've never experienced that happening, and I'm asked to submit evidence updates.

(1) Reply

For me ARL update processing is usually closer to 1 month rather than 2 weeks. 

I agree with your point regarding automatic evidence processing. Even though we have an on-site solution, it does not look like that there is lots of automatic processing.

It's either that, or none of FNMS cloud customers are updating their software to the latest version (or each company is using a completely different set of software for its business). I am working with IBM products a lot and I always find unrecognized evidences of new versions of well known applications. It's not unusual for an application to be released a year or two ago, but its evidence would still be unrecognized.

Lack of consistency is another really annoying thing:

  •  File evidence with the same name usually have different configuration for Windows and Unix environments - one entry defines only evidence name and another entry takes file path into account. However, some applications are configured one way or another, meaning that evidence from only one environment are assigned correctly. The rest are unrecognized.
  •  Flexera creates new versions of applications without taking configuration of past version into consideration. I.e. if previous version had both installer and file evidence linked to it and somebody reported only installer evidence of new version, a new ARL entry is created without adding file evidence (version accordingly updated) from previous application. Naming of file evidence (at least in IBM world) doesn't variate much unless there is a major change in the whole product family, so such "clean sheet" policy means that unrecognized evidence tab needs to be checked for each new version in the organization.