Difference between Last Inventory date and application Last Used date

[EHacking]

I was running a report this morning for a team wondering the last used date of an application. I thought I would include the Last Inventory date, too, since we are in the process of rolling out the Flexera Agent to all systems instead of using SCCM. I noticed a few systems that hadn't reported for a couple of months and yet had current Application Usage information.

For example, one machine showed a Last Inventory date of 8/19/2020, but the application usage showed it was last used 11/6/2020. When I look in the History it shows linking and unlinking from application throughout the past couple of months, but it still shows the last inventory agent as Flexera. I'm confused. If the Last Inventory date is 8/6, and the last Inventory source is Flexera, then why am I getting current history? If SCCM is providing the history, then why doesn't the latest inventory source show SCCM?

[jjensen · Accepted solution]

Hello Erick,

The difference between Last Used Date and Last Inventory Date may be easily explained. The two fields (inventory and usage) are populated by completely different files generated by the FNMS agent - assuming that you are using the agent for usage tracking:

Usage: .MMI

Inventory: .NDI

So, it is possible that there is a problem with the inventory side of the device (e.g. ndtrack is hung or erroring out), yet the usage component may be continuing just fine. That's one example of a scenario where those dates might become out of sync.

Regarding your question "If SCCM is providing the history, then why doesn't the latest inventory source show SCCM?" - here is a useful link detailing the definition of 'Last inventory date': https://docs.flexera.com/fnms/EN/WebHelp/index.html#topics/Dev-All_Inventory.html

"The date when the last inventory information was collected by the Last inventory source for this inventory device. The inventory process generates the value of this field."

Checking the definition for 'Last inventory source':

"If you have multiple overlapping inventory sources that report on the same device, it is possible for some inventory details to come from one source and other details from another source. This column identifies the most recent source of inventory that reported the majority of the hardware properties for this device."

So, if the agent is configured to be your 'primary' data source, then the last inventory source (and by extension, last inventory date) will remain as the agent, as this will likely be providing the majority of your hardware properties.

HTH,

Joseph

[ChrisG]

An exciting new capability that is planned to be included in the upcoming FlexNet Manager Suite Cloud November 2020 update and FlexNet Manager Suite On-premises 2020 R2 release is "Inventory Device Matching Transparency". This capability gives insight in situations where there may be data coming from multiple sources about a single device:

A new management view available in the Discovery & Inventory menu lets you investigate how and why overlapping inventory records from multiple different inventory sources were matched and merged into the inventory device records in your compliance database, making the devices visible (for example) in the All Inventory page.

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See the blog post Inventory Device Matching Transparency in FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2 for more information.