Flexnet Inventory Agent - force check-in

[Staceman89]

I've been deploying the Flexnet Inventory Agent software remotely to Macs using Kace, with varying levels of success.

I've verified that my installation scripts are working, as I've had a number of the Macs show up in the Flexnet inventory, and I have verification that the app and certificate were installed successfully on all of them. Unfortunately with so many employees working remotely at the moment, many of them not often needing to use our VPN, having their Macs on our network when the inventory upload time rolls around is quite sporadic.

If I understand the way the agent works correctly, I won't normally see them show up in the inventory until several hours after the installation of the agent, at whatever time 'ndschedag -e' shows as the next event.

My question is, is there a command I can push out to the agents while they're on our network via the VPN after the install to get them to force an upload to inventory, so that they show up in the inventory list on the Flexnet Manager inventory page sooner?

I've tried manually running 'ndtrack -o UploadLocation="https://our-flexnet-server/ManageSoftRL"' as well as adding '-o InventoryType=User' to that, on a test Mac that is showing up in inventory, but it did not cause the LastInventory date to change, so I don't think that's going to work on the ones not reporting in either.

Using version 14.1.0 of the agent software.

[Flex-Jeremy]

As a note, the inventory for new machines will not appear in the FNMS UI until after a reconcile completes, so there is a limit to how fast a machine will show up in the UI. 

I can think of three ways to do this, but I am sure that others have ideas. 

1. Run the NDupload command when the machine connects to the VPN. This executable from the agent handled the upload of files. More information can be found in the Gathering Inventory guide on page 228.  

https://docs.flexera.com/FlexNetManagerSuite2020R1/EN/WebHelp/PDF%20Documents/On-Prem/GatheringFlexNetInventory.pdf#page=228

2. Set up a scheduled task (other than NDUpload) to move the stored copy of the NDI to the beacon when the Machine connects to the VPN. The agent stores a copy of the last generated NDI file in the following (platform-specific) locations. Moving the NDI file to an Inventory Beacon's Incoming\Inventories folder will allow the beacon to upload the NDI to your FNMS server. 

NDI Location:
C:\ProgramData\manageSoft Corp\manageSoft\Tracker\Inventories 
/var/opt/managesoft/tracker/inventories

3. Set up an "Internet beacon". This would be a Beacon that is visible to machines not directly on your network. When the agents next connect and get a policy file they would see this "Internet beacon" as an option and be able to upload to this beacon. 

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Internet-Public-Available-Beacon/td-p/129650#

[kclausen · Accepted solution]

The following instructions can be used to force an installed agent to run an inventory scan and upload to a beacon, making sure that this is run sudo to root.

Navigate to /opt/managesoft/bin

Execute the following command

./ndtrack –t machine –o upload=true