Is Flexera able to capture any attributes for connected devices to EUDs?

[dougedwards]

Does anyone know if Flexera able to capture any attributes for connected devices to EUDs - for example a device connected via USB?

[jevans · Accepted solution]

Good afternoon Doug, thanks for reaching out on the Community!

On a Windows device, the config file 'wmitrack.ini' controls what WMI information the Agent inventories.
If you could update that to remove the comment characters (;) from the Win32_USBDevice node, I imagine you'd see WMI evidence coming in for attached USB devices.

;[Win32_USBDevice]
;Caption
;ClassGuid
;Description
;DeviceID
;Manufacturer
;Name
;Status
;SystemName

https://docs.flexera.com/fnms/EN/GatherFNInv/index.html#SysRef/FlexNetInventoryAgent/topics/FIA-WMIFormat.html

This would potentially require some additional deployment technology to update WMItrack.ini, however - to my knowledge, that's not something that may be updated by the Beacon or Agent Policy.

Microsoft's documentation, here, gives some insight of what information you'd get from those nodes in WMI:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/cimwin32prov/cim-usbdevice

At the very least, you'd see this reflected in the Hardware tab in:
Discovered Device Properties > Inventory Evidence

I'd be curious to hear what others think, that said!

Kind regards and thanks,

Jack

Flexera Support

[erwinlindemann · Accepted solution]

In case you work with FNMS on-prem, would have to customize:

• FNMS for adding custom fields (i.e. to the Asset object)
• The Flexera Agent for providing the additional information during scan of the hardware
• The FNMS READER and WRITER files to make sure the custom fields are populated with the additional information retrieved by the agent.

A possible solution might be to create Assets in FNMS for the additional devices connected via USB. For Assets, FNMS allows using a parent/child relationship for tracking which computer the USB device is connected to.

Quite a bit of effort, but this might make it easier to track smaller hardware assets, too.

[jevans · Accepted solution]

Good afternoon Doug, thanks for reaching out on the Community!

On a Windows device, the config file 'wmitrack.ini' controls what WMI information the Agent inventories.
If you could update that to remove the comment characters (;) from the Win32_USBDevice node, I imagine you'd see WMI evidence coming in for attached USB devices.

;[Win32_USBDevice]
;Caption
;ClassGuid
;Description
;DeviceID
;Manufacturer
;Name
;Status
;SystemName

https://docs.flexera.com/fnms/EN/GatherFNInv/index.html#SysRef/FlexNetInventoryAgent/topics/FIA-WMIFormat.html

This would potentially require some additional deployment technology to update WMItrack.ini, however - to my knowledge, that's not something that may be updated by the Beacon or Agent Policy.

Microsoft's documentation, here, gives some insight of what information you'd get from those nodes in WMI:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/cimwin32prov/cim-usbdevice

At the very least, you'd see this reflected in the Hardware tab in:
Discovered Device Properties > Inventory Evidence

I'd be curious to hear what others think, that said!

Kind regards and thanks,

Jack

Flexera Support

[erwinlindemann · Accepted solution]

In case you work with FNMS on-prem, would have to customize:

• FNMS for adding custom fields (i.e. to the Asset object)
• The Flexera Agent for providing the additional information during scan of the hardware
• The FNMS READER and WRITER files to make sure the custom fields are populated with the additional information retrieved by the agent.

A possible solution might be to create Assets in FNMS for the additional devices connected via USB. For Assets, FNMS allows using a parent/child relationship for tracking which computer the USB device is connected to.

Quite a bit of effort, but this might make it easier to track smaller hardware assets, too.

[mfranz · Accepted solution]

As an alternative to Custom Fields or additional Assets: Once the data is collected via the agent, as mentioned above, a simple SQL-based report could be used. It really depends on your use case.