Last inventory date in the future?

[ppyrzynski]

Hi all, 

Has anyone run into this? I have a device that is showing as last inventoried in 2025 :). 
Any idea how is that possible?

Regards, 
Paweł

[ChrisG]

I expect you will find that the clock on this computer is set to a date in 2025.

It is common to find a small but non-0 number of computers in any organization having dates that are set in the future. That will result in these future dates appearing in the "Last inventory date" field on the associated inventory device records.

[ppyrzynski]

Hi Chris,
That was my first thought but I figured in this case I would find '2025' in the ndi file coming from that machine. Finding nothing,

Best,
Paweł

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[ChrisG]

The inventory dates appear near the top of NDI files:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Inventory PUBLIC "Inventory" "http://www.managesoft.com/inventory.dtd">

<Inventory [...] DateTime="20230821T154008" [...]>
[...]

[ppyrzynski]

This is what the most recent ndi file from that machine shows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Inventory PUBLIC "Inventory" "http://www.managesoft.com/inventory.dtd">

<Inventory Tracker="19.0" Audience="Machine" Scope="pmivnhcml01607" MachineName="pmivnhcml01607" MachineUID="" MachineType="Physical" UserName="system" UserDomain="WORKGROUP" UserUID="" Hardware="True" Software="True" TrackFilesInUserInventory="True" DateTime="20230908T080028"

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

So if the date on the computer was previously set to a future date and it is then changed to be an earlier date, new inventory NDI files that are received will be treated as being older than the most recent inventory that has been received.

In other words: when an NDI file has an older date than the "Last inventory date" currently recorded, the system considers that the NDIs have been received out of order. The NDI with the older inventory date is ignored.

Overriding this is a little tricky. If you are using FlexNet Manager Suite on-premises, you could execute a query like the following against the inventory database to reset the inventory date stored in the database to an earlier date so that NDI files that are subsequently received will be processed rather than being ignored:

UPDATE ir
SET SWDate = '2000-1-1', HWDate = '2000-1-1'
FROM dbo.InventoryReport ir
   JOIN dbo.Computer c ON c.ComputerID = ir.ComputerID
WHERE c.ComputerCN = 'problematic-computer-name'

[ppyrzynski]

Understood, it makes total sense. Thanks for explanation and the query. No need to update the FilesDate?

Best,
Paweł

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[ChrisG]

I believe this should work without setting the InventoyReport.FilesDate column. It is the HWDate and/or SWDate columns that are important for checking whether a newly received NDI file is newer or older than the existing data.

[ChrisG]

There may be some more complexity going on here. After further investigation, if a new inventory is received that is materially earlier than the previous inventory date, then the system is "smart" enough to consider that likely occurred due to the clock being changed on the computer and the newly receivedinventory NDI file will not be discarded as suggested in my earlier comments.

So the fact that you are still seeing the 2025 date appearing as the last inventory date but newly received inventory files have a 2023 date suggests that there is something else going on.

For example, maybe there are 2 underlying raw computer records that are being merged into one inventory device - one record with a 2023 inventory date, and one with a 2025 inventory date. You could check whether that is occurring by looking for details about the computer on the Inventory Device Matching page, which will list out all raw computer records that have been merged into the inventory device record you see.

[ppyrzynski]

Next time something like this happens, I'll try that. Since I have already run the query you gave me, I can't see the 2025 date in Inventory Device Matching anymore. Thanks again.