Maintenance Renewals

[jiwaniec]

Hello, I am somewhat new to Flexnet and have just run into a situation where we have a Publisher with multiple products and received a Maintenance renewal for all products. What is the best way to apply that renewal? Do I have to create a maintenance po for each product? Different license types and counts? Please tell me there is an easier way.
Thanks!

[Greg_Misso]

Hi,

For the sake of consistency and future traceability, I would create and upload the PO template in FNMS to mirror that which was raised with the vendor. This is a relatively quick process as the template can be downloaded through the UI and can be populated with a lot of relevant information used for processing. This will simply be a copy/paste from your source data to the spreadsheet template.

Once you have the PO entitlements in the system (sitting in the "Unprocessed purchases" view) you will have to process each one of these entitlements product by product (or if there are multiple line items for the same product you can group by the same SKU) and link to the existing software license. If you try to process all in one go, all entitlements (irrespective of the product will be linked to one license record which is what you want to avoid).

The caveat to this is that if the maintenance renewal SKU has been processed before, you might see a recommendation to link the entitlement to an existing license. If this is the case, and you are happy with the recommendation, you can select the "Accept" button to accept this. The renewal will then be processed. If this is possible

Another reason why you need to be diligent when processing the renewals is for one of the conditions you highlighted - different license types. You want to be sure that these are processed in line with the correct license type eg. core, processor, PVU etc.

I hope this helps.

[jiwaniec]

Greg Misso wrote:
Hi,

For the sake of consistency and future traceability, I would create and upload the PO template in FNMS to mirror that which was raised with the vendor. This is a relatively quick process as the template can be downloaded through the UI and can be populated with a lot of relevant information used for processing. This will simply be a copy/paste from your source data to the spreadsheet template.

Once you have the PO entitlements in the system (sitting in the "Unprocessed purchases" view) you will have to process each one of these entitlements product by product (or if there are multiple line items for the same product you can group by the same SKU) and link to the existing software license. If you try to process all in one go, all entitlements (irrespective of the product will be linked to one license record which is what you want to avoid).

The caveat to this is that if the maintenance renewal SKU has been processed before, you might see a recommendation to link the entitlement to an existing license. If this is the case, and you are happy with the recommendation, you can select the "Accept" button to accept this. The renewal will then be processed. If this is possible

Another reason why you need to be diligent when processing the renewals is for one of the conditions you highlighted - different license types. You want to be sure that these are processed in line with the correct license type eg. core, processor, PVU etc.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the info Greg. I should have clarified, the maintenance renewal is a 1 item renewal. It does not break out all the specific products, just one line item extending support for all products for another year.
Thanks!

[Greg_Misso]

So if i interpret what you saying correctly, you have received a renewal notification as a single line item covering multiple products for a sum amount. Correct?

If you are still in the "quoting phase", I would ask for an itemized quote to help you break this down for processing against the existing license records. This would have the added benefit of providing you with a SKU (hopefully - depending on software publisher) that you will be able to utilize for processing (assuming it is in the SKU recognition library).

If this has already been processed ie. your organisation has submitted a PO for the maintenance renewal as the single line item, I would still recommend the approach I outlined previously whereby you would need to create/ populate a PO template including all of the the products being renewed and the qty's (again assuming that you are renewing only maintenance you have active coverage on).

Again, it is important to do it in this manner because of the different license metrics that you mentioned that you have. Each entitlement has to be assessed and processed on merit. Unfortunately it may seem like a lot of work, but the outcome will ultimately be more accurate and provide better transparency for reporting - so it is worth the additional effort upfront 🙂

Again, I hope this is useful.

[jiwaniec]

Greg Misso wrote:
So if i interpret what you saying correctly, you have received a renewal notification as a single line item covering multiple products for a sum amount. Correct?

If you are still in the "quoting phase", I would ask for an itemized quote to help you break this down for processing against the existing license records. This would have the added benefit of providing you with a SKU (hopefully - depending on software publisher) that you will be able to utilize for processing (assuming it is in the SKU recognition library).

If this has already been processed ie. your organisation has submitted a PO for the maintenance renewal as the single line item, I would still recommend the approach I outlined previously whereby you would need to create/ populate a PO template including all of the the products being renewed and the qty's (again assuming that you are renewing only maintenance you have active coverage on).

Again, it is important to do it in this manner because of the different license metrics that you mentioned that you have. Each entitlement has to be assessed and processed on merit. Unfortunately it may seem like a lot of work, but the outcome will ultimately be more accurate and provide better transparency for reporting - so it is worth the additional effort upfront 🙂

Again, I hope this is useful.

I was afraid that is what the suggestion would be. Thanks for the confirmation!