Setting a Inventory agent schedule for a single device

[rockfeather]

Hello, we have a device that needs to run specifically at 6pm not late and not sooner. However I do not want to do this though the global settings on the FNMS OnPrem site. Is there a way we can set the inventory scan to happen at a certain time for only a couple of devices?

[mag00_75]

Hi

For special devices I would recommend to schedule to run core components or the scanner at the time you want instead of using full agent. We have critical production equipment which we only scan upon startup and other types of devices where we schedule core/scanner

[mfranz]

I agree, your options are:

• the "FlexNet Inventory Scanner"
  https://docs.flexera.com/FlexNetManagerSuite2023R2/EN/GatherFNInv/index.html#SysRef/FlexNetInventoryAgent/topics/FIS-ChapIntro.html
• or deploying the agent/scanner components yourself, along with some kind of schedule, like from the Windows Task Scheduler or Crontab on Linux

[rockfeather]

We eneded up using a cron job to execute the following command 

ndtrack -t Machine UploadLocation="<BEACON SERVER>/ManageSoftRL"

In addtion, we started ti setyo the "Do not rerun after success" for 23 hours on the inventory agent schedule settings. However, it looks like when we ran it at 7am it ran again at 4pm (within that 23 hour blackout). We are not sure why, but I assume it was due to upload being set to False by default. Do you have any recommendations? Otherwise, we are going to give this below command below a try.

ndtrack -t Machine UploadLocation="<BEACON SERVER>/ManageSoftRL" -o Upload="true"

[ChrisG]

The "do not rerun after success" flag on the schedule will not have impact on a cron job. cron knows nothing about that flag, and will run the ndtrack process simply according to the details you have configured in the crontab file.

The command line you have suggested also has some problems in it (missing "-o" ahead of "UploadLocation", and missing protocol in the upload location URL). Try:

ndtrack -t Machine -o UploadLocation=http://QASPVPAFNMS01.americas.cshare.net/ManageSoftRL -o Upload=true

[rockfeather]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the command! The individual I was assisting was able to implement the cron job with the referenced command. Unfortunately, it seems the Generate Inventory task is still showing the same time we are looking to change.

Even after running the cron job with that new command before the workday, the generate inventory still kicks off at 4:15pm one we ran the get schedule command (a while we ran the cron job that is)

[ChrisG]

It sounds like you may still have the agent installed and configured. If the agent is installed and operational, it will gather inventory according to whatever schedule settings are configured on your Inventory Settings page. If you also configure a cron job to gather inventory, that will run in addition to the globally configured agent schedule - it does not replace the agent's built-in operations.

If are not wanting the agent to perform operations according to the schedule settings on the Inventory Settings page, you should not install the agent. @mfranz' helpful comments earlier in this thread provide pointers on options for gathering inventory without the agent installed.

[ChrisG]

Scheduling settings can't currently be managed per-device, but there are a couple of ideas in Flexera Ideas related to this that you may want to consider voting for:

• FXONE-I-48 Targeted inventory device scheduling
• ITAMFNMS-I-161 agent scan groups (schedule and settings)

[rockfeather]

Hey Chris,

Would love to put my vote for those. Would there be another link I can click to access those pages? I am taken to this "Aha!" login page.

[ChrisG]

My post had bad URLs in it sorry. I have edited the post to correct the URLs - hopefully they work for you now!