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Where is usage calculation coming from

Is there a way to differentiate between usage being calculated by FNMS based on installer evidence  and usage being pulled in from SCCM?  Assuming FNMS is pulling some usage and metering for application is turned on in SCCM, can you tell where usage is coming from?

The Raw Software Usage screen appears to be just for usage from Flexera agents.  We don't currently have usage turned on for our Flexera agents and use SCCM as our main inventory tool for desktops 

(14) Replies

Hi @kathy_allen

My understanding is that usage information from SCCM is gathered to some extent, but only limited aggregated information is made available in the Web UI. For example for a particular application, I can see all related devices which have the application installed, along with the 'last used date' information.

If you want more detailed raw software usage information, you might have to enable usage scanning option in FlexNet Inventory Agent. If this isn't feasible, you can raise enhancement request with Flexera Support, mentioning the business use case/problem you are facing.

 

Spoiler
Additional information for FNMS on-premise installation:
You may be able to check the raw data from dbo.ImportedInstalledFileEvidenceUsage table in the Compliance database. There is a column called ComplianceConnectionID, which you can filter to your SCCM connection ID from dbo.ComplianceConnection table.

 

 

Cheers, Kent

I see usage for an application but I can't tell if it is calculated based off of FNMS usage based on installer evidence or if it is being pulled in from SCCM metering information.

@kathy_allen , this cannot be determined from the User Interface.  If you have FNMS On-Premises, you could interrogate the SQL Database, but this would not be an option with FNMS Cloud.

At one level, you could look at the properties of the Inventory Device to see if the recent inventory source is showing as FNMS or as SCCM.

But, if you have the FNMS Agent installed on all your desktop computers, I am not sure what extra benefit you would get by importing data from SCCM in addition to using the FNMS Agent.

So if FNMS agents are not deployed and FNMS is relying on SCCM only, will FNMS import metering data if SCCM is configured to meter software usage?

Yes, if metering data is available in SCCM, it will be imported.
I had this same scenario today, what's the best place in the SCCM DB to find the metering data?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-collins-7aa71a3b

There are 2 primary types of usage or metering we pull from SCCM.

There are the file evidence based metering rules which are primarily pulled from the dbo.MonthlyUsageSummary table and this is populated if you've configured metering rules in Config Manager to track specific files for metering.  This requires the file evidence to be assigned to an application in FNMS.

The other primary type of metering we pull is Installer evidence usage which is mainly from the RecentlyUsedApps_Data table which is enabled if you have configured the option to track this in SCCM.  This does not require file evidence to be assigned to an application in FNMS.

We also collect usage from AppV applications as well but these use a variety of tables.

 

In each case, we roll up usage to the license and show IsUsed = True / False so the application needs to be linked to a license.

 

As said above, the Raw Software Usage page only covers the FNMS agent however there is an enhancement to open this up but this is not planned for the next 6-12 months currently.

(Anything expressed here is my own view and not necessarily that of my employer, Flexera)
If the solution provided has helped, please mark it as such as this helps everyone to know what works.
Yes. We don't use the FNMS agent on our desktops, only our servers, and we get the usage information from SCCM when it is configured for usage metering.
Erick Hacking, CSAM, CHAMP
IT Software Asset Manager, Lead Sr.

@EHacking 

If you don't use the agent, the information Kirk references above isn't as much value however on the previous page of this thread I posted some information on the 2 ways we gather usage data from SCCM and that may be of more interest to you.

If you need any further detail on the usage data from SCCM, please let me know.

(Anything expressed here is my own view and not necessarily that of my employer, Flexera)
If the solution provided has helped, please mark it as such as this helps everyone to know what works.

@kclausen - My company has  FNMS On-Premises, do you have any handy queries you can share to pull some data around Application usage or even 'last use date' for each user?

 

@NicOla :

There are many places where you can view the Last Used Date by adding the Last Used Date to the view using the column chooser:

1) The consumption tab of a software license

2) On the Applications tab of an inventory device

3) On the Devices tab of a software application

 

You can also build your own custom view using the Report Builder Wizard:

- Start with the "Inventory Device" object and add fields to the report to identify the device, such as Computer Name, Manufacturer, Model Number and Calculated User/Assigned User

- Then, add the "Installation" object so that the applications installed on each device are included, and here you can include the "Last Used Date"

 

Kirk

Measuring resource utilization is a core ingredient to any solid resource management flow. As a result utilization tends to be a highly sought after metric by the management team or leadership groups UPSers Employee Login. While management are interested in seeing the bigger picture, production teams are also keen to understand how they are progressing.

Is there some documentation around what utilization can be detected by Flexera, and what utilization can't be?  I see that Flexera reports usage inconsistently.   For some products, it does, and for others, it doesn't

Someone mentioned some settings in the agents. Is it USAGEAGENT_DISABLE = False ..   For calculating the usage, we should leave it at False?

@flexeranoob 

The current releases of the FlexNet agent primarily capture usage for applications that are installed with traditional and simply structured MSI packages. There are a range of applications which are not installed with this traditional technologyh, including some applications from from Adobe, and Office 365 applications installed via the ‘click-2-run’ technology - the FlexNet agent won't (by default) gather usage for these applications. See the following thread for more comments on this.

This gap is something that Flexera is hoping to address in 2020.

https://community.flexera.com/t5/FlexNet-Manager-Forum/Metering-Adobe-Acrobat-Pro-DC-Package-Updates/m-p/115415/highlight/true#M2656