Inventory Agent Schedules

[RWG2022]

Hello,

I am trying to determine at what point after the FlexNet Inventory Agent runs an inventory on devices will we see the updated inventory in the Flexera One UI. Based on the attached, our inventory agent schedule runs daily and starts at 07:00am and is set to commence within 2 hours. The processing queue for imports and reconciliation is set to daily and schedule after 10:00am. Am I correct in my understanding that for example my laptop could be inventoried at say 08:00am, the inventory data is then uploaded to the Beacon and processed, and after 10:00am the same day, the inventory from my laptop is imported and visible in the UI? If I'm incorrect, I'd really appreciate an explanation. We often see that the last inventory dates of devices in the UI can be 1-2 days prior to today's date even though the machines have been powered on and used daily. If there are any recommendations as to the most appropriate settings so we can ensure our inventory is as near real-time as possible would be appreciated.

Thank you

[atique]

Yes, your understanding is correct about how this cycle works. You can turn on the replication setting on the beacon which will get the copies of devices which are being inventoried by dates, then you can check if any device which got its NDI file uploaded is reflected in inventory or not on that day. Also, you can give two more hours after agent collection for reconciliation to see if that works.

[ChrisG]

Here are the key steps that happen from when the agent generates an inventory until when data from that inventory is visible in the Flexera One ITAM UI:

1. Agent generates inventory NDI file and uploads it to a beacon. This generally happens according to the schedule settings configured in the web UI (for agents which are configured to operate according to policy settings). If the agent cannot upload the inventory to a beacon at the time it is generated, the inventory will be cached on the computer for a later retry. I think the schedule to retry failed uploads is once per day.
   
   
2. Beacon uploads the inventory NDI file to Flexera One. This generally happens within a few minutes, although could be longer if the beacon has a backlog of files to upload or is not uploading successfully for some reason.
   
   
3. Inventory NDI file content is ingested into a staging database within the Flexera One backend environment. This generally happens within a few minutes.
   
   (With that said, there have been a couple of incidents in March and April in the Flexera One US environment where this process has got backlogged and it has taken some time for files to work through this step. See here and here.)
   
   
4. The inventory import & reconciliation process runs. This is commonly scheduled to happen once a day.

Data is only visible in the UI once step 4 has completed.