Question about altering 'Calculated User' in Business Importer

[Techbpn8771]

Hello,

Recently a team member of mine had noticed that the 'Calculated User' field in Inventory was not being populated properly via SCCM integration for some devices.  There is a mapping from SCCM -> Calculated User as shown in the Flexera mapping spreadsheet, and it is working for a vast majority of our devices.

However, we are looking in to alternatives for gathering user data in this field for those that are blank.  I am under the assumption that, like the 'Assigned User' field, we can alter the 'Calculated User' field in the business adapter.  Given that my enterprise has the visibility to get similar user data from other sources, we were considering the option of utilizing an export of that data to alter the CU field via an adapter. 

My question is should the business adapter alter the CU field for a device, in the event that the SCCM integration begins to see a CU appear through the mapping, is there some sort of flag that will be switched after a business import that disallows the ability for this field to be automatically updated?  As in, does running a business adapter for a manual assignment to this field still allow for the CU to be automatically changed should the SCCM integration start reading a new Calculated User?

Thanks!

[Techbpn8771]

Additional part of the question: if I were to alter the Calculated User field manually via business adapter, on next SCCM integration run would it empty the field I populated if the mapped value is still empty?

[ChrisG]

The Calculated User field on a computer (inventory device) can be set using a business adapter, but in general you should arrange things so that this is only done for computer records which are not imported from some inventory source (such as SCCM). If you try to set this field on a computer whose fields are also being populated using data imported from an inventory source then you will likely end up fighting against the inventory data that is being imported, with values flip-flopping between the value set by your business adapter and the value set based on imported inventory data.

A blank "last logged on" or "calculated user" value being seen on an inventory device imported from SCCM likely indicates either that SCCM had corresponding no user details in its database, or that the user account name in the SCCM database could not be mapped to a User record in Flexera One ITAM/FNMS.

[Techbpn8771]

Excellent, that's what I was looking for!  We would be okay with that as if there was a user that started being read from the SCCM mapping suddenly for whatever reason, the overwrite would be fine. 

Now does that apply for a blank value in the SCCM mapped field?  As in, whenever SCCM integration occurs and the calculated user mapping is empty, would whatever user we assigned in 'Calculated User' via the adapter be cleared and replaced with a null value?

When I communicated with our SCCM team lead he had said the field used for mapping into CU had been known to be empty sometimes.  I will cross check with our other data sources to see how many records are just not matching into the user table in ITAM.