Upload inventories directly to FlexeraOne

[maxhensel]

Hi community,

I just wanted to share that I've found a way to upload inventories gathered by the FlexNet Agent directly to FlexeraOne without the need of going through a beacon server.

Use case:

Some customers might have issues with inventorying remote devices (e.g. Laptops) which are not connected to a VPN. Here the way would be to deploy internet facing beacons with all the belonging security constraints and setup efforts.

Pre-Requisites:

• At least one deployed and connected beacon to retreive the beacon UID and encrypted password from the settings.xml
• A FlexNet agent on the remote device

How to send the inventory to F1 with an installed agent:

1. Add new registry key like in the screenshot -> Password = the encrypted password from the beacon settings.xml, User = the beacon UID from the settings.xml
2. Generate an ndi file with ndtrack and set the upload properties to false
3. Locate the ndi/gz file and change the name like this
   1.  Original Name: system on machinename at 20230601T133058 (Full).ndi.gz
   2. New Name: [YOUR TENANT ID]_system on machinename at 20230601T133058 (Full).ndi.gz
4. YOUR TENANT ID = the tenant ID of your instance (you will find this ID e.g. in the inventory import logs). The brackets and the underscore need to be in the string 🙂
5. Copy the new file to "C:\ProgramData\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Common\Uploads\Inventories"
6. Execute ndupload.exe -t Machine
7. Now the uploader will catch the ndi file and will upload it directly to FlexeraOne without going through a beacon 🙂
8. After the next full inventory import your device will be shown in your instance

Things to think about:

• I know, it is a PoC/workaround and it needs some effort to set this up correctly but in theory it could be a scripted process
• In the moment it is not possible to retreive agent policies from the instance so you have to handle this by yourself
• I would be happy if other customers can confirm this little PoC
• It would be a great thing if this would be an official feature (will submit an idea to the portal)

Best regards,

Maximilian Hensel