Spider 6.4.1 update - release date: 21th December 2018

[jborchers]

Spider 6.4.1 update is available 

Release Date: 2018-12-21

A new update has been released for Spider. Please see the included improvements and corrections below. 

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Improvements

Important innovations for SAM

• With the new contract type “Volume Licensing Contract” extensive new SAM functions are introduced. The update adds this contract type in general, even for customers without a full update edition and must be authorized on those installations if required.
• The volume license agreement can be used to describe standardized products (enterprise products). These products are defined as standard products throughout the whole company. Their licensing is based on contractually agreed characteristics. A dedicated license metric procedure ensures the correct calculation. For these products, no license requirement is reported.
• In the future, content-based templates will be used to store standard volume license agreements in the system, which will make it easy to enter corresponding contracts. For example, possible standardization products will be available for selection.
• A volume license agreement can be associated with several enrollments, each referring to different business units (branches).
• Licenses can be created directly from the volume license agreement. In the case of the license and maintenance system, if the volume license agreement terminates, the end of the contract is assumed and applied (e.g. end of maintenance, end of license for rental licenses).
• A new report shows Oracle Java SE versions installed on clients and servers. These are displayed as normalized software products, e.g. Java SE 8 u131, Java SE Development Kit 8 u151, Java SE 7.x, etc. For virtual systems, if available, the underlying host system is displayed. This report helps identify which systems use Oracle Java.
  The interpretation is based on the underlying inventory data. For Windows-based system, the installed programs provide a good overview. Unix / Linux systems require additional inventory extensions. The Columbus Datacenter Inventory solutions will be expanded accordingly.
• For consistent and easy processing of OEM licenses, the following functions have been added: When importing OEM licenses, the serial number of the computer system can be specified. This can usually be found in the order items. Based on the serial number, if uniquely identifiable, the asset is automatically linked to the OEM license. OEM licenses are only processed as compliance relevant if there is a linked asset and it has an active status. OEM licenses of inactive assets are therefore no longer processed in the compliance calculation. If no asset is linked to an OEM license, it will not be processed in the compliance calculation. The business unit of the OEM license is aligned with the business unit of the asset.
• Spider has been extended for automated processing of consumed applications to Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Server, Citrix). The following functional scope was added or completed:
• The Inventory and Metering of Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Server) will continue to require Columbus Datacenter Inventory on the Windows Server. The metering function identifies and transmits accessing users and remote clients.
• The remote clients identified in this way are listed in a new area in the Spider Web UI. In addition, the remote clients will be connected with an asset by matching the hostname, if possible.
• From the SAM point of view, the accessing systems are usually to be licensed, so a complete view of the accessing remote clients to assets is required.
• A regular background service will check if an asset can be found based on the hostname and then link it automatically. If multiple assets are found based on a hostname, the user can specify to which asset the remote client will be linked.
• For all remote clients for which no asset can be determined, functions for mass creation of new assets (Unknown or Template Assets) are available. This can happen, for example, if the complete inventory is not available in Spider, when using thin clients or accessing external computers.
• Built-in reconciliation makes management, auto-assignment, and adding missing assets very easy.
• Regular synchronization makes used applications on Remote Desktop Services visible as remote software usage on the linked assets.
• The License Metric Procedures (LMPs) harmonize the license demand of locally installed products and their use on Remote Desktop Services.
• It is also possible to activate the 90-day rule. In addition, you can set after which waiting period unused applications on Remote Desktop Services are removed from the accessing assets.
• This transparency makes it possible to determine the effective consumption of software on Remote Desktop Services and to take it into account in the compliance calculation.

General

• With Spider 6.4.1 the upload function for documents will be renewed. User systems and browsers that access Spider no longer needs to support JAVA applets. Instead, it is necessary that the browser used is HTML5 enabled. It is still possible to upload documents and files from the file system using drag & drop. Drag and drop directly from Outlook is no longer supported.
• The Spider Web API now better supports concurrent access to objects. If, when changing an object, the read sysUpdateDate field is specified, the Web API ensures that the object has not been changed since reading out. Thus, interim changes cannot be accidentally overwritten by re-editing. If the sysUpdateDate field is not specified, the new changes will be made anyway.
• So far, it was possible in the Spider Web API, that one can administrate users without tenant linking. Due to the current customization, the original routes are marked as obsolete and should not be used if possible. As a new alternative, new routes with client information are provided. This ensures that the managed user and the Web API user are assigned to the same tenant.
• With Spider 6.4.1, a button for easy reset of the set filters is again introduced on search pages.
• In the new object searches introduced with Spider 6.4, you can now also search for results that are not equal to the filter value.

Asset Management

• The employee display form (EmployeeView) now also supports the new search technology introduced with Spider 6.4.

License Management

• It is now possible to derive a new article from an existing catalog article.

Software Services

• The "AD Groups" section has been removed from the Software Services results pages and added to the main menu as a stand-alone menu item.

License Metric Procedures (LMP)

• In the future, content additions to the license metric procedures will be delivered via the Software Services. These are the LMP definitions that describe, among other things, definitions for suites and other LMP features. The monthly software service updates provide faster delivery of extensions and changes. Only from this Spider version the LMP definitions supplied by the Software Service can be used.

Corrections

General

• The performance of object indexing has been significantly improved.
• If the bulk change feature was selected, it could cause the user interface to be locked so the user had to use the back button on the browser.
• The Excel export of certain reports was not filtered correctly by tenant (mandator).
• After switching to the new search technology introduced with Spider 6.4, the configuration key "EnableLegalEntityAuthorisation" was not evaluated correctly.
• The installer had not issued a warning if ASP.NET was not registered in IIS on the application server.

Asset Management

• Asset search results were not filtered correctly when the search page was called via the Inventory dashboard.
• The Vulnerability Report for MS17-010 (WannaCry) can now also be filtered by Legal Entity.

License Management

• Due to a rendering error, the progress plots on the Compliance pages on the Y-axis displayed only a portion of the numbers to be displayed..

Software Services

• When transferring cloud subscriptions from the Recognition module to Spider Asset, errors could occur under certain circumstances.
• The Cloud subscription search page contains the "Used" column. The calculated value contained besides the used accounts also the suspended accounts as well as accounts with a warning. Since this could lead to confusion, the column now only contains the number of accounts used.

License Metric Procedures (LMP)

• There was an error in the license metric procedure for secondary use rights that could cause an endless execution.