Spider 6.4.4 - Release Date: 17th July 2020

jborchers · ‎Jul 17, 2020

Spider 6.4.4 version is available!

Release Date: 2020-07-17

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

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Highlights

Extended SKU-Catalog Settings

For the SKU catalog, it is now possible to restrict the selection to certain licensed programs. In addition, all government or education articles can be hidden. This makes it easier to select the right article when creating a license. When importing a license, the article is only determined based on the specified SKU within the restricted selection.

Extended License Creation Process

The fields "Purchase Quantity" and "Quantity Per Unit" for Licenses and Maintenance have been introduced. The goal of this extension is to simplify and improve the license import. By specifying the number of Articles purchased (PurchaseQuantity), the number of Licenses (number of usage rights) is automatically calculated. The num-ber per Article (Quantity Per Unit) is automatically derived from the assigned Article. The extension is backward compatible. Existing imports that set the Quantity field of Licenses or Maintenances will continue to be supported. The use of the new field "Purchase Quantity" for importing licenses and maintenances are recommended. For example, imports of Windows Server licenses can be simplified this way. In the future, only the purchased quantity must be specified. Depending on the SKU, it is then automatically identified whether it is a 2-core or 8-core item and the resulting number of Licenses is calculated. In the past, this had to be done before the import or had to be re-qualified afterwards. The configuration of both Spider editions (including Flex installations) is supplemented in the configuration. In addition, quality reports have been added that can be used to improve data quality.

Improved "Lic+SA" Handling

The behavior in Spider has been adjusted for items that lead to a combined License and Maintenance (Lic + SA). The Maintenance object inherits data from the License and cannot save any different data in these fields. This Maintenance is then also coupled with the License and cannot be decoupled.

Improvements

License Management

From now on, Licenses and Maintenance will no longer be updated automatically if changed information is delivered in the Article Catalog. The synchronization now requires a separate step, which can be done either via the web interface or via the importer. Quality reports show any deviations and help to compare them. The main reason for this function change is the introduction of the "Quantity Per Unit" field on the Article. An accidental data matching would otherwise change the license number without consent. In addition, the user can now see when synchronization takes place. Deviations, if any, are displayed in an area of the license processing page.
The import for Maintenance objects has been improved. An existing License (License identifier) can be specified so that the Maintenance is automatically coupled with this License. This significantly simplifies the import process, since the Maintenance had to be assigned to a License in an additional step in the past.
License and Maintenance have been expanded to include the "ExternalNumber" field. The field has been added to the configuration for all Spider editions (only for full update installations).
In order to give the user a view of the data quality in Spider, the new report category "Quality Reports" was introduced. It contains the new reports "Licenses with inconsistent quantities", "Maintenances with inconsistent quantities", "Maintenance without end date", "Subscriptions without end date", "Licenses with deviations from the article catalog" and "Maintenance with deviations from the article catalog".
When specifying an Update Product Version for a License, it is now also possible to cross grade to the Product Version of another Product.
The selection list of possible downgrade versions is now sorted.
Expired Licenses and Maintenance are now automatically set to an inactive status.
Three new reports indicate which product versions have which ECCN (Export Control Classification Number): ECCN overview, ECCN product report, and ECCN installation report.
The Article clearing was outsourced from the License object search to the new system report "Article Clearing for Licenses".
The Article clearing was outsourced from the Maintenance object search to the new system report "Article Clearing for Maintenances".

Software Services

For the software products recognized by the Recognition module, a new detail page shows more information about the recognized product, evaluations of the installations, and compliance data.
It is now possible to set the priority of the import processes in the Recognition module via the Spider user interface. This function is only available from version 1.2003.1 or higher of the Recognition module.
The manufacturer of the software found is now also displayed in the results of the software detection. It is also possible to filter according to the manufacturer or SAM priorities.
On the "Info & Settings" page of the Software Services, an information area now shows whether a calculation is currently running in the Recognition module or when the last calculation was carried out. In addition, the duration of the calculation is output and whether there were any errors. This function is only available from version 1.2006.2 or higher of the Recognition module. In order for the info area to be displayed, at least one calculation must have been carried out for the selected client after the Recognition module update.

Oracle Database Services

The presentation of the Oracle inventorying and recognition results has been extended. The result of the Oracle database search now shows the date of the last scan (LastScanDate). The value of the license unit is displayed in Oracle License Scope details. The value for the License Unit is also displayed in the "License Scope" area in the Oracle database details.

Asset Management

The Asset editing page has been expanded to include a function for managing the main user. The new "Manage users" button opens a dialog that shows the current main user. If other users use the device, they will also be displayed. The "Delete history" button deletes the login history up to the last 14 days. This makes it possible to define the new user as the main user on a device on which a user change has taken place, without having to wait for a longer period.
The "Oracle Java Installations" report has been extended to include the columns "Operating System" and "Date of the last scan"

Contract Management

For Volume License Contracts without an anniversary, the field is initialized once in accordance with the applicable calculation rule: The anniversary is defined as the date that is one year from the start date in the future. If the end of the contract is earlier, the anniversary is this date.

Corrections

Common

When changing form configurations or user profiles, user authorizations were not always recalculated correctly, so that users could not access individual functions and forms, even though they were authorized to do so.
When using the Excel export function, an error occurred which caused the order of the columns in the Excel file to differ from the configuration of the columns in the search result.
When a report was called up using URL parameter filters, the existing filters from the respective user settings were given priority, so that the URL parameter filter might have no effect.

Asset Management

The synchronization between Spider Asset and the Recognition module has been revised so that changes to the reported devices can be determined more efficiently and the processing speed is increased. At the same time, a status change, which results from the last scan date and the preset waiting time, is now enforced in every case. Similarly, a change in the asset number is now generally enforced, provided that they should be automatically formed from the domain and hostname and a change found here. There had previously been exceptions to both change scenarios so that occasionally changes were not transferred.

License Management

Due to an error, it was not possible to change the field SAM priority on the manufacturer via the multiple changes. An error message was displayed instead.
Due to an error, it was not possible to set an effective global filter for the SAM priority.
If the selection page was called up during the License creation without specifying a search parameter, the previous filter was loaded but not displayed. As a result, the user could not see why and after what the selection list was filtered. Now in such a case, all previous filters are discarded.

Software Services

If a Software Product for a device is no longer reported by the inventory, it is now deactivated instead of deleted. In this way, the selected settings for the Software Product are retained if it is reported again later.
When viewing Software Assignments for a cloud user, an error could occur if no Employee was assigned to the Cloud User in Spider. As a result, no Software Assignment could exist. This case is now taken into account.
For a subscription, for which a standard has been already selected, the selection could not be corrected.