Dec 13, 2019
02:42 PM
Wouldn't you do chargebacks based on the installation/usage reporting you see in FNMS? Assuming you've loaded the enterprise group information into FNMS, you should be able to see those reports based on Cost Center.
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Dec 05, 2019
02:34 PM
1 Kudo
I agree it would be great if we could extract the icon images from the EXE, but even if App Portal had the ability to extract images from ICO/EXE files, it doesn't have access to the package source in SCCM (plus App Portal supports several other deployment systems in addition to SCCM). I generally find it isn't too hard to do a Google/Bing image search for "<InsertApplicationNameHere> icon PNG" and then download the image to the <AppPortalInstallationFolder>\web\backgrounds\packages folder on the server. Since the App Portal UI automatically resizes images for display to 80x80 pixels, as long as you find an image with square dimensions that isn't too large (file size), you should be in good shape. If you're using App Broker for ServiceNow, then you need to either locate images that are already the appropriate size, or you can use one of many image processing tools to batch process them all to a common size (since ServiceNow's UI doesn't automatically resize the images for you).
What I'd really like to see is the ability for App Portal/App Broker to pull things like title, description, category, icon, etc. from either the deployment system metadata or from something like Technopedia/Application Recognition Library. I believe we'll start to see some of that in the SaaS version of App Broker when that's released; however, the images would probably carry some degree of difficulty due to things like publisher copyrights/redistribution rights.
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Dec 05, 2019
02:04 PM
I was also going to suggest an IISReset/ESDService restart. Do you see any errors related to the FNMS integration? That is usually the most common cause of not seeing that tab. If there are problems with the FNMS integration, that tab will not appear, regardless of the user's administrative permissions.
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Dec 05, 2019
01:56 PM
1 Kudo
As stated previously, they are two different SKU's of the same product. Depending on what entitlements are tied to your account, you may see both links in the Product and License Center, but the installation binaries will be the same whether you pull them from the App Portal folder or the App Broker folder. After you run the installation, you will be prompted to upload your license file. The license file you select will determine which SKU is activated.
Note: I am only referencing the on-prem products here. Once the SaaS version of App Broker becomes available, it will have some downloadable components, and those will be different than what is downloadable for the on-prem version.
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Dec 05, 2019
01:50 PM
Another thing I've stumbled across recently (though I don't think it's the cause in this particular case) is that App Portal can add a device to a direct membership rule on a collection even if that device does not fall within the parent limiting collection. The end result is that App Portal will indicate the device has been successfully added to the collection and may even indicate a successful policy refresh. However, since the device is not part of the parent limiting collection, it will never actually be added to the collection membership of the target collection and will therefore not receive the policy either. Since you said you can remove the device and re-add it to the collection and have it succeed, I don't think this is the issue you're experiencing, but just wanted to bring attention to this scenario. I suppose it's also possible that you could have two devices with the same name (perhaps different domains) and that App Portal is putting the wrong one into the collection rule. Then when you remove that and re-add the "correct" device, it succeeds.
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Dec 05, 2019
01:26 PM
I can't tell you specifically what's happening in this scenario, but here are some things to check.
Script "wrappers" often cause confusion with the actual result of a deployment in SCCM. The return code that SCCM gets back is from the script that is being launched rather than any other executable that may be called from the script, so you need to make sure the script returns meaningful return codes. Then you may need to make sure SCCM is configured to understand/interpret those script return codes correctly. For example, you may have a script that is calling setup.exe and then returning without any specific return code (usually 0/success, by default). No matter what happens with that setup.exe (success or fail), the script is still indicating a success unless explicitly configured to return some other code based on the result of the setup.exe command.
Package/program deployments in SCCM have a "rerun behavior" property that can be configured to "Always rerun", "Never rerun", "Rerun if failed previously", or "Rerun if successful previously". Depending on how that is configured, it may be impacting the result being returned from SCCM to App Portal. I suggest creating your own separate deployment directly in the SCCM console to see if you can get consistent/reliable results from installing/reinstalling within SCCM. Once you have that working, compare the deployment properties to the ones set on the App Portal deployment. If they are different, you can modify the properties of the App Portal deployment to match the working deployment, or you can remove the deployment from within the App Portal catalog item (Deployment property tab) and re-add it with the correct properties.
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Nov 15, 2019
05:26 PM
1 Kudo
It is generally a best practice to maintain a development environment and a production environment (often customers have even more non-prod environments for various purposes, but really not essential for App Broker). With any upgrade, it's advised to test the upgrade in a non-production environment first and then implement in production when you're satisfied the new release hasn't broken anything (not just that the installer completed without errors). That said, since most upgrades of App Broker don't change anything in ServiceNow, that piece of the puzzle isn't really super important from an upgrade testing perspective. You could test most functions of App Broker by submitting a request within the App Broker web UI, or you could simulate submitting a request from ServiceNow by using a tool like Postman or SoapUI to make the same REST calls that ServiceNow would (these calls are documented here).
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Nov 14, 2019
02:40 PM
Sorry, I'm not following the scenario. I'm not sure why having an active/valid ServiceNow connection would be required simply to upgrade App Broker from one version to the next. Even from a testing perspective after upgrading, you could create a test request without ServiceNow just within the App Broker UI to verify that the connections to FNMS (if relevant) and SCCM (or other deployment system) are working. If you actually want to test the ServiceNow workflow, then of course you'd need a "good" working environment.
When you say you have a bunch of duplicate assets, what do you mean by that?
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Nov 12, 2019
04:04 PM
1 Kudo
Teri is 100% spot on. A few other (hopefully) helpful notes:
If using a catalog item for harvesting (which is the most reliable/recommended way), it must have an uninstall deployment, and you must check the box under Deployment > Global > Installation Options that says Enable Uninstallation (Remove from collection)?. If you have an uninstall deployment but you don't check that box, App Portal will still attempt to use SmartUninstall (if enabled) or will simply not attempt to uninstall (if SmartUninstall is not enabled) instead of using the uninstall deployment on the catalog item.
If there are multiple catalog items with the same Flexera ID (ARL), App Portal will check to see if there is a previous App Portal deployment to that device and will attempt to use the uninstall deployment for the same catalog item that was used for the install deployment. If there is no previous install deployment for that device, or if the catalog item that was used to install does not have an uninstall deployment tied to it, then one of the catalog items with that Flexera ID that has an enabled uninstall deployment will be selected at "random" (it's probably not actually random, but I'm not sure what the "algorithm" is -- perhaps the one with the highest catalog/package ID, i.e. the most recently created one?).
If using SmartUninstall, please note that the uninstall is performed by using msiexec /x <product_code> and is run in the context of the account that SCCM is configured to run under for that deployment (e.g. installer account, currently logged in user, SYSTEM, etc.). As such, if the installation was performed under the same user context, or if the installation was installed for "all users", then the uninstall should work fine. If the installation was performed under a different user context and was installed "only for the current user", the installation may fail or may leave some traces behind (e.g. Start Menu/Desktop shortcuts) because they would have been installed into a different registry hive/user profile.
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Nov 12, 2019
02:09 PM
2 Kudos
App Broker is not a "free" version of App Portal. App Broker for ServiceNow and App Broker for BMC are separate SKUs of the same product that are intended for immersive integration with the corresponding ITSM system's own portal UI. End users and approvers interact only with ServiceNow or BMC Digital Workplace (formerly MyIT), while catalog administrators still interact with Flexera's (App Broker) admin web UI. The installation binaries are the same. The only difference will be the license file you upload after installation. The license file will dictate if you have an App Portal license, App Broker for ServiceNow license, or App Broker for BMC license.
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Nov 01, 2019
07:56 AM
@sempra123 , all product documentation can be found on HelpNet. You can also get there by selecting Documentation from the Other Resources menu in the navigation bar of this website. Once on the HelpNet site, select App Portal / App Broker as the Product and then select your desired version (e.g. 2019 R1) from the Version drop-down. You'll see a few different guides and release notes (including the Installation Guide) available as both browsable HTML and downloadable PDF formats.
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Oct 24, 2019
01:28 AM
First, make sure that you don't have "backup" copies of the original or new DLL's in the App Portal directories. Any backups should be stored in a separate location outside of the installation path. Second, replacing DLL's usually involves replacing those DLL's in a few different locations (usually 4 different locations). While the files may be named the same in each folder and sometimes may even be the same/similar size, they are not always identical. Make sure you put back the right files in the right places. Third, check the Windows event logs to see if there are any detailed errors provided when attempting to start the ESDService. If all else fails, try rebooting the server (or perhaps you've already done that, in which case, I'm all out of ideas).
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Oct 23, 2019
07:26 AM
1 Kudo
We have two different API's for this.
SOAP - part of the legacy API (/esd/api.asmx). This one does not expose the "override" flag as a parameter, so I believe the behavior is that it will always approve the full request and override/skip any other approvals that may be left in the workflow.
REST - only available if you have an App Broker license file (https://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/appportal2019r1/default.htm#helplibrary/ABAPI_Approvals_Reject.htm). This one does include an "overrideApprover" parameter within the JSON body. For this one, if you specify "true" for the override, then it exhibits the same behavior as the SOAP call. If you specify "false" for the override, then it will only approve the current step (and only if the user specified in the call is the current approver for the request).
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Oct 21, 2019
10:55 AM
Strictly from an App Portal/FNMS integration perspective, here are places to look (assuming you're using the Flexera Service Gateway):
The webapi.config has 3 instances of the FNMS URL that need to be updated. Make sure you got all 3 of them.
Launch FlexeraServiceGatewayHost and View Services to verify the URL's that are currently registered. If not correct, check the webapi.config from #1 above and then rerun the registration tool. Repeat this check to verify the newly registered service URLs.
Within the App Portal admin UI, on the Flexera Integration tab, you should see (in small blue text directly below the FSG server name) the URL to the FNMS endpoint. Make sure that is correct. If incorrect, see #2 above.
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Oct 16, 2019
01:42 PM
Teri, I think you had been working with flexible approvals at one point. Did you ever get that working? Would that address (avoid) this issue?
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