Change Title: Changes in Virtual Machine Normalization Type: Class 2 Change Notification What: Virtual machines come into normalization via hardware pipeline (along with, e.g., computers). Currently, they are normalized to Manufacturer-level only (i.e., no Technopedia product and/or model is specified). The proposed change is to normalize virtual machines to Technopedia hardware products and/or models under Computers – Virtual Machines category/subcategory. Why: The proposed change is intended to address: the need to clearly identify whether virtual machines are normalized or not—if normalized, they need to be associated with Technopedia product and categorization the need to have a single view of all inventoried devices, regardless of physical or virtual the need to capture additional details provided by the discovery source on virtual machines Current vs. Future Behavior: SCENARIO CURRENT BEHAVIOR FUTURE BEHAVIOR Normalization Normalized to manufacturer-only Normalized to hardware product and/or model Technopedia product/model None Representative hardware product and/or model for virtual machine Technopedia category/subcategory None Computers – Virtual Machines Virtual identifier Virtual flag (‘Yes’) Technopedia category/subcategory and Virtual flag (‘Yes’)   Examples: Current Behavior on Virtual Machines Examples: Future Behavior on Virtual Machines Potential Impact These changes will have impact on Data Platform, IT Visibility and/or Technopedia users: who rely on Is_Virtual flag to identify virtual machines who expect Technopedia manufacturer to be populated but Technopedia product and model to be empty for virtual machines who manage hardware products, as representative hardware products and/or models are being introduced with potentially blank values for hardware enrichment data (e.g., lifecycle dates, hardware specifications, etc.) who manage hardware taxonomy, as a new category/subcategory is being introduced: Computers – Virtual Machines When: The changes will be implemented in 2 (two) weeks Additional Notes Additional virtualization products and/or categorizations are proposed in the pipeline to distinguish desktop/server virtualization from other types of hardware virtualization: Storage virtualization: Storage – Virtual Storage Network virtualization: Network Equipment - Virtual Network Mainframe virtualization: Mainframe - Virtual Mainframe We are doing additional discovery work to get some sample evidence / discovered data which may fall under one of those virtualization types. At the conclusion of this discovery, we will provide an update to this Content Release Notification with the estimate before making the actual changes. ... View more

The latest monthly patch for Data Platform, 5.5.39, is available as of the end of March, 2021. This release contains several new capabilities, which includes: the ability to roll up open source components to the underlying OS distros which have them packaged/embedded by utilizing the two newly introduced relationships: between the original open source components and their distro-variant equivalents (e.g. between Apache Tomcat to Red Hat Tomcat); between the distro-variant components and the OS distros themselves (e.g. between Red Hat Tomcat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux) new identification of software titles that are classified as 'library' or 'plugin' along with the reason/explanation as to why they are being captured in Technopedia. By default, libraries or plugins fall outside Technopedia's software eligibility criteria. Exceptions, however, are made on certain titles which are captured in Technopedia due to any of the following reasons: they are commercial and/or licensable they have security/vulnerability impact they are tracked as part of Technopedia's DejaCode Open Source Content Pack they are complex and independent components they have a continuous and/or comprehensive version control and support they are significant to Flexera customers These capabilities are available in both the bdna_publish database of Data Platform's instance as well as on the Technopedia API. Details on 5.5.39 (March. 2021) release can be found in the  release notes  posted in the  documentation section  of Data Platform. ... View more

We are very excited to announce that our latest release of ServiceNow integration with Scoped App version 5.0.4 has been certified as of March 25, 2021. One of the major capabilities this release brings is the option to populate ServiceNow's native (out-of-the-box) tables with Flexera data. That includes populating software model and hardware model tables with standardized models from Technopedia as well as bringing software installations from Data Platform or IT Visibility normalization. Users are offered the option to turn this capability on or off (by default, only custom Flexera tables will be populated). Furthermore, the flexibility to pick and choose only certain tables will ensure full control on the expected behavior in their consumption of Flexera data. This release also brings Flexera data front and center in the Incident/Problem/Change (IPC) management module, which allows users to select standard software and/or hardware models from Technopedia as well as software installation from their Flexera normalized inventory when they file an incident, problem or change ticket. Finally, several usability improvements have also been introduced to allow for clear and consistent Flexera views as well more intuitive Comparison views. All this will contribute into users' ability to see the immediate value of Flexera's Technopedia data more easily. Flexera Integration with Scoped App 5.0.4 is supported on the latest release of ServiceNow (Quebec) as well as the previous two releases (Paris and Orlando). It can be downloaded at ServiceNow's store at this link (or search using the keyword "Flexera" which will return the "Flexera Integration" app). Documentation can be found at this link (you can also find it in the Product Documentation section of the Community Portal). Please reach out to us if you have any further questions! ... View more

We are very excited to announce that our latest release of ServiceNow integration with Scoped App version 5.0.4 has been certified as of March 25, 2021. One of the major capabilities this release brings is the option to populate ServiceNow's native (out-of-the-box) tables with Flexera data. That includes populating software model and hardware model tables with standardized models from Technopedia as well as bringing software installations from Data Platform or IT Visibility normalization. Users are offered the option to turn this capability on or off (by default, only custom Flexera tables will be populated). Furthermore, the flexibility to pick and choose only certain tables will ensure full control on the expected behavior in their consumption of Flexera data. This release also brings Flexera data front and center in the Incident/Problem/Change (IPC) management module, which allows users to select standard software and/or hardware models from Technopedia as well as software installation from their Flexera normalized inventory when they file an incident, problem or change ticket. Finally, several usability improvements have also been introduced to allow for clear and consistent Flexera views as well more intuitive Comparison views. All this will contribute into users' ability to see the immediate value of Flexera's Technopedia data more easily. Flexera Integration with Scoped App 5.0.4 is supported on the latest release of ServiceNow (Quebec) as well as the previous two releases (Paris and Orlando). It can be downloaded at ServiceNow's store at this link (or search using the keyword "Flexera" which will return the "Flexera Integration" app). Documentation can be found at this link (you can also find it in the Product Documentation section of the Community Portal). Please reach out to us if you have any further questions! ... View more

As part of monthly release cadence for Data Platform, we have made the 5.5.38 release available as of the end of February, 2021. This release contains various bug fixes as well as some minor enhancements. Details can be found in the release notes posted in the documentation section of Data Platform. Give us a shout for any questions! ... View more

This is the  2nd UPDATE   to the Class 1 Content Change Notification - Technopedia and ARL Eligibility and Coverage Updates published on December 23, 2020 posted here. The 1st UPDATE (posted here) has been completed with removal of the initial set of ARL applications took place as part of the January 24 ARL release.  This 2nd UPDATE proposes the next set of ARL applications to be cleaned up and deleted (see the attached list). Evidence linked to these applications will be marked "Ignored" in the ARL. We plan to begin removal of these applications as part of the February 26 ARL release.    We will be publishing additional cleanup lists and schedules as this activity continues.  As a reminder, you can find the updated Technopedia Software Eligibility knowledge base document in this KB Article. ... View more

Data Platform's User Console is built upon Pentaho’s Business Intelligence platform. It has a built-in capability to schedule reports generation along with the option to email them to users within the organization. We have just posted the detail instructions on how to use the scheduler in the following documentation: Data Platform 5.5.x Report Scheduler in User Console. This document  can be found in  Product Documentation  section of Data Platform.   Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions! ... View more

Data Platform introduced folders management capability in User Console with the 5.5.36 update (end of December 2020). This capability allows users to organize reports in folders, which includes: create and customize folders and/or sub-folders pin/unpin reports into folders and/or sub-folders sort reports within the folders, including manual sorting share and/or set permissions on the folders across users in the organization customize the home page to show any reports of choice Please find the details in this documentation: Data Platform 5.5.36 Folders Management for User Console Reports. You can find it in the Product Documentation section of Data Platform. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions! ... View more

Change Title Major Changes in Technopedia - ARL Crosswalk Class 1 Customers should be prepared and take action Change Summary The Technopedia – ARL Crosswalk provides a means to associate Technopedia software products and/or releases to ARL applications for joint Data Platform and FNMS customers. The original crosswalk was based on analyzing title-to-title comparisons. We have enhanced the crosswalk methodology to link titles based on the underlying evidence, providing a higher quality of match. We plan to deploy the first set of these changes beginning March 8, 2021. Impact These changes will impact all customers who use both Data Platform and FNMS and take advantage of either the crosswalk table in Data Platform or the crosswalk report in FNMS. The crosswalk table in Data Platform (CAT_FLEXERA_ARL) will see the following changes: Crosswalk records today: 230,713 Crosswalk records will be marked ‘To be deleted’: 30,171 Inaccurate crosswalk: 13,340 Crosswalk to product-level only: 12,535 Crosswalk on Tier 10 (Inactive) publishers: 4,296 Crosswalk records after March 8, 2021: 200,542 Evidence-based crosswalk: 74,112 Legacy crosswalk: 126,430 The crosswalk report in FNMS will see changes depending on how many titles in your inventory have crosswalk relationships to Technopedia. Additional crosswalk table updates to enhance crosswalk relationships with evidence are planned in the near future. Next Steps: You should review the proposed changes and be prepared for potential impact in your inventory. Several additional releases will be announced in the future with a minimum of ten business days notice, linked to this original announcement. We will not publish the list of actual records above in the Community Portal. If you are entitled to the crosswalk and would like to obtain the list, please contact us so we can arrange to have the list provided to you before the March 8, 2021 date. We welcome your feedback on these changes! ... View more

Change Title Major Changes in Technopedia - ARL Crosswalk Class 1 Customers should be prepared and take action Change Summary The Technopedia – ARL Crosswalk provides a means to associate Technopedia software products and/or releases to ARL applications for joint Data Platform and FNMS customers. The original crosswalk was based on analyzing title-to-title comparisons. We have enhanced the crosswalk methodology to link titles based on the underlying evidence, providing a higher quality of match. We plan to deploy the first set of these changes beginning March 8, 2021. Impact These changes will impact all customers who use both Data Platform and FNMS and take advantage of either the crosswalk table in Data Platform or the crosswalk report in FNMS. The crosswalk table in Data Platform (CAT_FLEXERA_ARL) will see the following changes: Crosswalk records today: 230,713 Crosswalk records will be marked ‘To be deleted’: 40,795 Inaccurate crosswalk: 23,962 Crosswalk to product-level only: 12,534 Crosswalk on Tier 10 (Inactive) publishers: 4,299 Crosswalk records after March 8, 2021: 200,542 Evidence-based crosswalk: 74,112 Legacy crosswalk: 126,430 The crosswalk report in FNMS will see changes depending on how many titles in your inventory have crosswalk relationships to Technopedia. Additional crosswalk table updates to enhance crosswalk relationships with evidence are planned in the near future. Next Steps: You should review the proposed changes and be prepared for potential impact in your inventory. Several additional releases will be announced in the future with a minimum of ten business days notice, linked to this original announcement. We will not publish the list of actual records above in the Community Portal. If you are entitled to the crosswalk and would like to obtain the list, please contact us so we can arrange to have the list provided to you before the March 8, 2021 date. We welcome your feedback on these changes! ... View more