As we engaged with several customers and partners in discussions around FlexNet Manager Analytics, we have identified a desire to replace the existing “static” Management Dashboard in FlexNet Manager (the typical landing page) with a fully configurable dashboard. At this time, we have an early version available in our Cloud environment and as part of 2020 R1 on-premises release.  In both cases, the dashboard is still very much under development, but we decided to release a preview of this feature in order to collect feedback, with a goal of finalizing and fully supporting it before the end of this year. You can access this configurable dashboard by adding /Management/Dashboard to your FlexNet Manager Suite URL (if you are on premises, you must install 2020 R1 version first). Since we have the ability to make frequent updates to the Cloud environment, the version of the configurable dashboard is a bit more advanced than the one included in the 2020 R1 on premises version. When you first load the configurable dashboard, it will be blank (as shown below).   You can use the “Add Widgets” function to add widgets you feel are useful in your role and then you can use “Manage Dashboard Templates” to save your dashboard. If you are using the Cloud version, you will also be able to “Manage Custom Widgets”.  This will allow you to create an Analytics based widget and have it display in the management dashboard. And ultimately, this is the goal of the configurable management dashboard feature: To allow you to create your dashboard, or dashboards, share them with other users and add custom Analytics-based widgets to tailor your experience, so YOUR DASHBOARD can look like this:   Or like this: Or any other way YOU decide is right for YOU. So, please take a look at this feature and share your feedback in comments to this blog.  We are ALWAYS looking for your feedback. ... View more

As part of FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 we are delivering an expanded set of Analytics dashboards and insights. We developed these visualizations in collaboration with several customers and partners, who provided ideas and feedback to ensure that we deliver visualizations that provide out –of-the-box value. Availability: On-premises customers will be able to download and install the new dashboard and widget content from Product and License Center, without the requirement to upgrade to the 2020 R1 release. Cloud customers can access the dashboards in their Cloud instances starting June 16th, 2020. The dashboards can be viewed in FlexNet Manager Analytics.  If you are unsure how to access FlexNet Manager Analytics, please review Accessing FlexNet Manager Analytics post. Application Rationalization dashboard This dashboard delivers a collection of visualizations that provide information about applications in your environment that you may want to remove, update, or consolidate. It provides information about application counts, management status, and end of service life (if/where available). Application Summary dashboard This dashboard provides a collection of visualizations that provide a high-level summary of top software producers (by install count), top applications (by install count), and distribution of applications based on component classification (e.g. commercial, freeware, etc.) and status (e.g. manager, unauthorized, etc.). Using this view, you can evaluate what software producers and applications you should be focusing on, from the Software Asset Management perspective. You can also identify the types of applications found—for example, do you have any unauthorized (blacklisted) software installations in your environment, so you can take appropriate actions. End of Service Life – 90-day window dashboard If you have end of service life information in FlexNet Manager Suite, this dashboard informs you about software installations for applications and versions that are reaching end of life. This provides important insights, as end-of-life applications may require custom support agreements or may become unsupported, potentially increasing security risk. End of Service Life – as-of date dashboard For a broader view of application lifecycle status (if available), you can use this dashboard. It drives focus to those applications that have the most installations—which may represent the highest potential risk. Hardware Assets dashboard Managing hardware is foundational in IT Asset Management. As a result, understanding changes in hardware assets and inventory is key to identifying anomalies in your environment. Are you missing inventory, and is this expected (after all, devices are retired and disposed over time)?  Do you see expected levels of new inventory? Do you see any issues (duplicate names or serial numbers, which can cause inventory matching collisions)? Operational dashboard There are two variations of this dashboard On-premises version: This dashboard provides information to help you understand where to focus your attention to improve overall health of your managed software environment. Unprocessed purchases suggest there are assets or entitlements that have not yet been entered, impacting the completeness of the system. Understanding unlicensed or unmanaged commercial applications will allow you to focus your work on reducing compliance risk (some of this may be expected if you only manage key software producers and product licenses centrally and departments do their own purchasing for some software).    Cloud version: In addition to the visualizations in the on-premises version, the Cloud version of the Operational dashboard includes trending data. This shows you the health of your environment over time. You can easily see whether you are improving the management of your environment—providing valuable insights to your team and your management about the effectiveness of your efforts. Publisher Portfolio Dashboard This is a unique dashboard, in that it is six dashboards in one—with each tab providing access to a dashboard filtered to a specific key software producer. The All Publishers tab provides compliance and risk information for all publishers across your environment.  (The Instructions tab provides information about adding additional dashboard tabs.) This dashboard provides information related to: Compliance status, potential surplus, and financial risk (based on information input in FlexNet Manager Suite) Unlicensed installation information—including breakdowns based on status, classification; and the top products and applications (product versions) found in your environment. Risk Management dashboard This dashboard focuses on data that may represent risk in your environment. Whether it’s compliance, high utilization rates, end of life, or expiring contracts, these data points suggest where action may be required to minimize risk to your organization. If you are looking for instructions on how to access Analytics, please check out a separate post on this topic. ... View more

Accessing FlexNet Manager Analytics FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 delivers an expanded set of Analytics dashboards and insights. We developed these visualizations in collaboration with several customers and partners, who provided ideas and feedback to ensure that we deliver visualizations that provide out-of-the-box value. Our work is not yet finished. We will continue to expand our set of visualizations and dashboards over the next few months, with a goal of finalizing the project in time for the next release of FlexNet Manager Suite. The visualizations will be updated periodically in our Cloud environment. To access the dashboards, click the Reports button in the main FlexNet Manager page.  From there, hover over Analytics and click on My Analytics home to launch the Analytics UI. This opens the Analytics home page. In Analytics, open “Team Content” folder in left Navigation and click on “Flexera Boards” folder. In this folder, you will see all of the dashboards that are available. (For on-premises customers, you will see them after loading the new Analytics package into your environment.) The Hardware Asset Management, Software Asset Management, and Widget Library dashboards have not changed from the previous releases.  You can view description of the 8 new dashboards in a separate FlexNet Manager Analytics Enhancements post. ... View more

Last updated: June 26, 2020 We are excited to share with you information about the release of FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 for Cloud and On-premises editions. This update is planned to be available on the following dates: European Cloud:                User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – May 21, 2020                Production – June 4, 2020 North American Cloud: User Acceptance Testing (UAT) – May 28, 2020                Production – June 11, 2020 On-premises:                June 25, 2020 - downloadable from the Product and Licensing Center   This release delivers many new capabilities and improvements. The complete list of all changes is available from the Features by Release documents for Cloud and On Premises. Other documentation can be found in FlexNet Manager Cloud and On-premises documentation in Flexera Community using the “Other Resources > Documentation” link. This includes: List of issues resolved in this release Online help System requirements   We would like to thank all our customers and partners who provided their insights to help ensure the changes and new features in this release meet your needs.   Highlights of this release include: Docker container discovery and inventory on Linux FlexNet Manager agent can now discover your Docker containers on Linux and collect inventory of software running in these containers.  This will allow you to understand whether software deployed in containers impacts license consumption. This is the initial release of this capability and we will continue to update it in future releases to ensure you are able to discover containers, track software deployed in container images and include that software in appropriate license compliance calculations.  Application installation inventory from Docker containers provides visibility into what software is deployed, but in this release it will not contribute towards your license consumption. We are looking for your feedback to help prioritize future work, so please post your feedback in the comments section for this post–we would love to hear examples of software and license models that you have running in containers. SAP Digital Access license support The SAP component of FlexNet Manager Suite now allows you to evaluate the cost of Digital Access licenses, new indirect license consumption model introduced by SAP. You can use this feature to compare the cost from the new metric to your existing Indirect Access license cost and decide whether you want to switch to Digital Access license model. Based on data collected from the official SAP Passport interface for the new metric, you can get an accurate measure of the number of documents created and assess the costs to the organization at various levels of granularity. Improved Flexera Analytics We have added new Analytics Dashboards, built based on feedback we’ve heard from you.  We will be continuing to periodically deliver additional updates automatically in our Cloud environments, and by providing an optional update to Flexera Analytics for On-premises deployments. New FlexNet Manager Suite Management Dashboard This is an updated, configurable version of the Management Dashboard.  It is provided as an “experimental” feature in this release.  You can access it by appending “/Management/Dashboard” to the standard FlexNet Manager Suite URL. You may wish to try bookmarking https://your-server/Suite/Management/Dashboard to be used as your entry point to FlexNet Manager Suite. We are working on additional enhancements and are looking for feedback for this feature.  Please post your feedback in the comments section for this post. Flexera SaaS Manager integration Integration with SaaS Manager enables SaaS consumption information to be shown in FlexNet Manager Suite, providing a unified view of all on-premises software license consumption alongside SaaS consumption. Oracle Database transparency This is a new capability for the on-premises edition of FlexNet Manager Suite, allowing you to view detailed information about the collected usage evidence, including the sources of the evidence, for Oracle Database Options and Management Packs. This capability already exists in the loud edition. ServiceNow integration The integration with ServiceNow has been updated and is certified with the London, Madrid, New York and Orlando releases.  The integration name in the ServiceNow store has changed to “Flexera Integration”, as the same integration is now used by both FlexNet Manager Suite and Flexera’s Data Platform product.   Over the next few days, we will be posting additional blogs, with more detailed descriptions and demos of key improvements in this release, so please remember to check for the updates. Recording of the release webinar is available here: FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R1 release webinar  And please keep your feedback coming! Flexera Product Management team ... View more

After skipping the December update to avoid introducing changes before the end of year holidays, we have decided to skip the January update as well.  The first FlexNet Manager Cloud update of 2020 is scheduled to go to UAT at the end of February and Production in the first half of March. Why the change? We are working to improve the reliability and performance of our Cloud environment and want to make sure we can monitor these changes without introducing other updates. This also means the first update of 2020 will be larger - we haven't stopped working on FlexNet Manager.   We are continuing to work hard to deliver new capabilities and improve overall quality of our product.     ... View more