Data Analytics 9.6. User's Guide

Transcription

1 Data Analytics 9.6 User's Guide

2 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Copyright Notice This document contains information, which is the confidential information and/or proprietary property of LANDESK Software, Inc. and its affiliates (referred to collectively as LANDESK ), and may not be disclosed or copied without prior written consent of LANDESK. To the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, LANDESK assumes no liability whatsoever, and disclaims any express or implied warranty, relating to the sale and/or use of LANDESK products including liability or warranties relating to fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, or infringement of any patent, copyright or other intellectual property right, without limiting the rights under copyright. LANDESK retains the right to make changes to this document or related product specifications and descriptions, at any time, without notice. LANDESK makes no warranty for the use of this document and assumes no responsibility for any errors that can appear in the document nor does it make a commitment to update the information contained herein. For the most current product information, please visit Copyright , LANDESK Software, Inc. and its affiliates. All rights reserved. LANDESK and its logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of LANDESK Software, Inc. and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Other brands and names may be claimed as the property of others Last updated: 11/25/2014 2

3 USER'S GUIDE Contents Contents 3 LANDESK Data Analytics overview 5 Data Analytics features and benefits 5 Automated asset management 7 Asset Control 9 About the Asset Control view 9 Getting started 10 Viewing inventory data 11 Asset Control reports 13 Console Extender 14 About the Console Extender view 14 Getting started 15 Data Translation Services 17 About the Data Translation Services view 17 Getting started 24 Configuring new rules 27 The core scan processor service 29 Rule names and database selections 29 Aggregate data wizard 30 Archive asset wizard 31 B2B connectors overview 33 B2B connector wizards 34 Barcode CSV import wizard 47 Barcode web-form wizard 50 Barcode web-group wizard 55 Bulk input wizard 56 Calculate data wizard 58 Enterprise aggregators overview 59 Enterprise-aggregator import wizards 60 Export data wizard 65 Import data wizard 69 LDAP export wizard 76 LDAP import wizard 80 Licensed-software rules overview 84 Licensed software wizard 87 VDI licensing overview 91 Map data wizard 94 Map list wizard 100 Model attributes dialog 101 Normalize wizard 105 Software-license importing overview 107 Software-license import wizard 111 SQL command wizard 115 Virtual-licensing rules overview 116 Datacenter product wizard 121 VMWare vcenter import wizard 125 Web custom data wizard 127 Web import wizard 127 Database Doctor 134 3

4 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About the Database Doctor view 134 Getting started 136 Discovery Services 143 About the Discovery Services view 143 Getting started 144 Detecting duplicate inventory records 148 Microsoft SQL Server edition discovery 149 Executive Report Pack 151 About the Executive Report Pack view 151 Getting started 152 Running, creating, and scheduling reports 154 Organizing report data by hierarchy 160 Customizing report data with include/exclude lists 163 Sorting data within reports 164 Rapid Deployment 168 About the Rapid Deployment view 168 Getting started 168 4

5 USER'S GUIDE LANDESK Data Analytics overview Use LANDESK Management Suite's Data Analytics tools to significantly increase your IT assetmanagement capabilities, whether you re involved in procurement, auditing, or inventory. When you install the Data Analytics software, a parent item called Data Analytics appears in the Management Suite console's Tools menu and Toolbox that you can use to access these tools: Asset Control: Boosts your ability to discover and manage assets. A primary element of endpoint device management is the ability to identify those devices within your infrastructure. Discovery is no longer just about hardware; software discovery and inventory are just as important. Console Extender: Adds data-related tasks to the Management Suite console through rightclick menus. Data Translation Services: Enables you to use a powerful data-mining engine to scan your organization's devices for the inventory data you most care about data relating to software licensing, warranties, and so on. Database Doctor: Helps you avoid data corruption and normalize data to reduce multiple product names and instances of data. Discovery Services: Adds discovery services for devices without a LANDESK agent that you may not have managed in the past, such as printers and other SNMP devices on your network. While you may not need to manage some of these devices directly, it s important to understand and have control over your organization's IT assets. Executive Report Pack: Enables you to expand, organize, and publish LANDESK reports to personnel based on their individual roles. Rapid Deployment: Ensures that the LANDESK agent is always available on all devices. This help provides detailed conceptual and procedural information about configuring and using the Data Analytics tools. You can navigate the help topics in the LANDESK Help Center or perform a search using a specific key word or phrase to find the information you want. Data Analytics features and benefits As an IT professional, you want to reduce risk by knowing about each hardware and software asset in your network environment. Manual processes increase IT cost, which is a burden against your budget. The primary challenge is having a full view of assets, from PoP to retirement. Implementing yet another console increases deployment time, as well as the cost of controlling your IT assets. Data Analytics solves these problems by tracking assets from the time they're purchased to when they're retired. With Data Analytics, you can easily monitor the purchase history, warranty information, and usage data of both software and hardware. You can use run-time configurations to patch and upgrade software seamlessly without losing your inventory information. Data Analytics captures PoP information and provides an end-to-end product lifecycle picture that establishes end-of-life and when to purchase new IT assets. 5

6 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS NOTE: Data Analytics provides aggregated vendor data Aggregated vendor data (via the Cloud) includes: HP, CDW, Insight, Apple, En Pointe, Dell, IBM, and many others. Key results Automated data collection EULA/software license normalization Third-party device inventory data Executive reports Purchase management Purchase history Barcode scanner integration Automatic asset enrollment License renewal Asset retirement Warranty expirations Software- and hardware-usage monitoring Hardware and software discovery Asset mapping Printer monitoring (toner level and pages printed) Asset reporting Data normalization Custom data collection Customizable reports Configurable run-times Efficient acquisition Adherence to corporate policies or budgets Business-to-business connectors (business alignment and automation) Order-to-inventory visibility Reduced risk of renegade purchasing and unauthorized buyers the purchase event is part of the asset process Unnecessary or duplicate acquisitions eliminated Automated tracking of purchases at the point of purchase 6

7 USER'S GUIDE Automated asset management Use Data Analytics to manage your assets in the following ways. Asset mapping Automatically map your discovered devices to their location, which improves device supportability and visibility. Inventory is not just a LANDESK feature it s at the heart of everything in IT. Normalized data As software has evolved, manufacturers have used various names for their company and products. For example, Microsoft software has been delivered under names such as Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Labs, Microsoft Inc., and so on. In addition, many of Microsoft s brands have names such as Visio Corporation, which makes it difficult to discover software accurately at the endpoints. Data normalization, combined with a rules-based engine, allows you to inventory similar names into one system group. Now, various software products from Microsoft can be inventoried against one name, Microsoft. Normalized data greatly simplifies how you manage software assets and helps you identify the assets being used on your hardware endpoints and by end users. Rules-based licensing Most organizations lack visibility into the software within their infrastructure. Using rules-based licensing enables better visibility and control, reducing security and liability risks and improving employee productivity. Software-usage monitoring One of the benefits of software-usage monitoring is that you don t need to count every package simply because it s there. For example, if Microsoft Office Professional 2010 is installed on a device, as well as Access 2007 and Outlook 2007, your license only needs to cover Office Professional 2010 information that Data Analytics can provide automatically. Effective asset retirement You can use Data Analytics to plan for a successful future by tracking assets in the following ways: You can increase productivity and reduce costs by knowing ahead of time about warranty expiration and license renewal. Having a clearer picture of the assets you have and the assets your organization needs ensures that your users have the right tools to be productive. You purchase only what you need and reduce expensive over-buying scenarios. Organizations without tools such as Data Analytics find that they overspend on software and hardware because they don t know what they have. These same organizations overspend on software licenses to ensure compliance. 7

8 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS When you're in the planning phase, use Data Analytics to know what you have and what you need before entering into negotiations with your vendors. 8

9 USER'S GUIDE Asset Control Asset Control is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that enables you to store and view detailed inventory records for devices lacking the LANDESK agent. For Unmanaged Device Discovery (UDD) devices (such as printers, switches, routers, and so on), only a minimal amount of data is stored in the Management Suite network view. By using Data Analytics' Discovery Services to add these devices to the Asset Control database, you have the ability to view a more detailed inventory record. The Asset Control database is also an ideal place to archive the inventory records of older LANDESKagent-enabled devices that you don't want included in Management Suite license calculations. The records are maintained as is, without using a license. To archive device records in Asset Control, you need to use the Data Translation Services "Archive asset wizard" (31). NOTE: If you want to move a device record back into the inventory database after archiving it in Asset Control, you must rescan the device with the Management Suite inventory scanner. About the Asset Control view When you open Asset Control, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a tree structure that lists various folders, displaying device data much like the network view. About the tree-list folders In the tree list, the expanded Database folder contains these folders: 9

10 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Assets: Expand this folder to view a series of sub-folders containing all devices that you've added to the Asset Control database. A device may appear in any number of sub-folders, depending on its type, status, and so on. Click a device to view its inventory. Column Sets: Expand this folder to show the column sets defined for viewing device inventory in the Asset Control view. Queries: Expand this folder to show the queries defined for searching for specific devices within the Asset Control database. About the toolbar icons Refresh: Refreshes the tree-list display. Properties: Enables you to view the inventory of a selected device in the tree list. You can also view and edit the properties for a selected column set or query in the tree list. Delete: Deletes a column set or query from the Asset Control database. Export Device: Exports (as an.xml file) a single device's inventory data from the Asset Control database to a location you specify. When exporting, you must specify an Attribute for filename, which is a database attribute used to create the name of the.xml file. For example, if you select Device.Device Name, the exported filename will be the name of the device. You must also specify a Link attribute, which is the attribute to be used when you re-import. Normally, you'd want to use Device.Network.TCPIP address, because that's how a device is usually discovered. In the case of Verizon data, for example, the device doesn't have an IP address, so you could use Device.Device Name instead. Getting started To use Asset Control, you first need to add devices to the database so that you can see them in the Asset Control view. You can add devices to Asset Control in a couple of ways. The first and simplest is through the Data Analytics' Discovery Services. When Discovery Services is configured to scan for new agentless devices, records for these devices are created in the Asset Control database. These device records are not visible using the Management Suite network view, but do appear in Asset Control view. You can also use Data Analytics' Data Translation Services to add new devices to Asset Control. For example, you can configure a barcode web-form rule that creates records for new devices. These web forms can include LANDESK database attributes or new attributes you specify that will become part of the device record. Asset Control is also integrated with the other features of Data Translation Services. For example, if you have HP printers with warranties visible on the HP cloud-services website, use Data Translation Services to import that data into the Asset Control database. 10

11 USER'S GUIDE Viewing inventory data As you add devices to the Asset Control database, they're organized under the All Assets folder in any number of applicable sub-folders. You can browse these sub-folders and use the right-click menus off of any device for a variety of actions. You can also define column sets and queries to customize how you view device data in the Asset Control view, similar to how you view data in the Management Suite network view. About the right-click menus View inventory: Opens the full inventory record of a device. Export device: Exports (as an.xml file) a single device's inventory data from the Asset Control database to a location you specify. When exporting, you must specify an Attribute for filename, which is a database attribute used to create the name of the.xml file. For example, if you select Device.Device Name, the exported filename will be the name of the device. You must also specify a Link attribute, which is the attribute to be used when you re-import. Normally, you'd want to use Device.Network.TCPIP address, because that's how a device is usually discovered. In the case of Verizon data, for example, the device doesn't have an IP address, so you could use Device.Device Name instead. Delete: Deletes the device record from the Asset Control database. Custom menu options: If you created new right-click menu options in the Console Extender, these will appear under Delete. Column sets You can edit the columns that appear when viewing devices or query results in the Asset Control view. Once you've created a column set, you can export it at any time as an.xml file by right-clicking it and following the prompts. Create a column set 1. Expand Database > Column Sets. 2. Right-click All Column Sets and select Add Column Set. 3. Give the column set a name. 4. From the Attributes list, select the new attribute (column to display) and click the Add button. The attribute will appear in the list below that shows other columns in the set. If you want to rearrange the display order of the columns, click an attribute and move it up or down the list using the arrow buttons. 5. Click the OK button to save your changes. 11

12 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 6. Right-click the column set and select Set Current to change the default column set for all devices that appear in the Asset Control view. Edit a column set 1. Expand Database > Column Sets > All Column Sets. 2. Right-click a column set in the list, and select Properties. 3. Edit the column set properties and click the OK button to save the changes. Queries Queries are useful in Asset Control to search for devices matching a set of criteria. You can create a new query or import an existing LANDESK query to search for devices. When importing a query, you can either use it as is, or you can import and then edit it. Once you've created a query, it will appear in the All Queries folder. To see the results of a query, right-click the query and select Run. You can export the query at any time as an.xml file by rightclicking it and following the prompts. Create a new query 1. Expand Database > Queries. Right-click All Queries and select New Query. 2. Give the query a name. 3. In the All Attributes list, select an attribute for the basis of your query. 4. Select an Operator. 5. To select an existing value, click Show values, then select a value. You can also enter a new value in the Value box. 6. Click the Insert button. 7. Add as many additional elements to the query as you want. You can select And or Or logical operators, edit your entries, and group elements together. 8. Click the Save button. Import a query 1. Expand Database > Queries. Right-click All Queries and click Import. 2. Browse for the query you want to import and click the OK button. Import and edit a query 1. Expand Database > Queries. Right-click All Queries and click New Query. 2. Give the query a name. 3. Click the Import LANDesk query button (lower right area). 4. Use the drop-down box to select a query and click the OK button. 5. Edit the query elements. When done, click the Save button. Use a query filter 12

13 USER'S GUIDE You can use a query as a filter to display only some of the available devices in the Asset Control view. Right-click a query and select Use as filter to display only the devices found based on the query. Click the magnifying glass next to Filter to remove the filter from the displayed list. Use the drop-down list to view previously used filters. Filters appear in this list based on the user who created them. Asset Control reports Asset Control reporting is handled through the Data Analytics' Executive Report Pack. Many Asset Control reports ship by default and are listed under Executive Report Pack > Reports > Asset Control. To create a new Asset Control report, open the Executive Report Pack and click the Create Report toolbar icon. During the creation process, you'll have the option of creating a report specifically for devices in the Asset Control database. 13

14 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Console Extender Console Extender is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that enables you to customize the right-click (context) menu of devices appearing in either the Management Suite network view or the Data Analytics Asset Control view. Console Extender provides a convenient way of customizing right-click menus instead of the more time-consuming method of editing a device's registry. Console Extender ships with a number of pre-built menu options that automatically appear on the right-click menus of devices in either the Asset Control view or the network view. You can edit these options as needed. About the Console Extender view When you open Console Extender view, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a tree structure that lists various folders. About the tree-list folders The tree list contains these main folders: Asset Control: Lists the right-click menu options available for devices in the Asset Control view. For a menu option that you want to disable but not delete, right-click it and select Disable. To enable the option again, toggle back to Enable. Management Suite: Lists the right-click menu options for devices in the Management Suite network view. About the toolbar icons Add Group: Creates a new group for organizing right-click menu options in the network view. The group name you specify here will appear on the right-click menu of devices. Not an option for devices in Asset Control. 14

15 USER'S GUIDE Add Command: Creates a command that will become a new right-click menu option. The name you specify here will appear on the menu. Delete: Deletes a group or command from the list. If you delete an item and want to restore it: For Asset Control items, you must rerun the database installation. For Management Suite items, you must manually access the registry of a device in inventory, then re-enter the information here. Refresh: Refreshes the tree list. Set Display Order: Enables you to use up/down arrow buttons to reorder the right-click menus for devices appearing in Asset Control. Not an option for devices in the network view. Getting started Using Console Extender is simple expand either the Asset Control or Management Suite folder, create a command, and set its parameters. The command will then appear as an option on the rightclick menu of devices found in that particular database. To edit a command, select it in the tree list. The command parameters will appear to the right. Edit them and click the Save button. Asset Control When creating a new right-click menu option for devices in Asset Control, you must specify which devices the option will be associated with. Do this by creating a query that limits the scope of the command. Create a new menu option 1. Expand the Asset Control folder. 2. On the toolbar, click the Add Command icon. 3. In the tree list, enter a name for this menu option. 4. Enter the path to the Executable file that this menu option will run. Click the ellipsis (...) button, select a file, and click Open. If the file resides in a special folder, Special Folder can help you enter the path more quickly. 5. Enter any command-line options for this executable file, along with a database attribute if needed (often Device.Device Name). For example, if you want the menu option to open Notepad and copy device names into that file, you would specify Device.Device Name here. 6. To use this option on multiple devices at once, specify a Separator, such as a comma, to separate each device in a resulting list. 7. Enter a group name for this menu option. Groups support one level of organization. 8. Select a query that specifies which devices will have this command appear in their right-click menu. 9. Click the Save button. 15

16 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS After you've created a menu option, you can see the result by going to the Asset Control view and right-clicking a device in the All Assets folder. Management Suite Any right-click menu options that you create for the network view are global, appearing for all devices in inventory. You can also organize menu options in groups. Create a new menu option 1. Expand the Management Suite folder. 2. On the toolbar, click the Add Command icon. 3. In the tree list, enter a name for this menu option. 4. Enter the path to the Executable file that this menu option will run. Click the ellipsis (...) button, select a file, and click Open. If the file resides in a special folder, Special Folder can help you enter the path more quickly. 5. Enter any command-line options for this executable file, along with a database attribute if needed (often Computer.Device Name). 6. To use this option on multiple devices at once, specify a Separator, such as a comma, to separate each device in a resulting list. 7. Click the Save button. After you've created a menu option, you can see the result by going to the Management Suite network view, selecting a device in the list, and right-clicking it. Create a menu group 1. Expand the Management Suite folder. 2. On the toolbar, click the Add Group icon. 3. In the tree list, enter a name for the group. 4. Add and organize your menu options as desired. Groups support one level of organization. 16

17 USER'S GUIDE Data Translation Services Data Translation Services (DTS) is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that scans your organization's devices for the inventory data you most care about, such as software licensing, warranties, and so on. Once the data is scanned into the inventory database, you can customize, aggregate, and organize it in reports to make informed and practical decisions about hardware and software purchases and needs. The power of DTS is found in its rules, which enable you to scan for much of the device data that's important to your IT work. DTS installs with numerous default rules that will likely address most of your IT needs, though you can configure your own rules to perform customized tasks as well. When you configure a rule and run it, you're enabling DTS to perform a task such as retrieving warranty data from a vendor website or pulling data from Active Directory. Once that information is in the inventory database, you can use it for customized reporting. In this topic: About the Data Translation Services view Getting started Configuring new rules About the Data Translation Services view When you open DTS, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a tree structure that lists various folders, most of which are used to store the different rule types. Most of the folders also have right-click menus that you can use for various tasks, such as configuring, editing, or running rules, importing/exporting rule data as.xml files, and so on. You can also use the toolbar for many of these same tasks. About the toolbar icons 17

18 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS From the toolbar, you can complete the following tasks: Refresh list: Refreshes the tree view. Edit properties: Allows you edit the properties of a rule. You can edit only the rules you create on your own. With system-generated rules, you must first copy the rule and then edit it. Delete: Deletes a rule or group folder and its contents. You can only delete rules you create on your own, not system-generated rules. Toggle active/inactive: Makes a rule active or inactive. By making a rule active, the rule automatically runs when the core server receives the scan file. You also need to ensure that the Enable Real-time Processing is on at the DTS toolbar. Schedule: Schedules a rule to run now or at a later time against the inventory database. The Schedule icon remains dimmed until you highlight a rule in the DTS tree view. Once you schedule the rule to run, a script is created in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks. The script name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify it there. Rules don't have to be active in order to schedule them. Export configurations: Exports a rule configuration to an.xml file. Import configurations: Imports a rule configuration.xml file into the inventory database. Run order: Sets the run order for your active rules. The top rule runs first, and the others follow in descending order. Use the arrow keys to change the run order. Only rules set to active appear on this list. Run order is important, because some rules are dependent on other rules for information. For example, if you're interested in obtaining warranty data for your Dell devices, you would first run a Dell Warranty rule to scan the data initially into the database, and then run the Last Warranty End Date rule to scan more specific data about that warranty. Model attributes: A tool that "models" data usually handled by a catch-all table where unknown or unmodeled data in the database is placed. You can model the unmodeled data to its own normalized table for users unfamiliar with SQL or the schema of the database. Settings: Turns on/off the Data Analytics software manager service scan that runs the licensed software rules for all vendors. This service runs nightly on the core server when network activity is low. Because the service is resource intensive and can take hours to complete, by default it's turned on at your child core servers and turned off on your rollup servers. We recommend the default, which ensures your inventory data will be current during your regularly scheduled rollup. Enable/disable real-time processing: Enables or disables active mode for rules. Active mode causes a rule to run when the core server receives the scan file. To enable active mode, rightclick a rule to set it as "active" and ensure that Enable Real-time Processing is on at the DTS toolbar. About the tree-list folders and rule types Folders are described below in the order they appear in the tree list. 18

19 USER'S GUIDE Favorites: Organizes the rules you consider favorites. Drag and drop rules into this folder. Active: Organizes rules by "active" status, which means they run nightly during the Data Analytics core processor service scan. By default, DTS ships with an active subset of rules that provides data for a number of reports. When you set a rule as active, it automatically appears in this folder as well as remaining in its original folder. All types: Contains a list of folders that represent all available rule types. System groups: Organizes rules by system type. Drag and drop rules into the appropriate system group folder, where you can run them all at once. User groups: Organizes rules by the user groups you've defined. Drag and drop rules into the appropriate user group folder, where you can run them all at once. The rest of the folders contain rule types. Most of the folders ship by default with rules already configured in their All Rules folders. 19

20 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS NOTE: You may find that the following list of folders is incomplete. The weekly LANDESK content update service will occasionally publish new folders that aren't currently in the product. Aggregate data: Creates a rule that performs counts on one-to-many database attributes. If the source attribute is a number, the rule will total the values of the attribute; for example, counting the available storage of a logical drive will return the total storage available on all computer logical drives. If the source attribute is not a number, the rule will count how many records exist and return the number in the destination attribute; for example, counting removable logical drives will total the number of those drives found on all computers. Archive asset: Creates a rule that removes active assets from the inventory database while archiving a backup copy of the records in Asset Control. You may need to do this for policy or legal reasons. B2B connector: Creates rules that retrieve data such as purchase history or software license information from external vendor websites such as CDW or Microsoft. Barcode CSV import: Creates a rule that automatically copies a.csv file from your barcode scanner or other source and drops it into a directory for import into the inventory database. Barcode web group: Creates a rule that organizes barcode web-form rules into logical or functional groups. 20

21 USER'S GUIDE Barcode web form: Creates a form for entering custom data into the inventory database using a web browser. Bulk input: Creates a spreadsheet for entering custom data "in bulk" for new and existing device inventory records. Calculate data: Creates a rule that uses VBScript to combine multiple database attributes to return a single value or do other operations. Enterprise aggregators: Creates a rule that imports data from various enterprise databases into inventory so that you can analyze it using Data Analytics. The data is pulled from the enterprise databases without making any changes to those databases. Export data: Creates a rule that exports data to SQL, ODBC, Oracle, or.csv files. Import data: Creates a rule that imports data from SQL, ODBC, Oracle, or.csv and Excel files. LDAP import: Creates a rule that enables DTS to connect to an LDAP source and import data into the inventory database. Data Analytics ships with a number of these rules by default. However, you may want to modify them to gather additional or customized data. An LDAP browser is included to help you find the information you need. LDAP export: Creates a rule that enables DTS to connect to a LDAP source and export data from the inventory database to that source. Licensed software: Creates a rule that groups software products together by shared license information, showing exactly how many licenses you need to be compliant. Map data: Creates a rule for manipulating data, such as copying a database attribute from one place to another. Data Analytics ships with a number of these rules by default. However, you may want to modify them to gather additional or customized data. Map list: Creates a rule for creating a new database attribute based on a different attribute. For example, if you have a number of subnets in your network, each one can be mapped to a particular city. You can then map each default gateway to a city. Normalize: Creates a rule for normalizing inventory data by standardizing the names for hardware, software, or vendors to make the data reportable. Software license import: Creates a rule that imports software license data from external sources (such as.csv or Excel files, ODBC, Oracle, or SQL) into the Management Suite software license management (SLM) tool. SQL command: Creates a rule that directly writes SQL to modify the inventory database. You can enter any valid SQL command or series of commands. Web import: Creates a rule for collecting data from the Internet or an intranet. You can specify a vendor website to go to and the information to gather. The most popular of these rules perform manufacturer warranty look-ups and ship by default with Data Analytics. Web custom data: Creates a rule that creates web forms you may want to use. VMWare vcenter import: Creates a rule that imports information about VMWare ESX servers and virtual devices from a vcenter database into the inventory database. 21

22 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Datacenter product: Creates a rule that modifies licensed software detected based on a vendor's advanced licensing policies. For example, running SQL Server in a virtual environment requires comparisons between the host and virtual images to determine the actual license that is most cost effective. About the right-click menus Most of the tree-view folders have right-click menus that you can use for various tasks, such as configuring or editing rules, scheduling rules to run, importing/exporting groups or rule data as.xml files, and so on. NOTE: The following items are a global list of right-click menus, and they're listed alphabetically. Not all menu items are available for all folders. Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Add licensed software to SLM: Manually runs the Data Analytics software manager service to add product license data to Management Suite s software license monitoring (SLM) console. The same service runs automatically each night. We recommend that you do not run this process manually unless necessary it s resource intensive and could take several hours to complete. Add root group: Creates a group folder, at the root of the tree view, that you can use for organizing rules. Drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Add software license lookup entry: Allows you to add a software product to the software license look-up table. The lists that are built for vendor, product, and version come from the licensed software rules. When running a license import, if you receive the message Product is not defined for row xyz, the product was not defined in the look-up table, and you must add it. Assign computer groups: Lets you use computer groups to limit the scope of a software license. These are groups that you've already defined in the database using the software license monitoring (SLM) tool. Assign LDAP groups: Lets you assign licensed software to LDAP groups, ensuring that users in those groups are counted in license compliance. By assigning LDAP groups, you have a way to track license usage accurately in a Citrix or Terminal Server VDI-licensing environment where users remotely access software and aren't using a device with the LANDESK agent installed. Copy: Creates a copy of a rule in the same group folder. You can then rename and edit the copy. Delete: Deletes a rule or group folder and its contents. You can only delete rules you create on your own, not system-generated rules. Delete licensed software data: Completely deletes software data from the inventory database for all devices. This data won't appear again in inventory until you create a new rule that enables the Data Analytics software manager service to detect it again during a scan. 22

23 USER'S GUIDE Delete software license lookup entry: Allows you delete a software product from the software license look-up table. Disable/enable group: Disables a group and its rules from running as part of the nightly Data Analytics software manager service scan. When a group is disabled, the service skips that group and doesn t run its rules. This feature is useful if the default rules for a vendor don't represent the specific license agreement your organization has with that vendor. For example, if you have a deal with Microsoft that's different from their standard license downgrade rights, you can disable the Licensed Software > All Vendors > Microsoft group and create a new group called "YourCompany Microsoft." In that group, you would configure new rules that are specific to your organization's use of Microsoft products, reflecting the true nature of your license agreement with Microsoft. Edit: Allows you edit the properties of a rule. You can edit only the rules you create on your own. With system-generated rules, you must first copy the rule and then edit it. Export: Exports a rule as an.xml file. To export multiple rule configurations, select them in the list view and click Export. Export computer groups: Exports your SLM-defined computer groups as an.xml file for use in another database's software license look-up table, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Use computer groups to limit the scope of a software license. Export group: Exports a group folder as an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. This action doesn't export the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must export the rule configuration files separately. Export LDAP groups: Exports an LDAP group as an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Export software license lookup information: Exports data from the software license look-up table, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Import computer groups: Imports your SLM-defined computer groups as an.xml file from another database's software license look-up table, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Use computer groups to limit the scope of a software license. Import group: Imports a group folder from an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder. Import LDAP groups: Imports an LDAP group from.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Import software license lookup information: Exports data from the software license look-up table, which is useful in a multi-core environment. 23

24 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Modify approved software: Enables you to choose which products are part of the corporate standard for your network environment by setting the Computer.Software.Licensed Software.Approved attribute to "Yes." This setting is useful when you want to ensure all devices are standardized and running company-approved software. New rule: Opens a wizard for creating a new rule configuration. Run now: Runs the selected rule immediately. Schedule: Schedules a rule to run as a task against the inventory database. The task will show up in the DTS Scheduled folder, and a script is created in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks. The script name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify them there. Rules don't have to be active in order to schedule them. Set active/inactive: Sets a rule as active, so that it will run when an inventory scan is received (keeping your inventory data as current as the last inventory scan). When you set a rule as active, you'll be prompted to run it against the entire inventory database to update the data for existing devices; we recommend that you do this. Once a rule is set as active, it automatically appears in the Active folder. Active mode also requires you to turn on Enable Real-time Processing at the DTS toolbar. Set group run order: Sets the run order for rule configurations in this group. The top rule runs first, and the others follow in descending order. Use the arrow keys to change the run order. Run order is important, because some rules are dependent on other rules for information. For example, if you're interested in obtaining warranty data for your Dell devices, you would first run a Dell Warranty rule to scan the data initially into the database, and then run the Last Warranty End Date rule to scan more specific data about that warranty. Set targets: Lets you specify which types of devices a rule runs against. For example, you wouldn't run a Dell warranty rule on HP devices. A target can be a device group, individual devices, queries, scopes, or any combination of these. Show all licensed software detected: Shows an up-to-date list of all scanned, licensed software. Getting started To obtain inventory data and then view it in report format, you'll use both the DTS and the Executive Report Pack (ERP) tools. Use DTS to configure and run the rules that determine the type of data that's scanned into the inventory database, and use ERP to create a variety of reports that are useful for lifecycle management, software compliance audits, and so on. Understanding rules You'll likely find that the default rules shipped with DTS (called system-generated rules) are comprehensive enough to begin creating the reports you're most interested in viewing. DTS ships with two kinds of rules: 24

25 USER'S GUIDE The licensed software rules, listed under Licensed Software > All Rules, gather information about software licensing that you'll want for reporting. By default, these rules run collectively each night during the Data Analytics software manager service scan and are turned off only if you disable a vendor group from being part of the scan. You also have the option of running these rules on demand or as a scheduled task, either by vendor group or individually. To see licensed software rules specific to a vendor, click Licensed Software > All Vendors. All other rules, not related to software licensing, gather information from various sources that could also be of value to you. You'll find these rules in the various folders of the DTS tree view, and by default, most are inactive. Only a subset of the most commonly used rules install as active. To run these rules, you can do so manually, as a scheduled task, or set them as "active." By setting a rule as active, it will appear in the Active folder and will run when an inventory scan is received. NOTE: The LANDESK content update service, which publishes Data Analytics updates on a weekly basis, regularly overwrites the existing system-generated rules. New system-generated rules, reports, column sets, and so on are also published during these updates. Running rules You can run rules three different ways: As a scheduled task: Create a script that schedules a rule to run by right-clicking the rule and selecting Schedule. The script you create will appear in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks, and the name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify them there. By manually activating: Run a rule manually by right-clicking it and selecting Run Now to run it on all devices. Or, with some rules, you can drag and drop a device, group, or query from the Management Suite console onto the rule in the DTS console view. This action opens a dialog where you can specify that the rule runs against just those devices. By setting as "active" for real-time processing: Set a rule as active so it runs when an inventory scan is received. You can turn on active mode by right-clicking a rule and selecting Set Active. Once a rule is active, it automatically appears in the Active folder. For active mode to work, you must also enable real-time processing. To do this, make sure the Enable Real-time Processing stoplight is green on the DTS toolbar. To set a rule as inactive, right-click it and select Set Inactive. DTS will automatically remove the rule from the Active folder. The rule will still exist in its original group folder. Both scheduled and manually-activated rules run directly against the inventory database. 25

26 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS When real-time processing is enabled, the LANDESK inventory service receives the scan file from a device and writes it with an.mp extension. The Data Analytics core scan processor service then picks up the scan file and runs all active rules against it. After completion, the service puts the scan file back in the LDScan folder as a.scn file and the inventory service processes it. For performance reasons, a rule will only run against a scan file if the source data for it is in the scan file. For example, most of the web warranty rules are looking for the System.Serial Number attribute. When a device first sends a scan file, it contains all the data about the device. At that point the serial number should be in the scan file and the rule will run. However, subsequent scans from the same device are normally delta scans (only changes are sent). Since the serial number does not normally change, the rule will not run. When you set a rule as active, you'll be prompted to run it against the entire inventory database to update the data for existing and new devices; we recommend that you do this. Once a rule is set as active, it automatically appears in the Active folder. For more information, see "The core scan processor service" (29) Assigning targets With most rules, you can specify which types of devices or "targets" the rule runs against. For example, you would only run a Dell warranty rule on Dell devices, not HP devices. A target can be a device group, individual devices, queries, scopes, or any combination of these. Assign a target to a rule 1. Right-click the rule and select Set Targets. 2. Drag an item from the right (Available Devices) to the left (Selected Devices). 3. Select Check database only if you want the query to check the database but not run against the scan file. This option is important if the attributes being used are not in the scan file, such as data brought in by other rules that may not have run. 4. Click OK. Viewing reports By default, Data Analytics installs with multiple reports already defined. You can view these reports by opening the Executive Report Pack tool. From an IT perspective, the most valuable reports are the ones showing software licensing compliance, though many other types of reports are also available. View license-compliance reports 1. In the Data Analytics toolbox, open Executive Report Pack. 2. In the tree view, click ERP > Software Compliance. You'll find several reports to choose from in this folder. For more information about ERP, see "Executive Report Pack" (151). 26

27 USER'S GUIDE Configuring new rules The power of DTS is found in its system-generated rules, which enable you to scan for a wide variety of device data that's important to your IT work. At some point, you may want to configure new rules. DTS has numerous wizards that lead you through the process of creating a rule. These wizards are accessible via the tree view by right-clicking any of the folders and selecting New Rule. For descriptions of the rules you can configure, see About the Data Translation Services view. The rules you will most commonly need that may not ship by default with Data Analytics involve merging records, normalizing data, and managing licensed software. The following sections describe those rule types. Merging records One key feature of DTS is the ability to use a barcode form or B2B connector to create a "stub" record for a device that doesn't yet exist on your network. For example, when you receive a computer at your loading dock, you can scan the barcode on the box, and DTS will create the stub record in the database. Then, depending on the manufacturer, DTS may pull additional information from the web about the device. After you put the device on the network with an installed LANDESK agent, this stub record is merged with the normal inventory record. Stub records are stored in the following places: For devices that can be managed, such as computers, they're stored in the inventory database. For a non-agent device, such as a printer, they're stored in Asset Control. For a software license, they're imported into Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) tool. Rules for B2B connectors and barcode forms merge stub records automatically. Below is a description of the process. B2B connector merging The various B2B connectors are designed to pull information about your devices from the web and add that information into inventory. For example, if you purchase devices from CDW, you can create a B2B connector rule for CDW that can pull purchase information such as the price, P.O. number, and so on. B2B connectors can also create new stub records to show devices you have ordered but have not yet installed with the LANDESK agent. When a B2B connector rule creates a record, it assigns the Computer.Scan Type as Vendor Import. It also assigns the serial number (or other numbers for certain vendors) to the Computer.Barcode field. A service then runs on the core server looking for all records of Computer.Scan Type Vendor Import. It checks the Computer.Barcode against all other devices to see if a device with a different scan type exists. 27

28 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS An important point is that by default, the LANDESK agent does not report a Computer.Barcode value. When DTS is installed, a system-generated rule is also installed that can populate this field. If you plan on merging records, it's best practice to run this rule manually (located in Calculate Data > All Rules > Computer.Barcode). After comparing the barcodes for a match, the service copies only the stub record data that doesn't already exist into the inventory database. The stub record is then deleted. For more information, see "B2B connectors overview" (33) Barcode merging Barcode merging is similar to B2B merging. The main differences are that the Computer.Scan Type is set to Barcode, and it's not necessarily the Computer.Barcode field that's used to merge. Each barcode form has a link field. When a barcode rule creates a device record, the Computer.Barcode Configuration attribute is populated with the name of the rule that added it. When the service performs its merge check, it looks for all devices with a Computer.Scan Type of Barcode. It then looks up the Computer.Barcode Configuration value for the device. The service reads the barcode form for the link attribute and searches the database for any non-barcode devices with the same link attribute value. If one is found, the records are merged in the same manner as for B2B connector devices. For more information, see "Barcode web-form wizard" (50). Normalizing data For a variety of reasons, much of the data in your inventory database is not in report-ready format. Many vendors have few standards for naming their hardware, software, or company, making it difficult to create a clean report that shows all of the vendors and product versions you have installed. The inventory database can only report back what a device reports to it. A hardware vendor may report that its name is just "Vendor" on one device, Vendor Inc. on another device, and Vendor Incorporated on a third. By normalizing the data, you can make it more easily reportable. For more information, see "Normalize wizard" (105) Managing licensed software One of the most expensive aspects of an IT environment is the software. Using DTS to determine an accurate number of licenses your software products require can result in huge cost savings. DTS uses a EULA-based method for determining which software products actually need licenses in your environment. For example, Microsoft may allow a license for Office 2010 Professional to also cover a copy of Office Professional 2007, but not a copy of Office Standard Regardless of how many of these covered copies of software exist on a device, you need only one license to be compliant. This is known as effective licensing the number of licenses you need versus what you may have installed. DTS uses a flexible, query-based engine to determine effective licensing. For more information, see "Licensed-software rules overview" (84) 28

29 USER'S GUIDE The core scan processor service All of the Data Translation Services rules that are set to active are executed by the Data Analytics core scan processor service. The core scan processor service actually does the processing of the scan files. In order to process the scan files, they are moved to different directories: 1. The LANDESK inventory service receives the scan file and puts it in the ManagementSuite\ldscan directory with an extension of.mp. 2. The Data Analytics core scan processor service moves the scan file from the ManagementSuite\ldscan directory to the ManagementSuite\MP_TEMP directory and changes the extension to.scn. 3. All active rules are applied to the scan file. 4. The core scan processor service moves the scan file from the ManagementSuite\MP_TEMP directory to the ManagementSuite\ldscan directory. 5. The LANDESK inventory service processes the scan file into the inventory database. The core scan processor service processes multiple scan files simultaneously, by default, 10 at a time. You can increase or decrease this number with a registry value. Increasing the value can increase performance if Data Analytics rules spend a lot of time waiting for other resources, such as LDAP queries or other computers. Change the number of scans processed simultaneously 1. Set the following registry value: HKLM\Software\Managed Planet\Core\ThreadCount NOTE: This value is a DWORD. Set it to the number of simultaneous scan files to be processed. Rule names and database selections You can use Data Translation Services (DTS) to configure rules that do various tasks. Each rule has a specific wizard that leads you through the configuration process. When configuring rules in DTS, the first page of each wizard requires you to provide a name and description for the rule. Each rule must have a unique name; no other rule of any type can have the same name. The description you enter will be visible only in the DTS console. 29

30 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The second page of most wizards requires you to select the database where the rule will store the data it gathers. Depending on what you have installed, the database options are Management Suite, Asset Manager, Asset Control, or Asset Lifecycle Manager. Aggregate data wizard You can use this rule as a simple way to perform counts on one-to-many database attributes, which are attributes with more than one entry. For example, if you look under Computer.Software.Package in inventory, you'll see many entries under that class, because a software product can have many files. One-to-many attributes are useful for storing many instances of one type of data, such as files. 30

31 USER'S GUIDE Source: The one-to-many database attribute to aggregate. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. If the source attribute is a number, the rule will total the values and return the number in the destination attribute. For example, counting the available storage of a logical drive will return the total storage available on all computer logical drives. If the source attribute is not a number, the rule will count how many records exist and return that number in the destination attribute. For example, counting removable logical drives will total the number of those drives found on all computers. Description: The database attribute where the rule will return the aggregated result. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Aggregate Data > All Rules folder. Archive asset wizard Use this wizard to create a rule that automates an archiving process for your Management-Suitemanaged devices. For policy or legal reasons, you may need to remove devices from the inventory database but still keep a backup copy of those records in an archive. The Asset Control database is a location where you can archive records after removing them from the active management area. When a device record is moved out of inventory and into Asset Control, the device no longer consumes a Management Suite client license. NOTE: If you want to move a device record back into the inventory database after archiving it in Asset 31

32 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Control, you must rescan the device with the Management Suite inventory scanner. You can also use this wizard to create a rule that stores copies in Asset Control of device records that continue to exist in the inventory database. The device records in Asset Control will only be as up-todate as the last time you ran the rule. Use the Link attributes list to link the device to an inventory record in the Asset Control database. Computer.Device ID is the attribute used to determine uniqueness in inventory and is entered by default. Because IDs can change if devices are re-imaged, the Computer.System.Serial Number is also a good link attribute to use. Click the Add button to open the attribute browser and add more link attributes to the list. Delete from Management Suite: Removes device records from the inventory database after archiving them. The device no longer uses a Management Suite client license. To import a deleted device back into inventory, you must rescan the device. Only copy devices that do not exist in Asset Control: Copies device records only if they don't currently exist in the Asset Control database, which is useful for keeping copies of records that don't need up-to-date information. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Archive Asset > All Rules folder. 32

33 USER'S GUIDE B2B connectors overview You may have purchased products or services for your organization from manufacturers that DTS refers to as "B2B connectors." B2B connectors are manufacturers whose websites store data records of customer purchase history, software license information, and so on that you may find valuable for reporting and auditing purposes. By configuring B2B connector rules, you have the option of importing this information into the inventory database. The types of data you can retrieve will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. For example, a rule for Adobe can import their most current software license data, helping you maintain up-to-date records within Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) console. A rule for CDW can import information about devices purchased from CDW, such as purchase price, P.O. number, and so on. NOTE: The B2B connector rules rely on vendor websites to import data. On occasion, a vendor may change their website, preventing the rule from working correctly. If this occurs, contact LANDESK Software to ensure that the rule functionality is updated via a content patch. You may also find that a vendor has added a Captcha key, which prevents a B2B connector rule from accessing the vendor's website. In this case, contact the vendor directly. When configuring B2B connector rules, you'll notice there are two types file based and web based. Both types import manufacturer-supplied records, each in different ways: File based: You log into the manufacturer website directly, create a report file from available data records (or request one from the manufacturer), and store the file in a directory location. When you run the rule, DTS imports the.csv,.xls, or.xlsx file. You'll want to update this report file periodically when new manufacturer records become available. Manufacturers that require you to create a report include Softchoice and Softmart. Web based: DTS dynamically pulls data records from the manufacturer's website and imports them each time you run the rule. All manufacturers listed under the B2B connector folder are web based except for Softchoice and Softmart. When you expand the B2B Connector folder, you'll see that DTS has an extensive list of manufacturers that you can set up as B2B connectors. To open the wizard for a manufacturer, right-click the manufacturer name and select New Rule. Each manufacturer has slightly different requirements for configuring B2B connector rules. For more information, see "B2B connector wizards" (34). About the Universal B2B import rule You may also have a manufacturer-supplied report file that you want to import into the inventory database. In that case, use the universal B2B import rule to import the file data. 33

34 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS A list of manufacturers whose.csv,.xls, or.xlsx files DTS can currently import is accessible via the Universal B2B import folder's Edit Manufacturers right-click menu. If a manufacturer is not in this list, you must contact LANDESK Software with a request to add it. For more information about this rule, see "B2B connector wizards" (34). Merging records One key feature of DTS is the ability to use a B2B connector to create a "stub" record for a device that doesn't yet exist on your network. For example, when you receive a computer at your loading dock, you can scan the barcode on the box, and DTS will create the stub record. Then, depending on the manufacturer, DTS may pull additional information from the web about the device. After you put the device on the network with an installed LANDESK agent, this stub record is merged with the normal inventory record. Stub records are stored in the following places: For devices that can be managed (such as computers), records are stored in the inventory database. For a non-agent device (such as a printer), records are stored in Asset Control. For a software license, records are imported into Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) console. When a B2B connector rule creates a stub record, it assigns the Computer.Scan Type as Vendor Import. It also assigns the serial number (or similar identifying number) to the Computer.Barcode field. A service then runs on the core server looking for all records of Computer.Scan Type Vendor Import. It checks the Computer.Barcode against all other devices to see if a device with a different scan type exists. NOTE: By default, the LANDESK agent does not report a Computer.Barcode value. You must use a systemgenerated rule that's installed with DTS to populate this field. If you plan on merging records, we recommend manually running this rule (located in Calculate Data > All Rules > Computer.Barcode). After comparing the barcodes for a match, the service will copy only the stub record data that doesn't already exist as part of the inventory record and then delete the stub record. B2B connector wizards Each manufacturer, or B2B connector, has slightly different requirements for configuring rules to retrieve data from their websites. For more information about B2B connectors, see "B2B connectors overview" (33) In many cases, you may have report files supplied by manufacturers not appearing in the B2B connectors list. For any of these.csv,.xls, or.xlsx files that you want to import, use the "Universal B2B import wizard" (41). 34

35 USER'S GUIDE NOTE: The B2B connector rules rely on vendor websites to import data. On occasion, a vendor may change their website, preventing the rule from working correctly. If this occurs, contact LANDESK Software to ensure that the rule functionality is updated via a content patch. You may also find that a vendor has added a Captcha key, which prevents a B2B connector rule from accessing the vendor's website. In this case, contact the vendor directly. Expand the B2B connector name below for more information about using the wizard: Adobe Software Import An Adobe B2B connector rule functions just like a software-license import rule. You may need to update the software license look-up table if the rule is importing software data that's not recognized. For more information, see "Licensed-software rules overview" (84) User: The username assigned by Adobe. Password: The password assigned by Adobe. Start date: The date to start collecting data from Adobe. All data from the Adobe volume licensing site will be imported from this date on. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Adobe Software Import > All Rules folder. CDW Import To pull information from the CDW website, it's first necessary to create a report for the data you want. Create the report by going to the CDW website and following the steps below. Because you'll be scheduling this report to run periodically, make sure you select an appropriate time period for the data you want to import. For example, you may want to schedule the report to import data once a week, so you would select Month To Date. You may also want to do one initial pull of historical data to populate the items already in your database. To create a CDW report 1. Go to 2. Log in using your credentials. 3. From the menu, select Order Center > Order History. 4. Select Create New Report and select the fields you want to include in Management Suite. 5. Select a Time Period for the report. 6. Click Save Report. Once you've created the report, you can configure a rule to pull the data into the database. 35

36 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Report URL: The URL for the report you just created on the CDW website. Go to that report, run it, and copy the URL into the Report URL text box. This link will be a very long; make sure you copy the entire URL. User: The username assigned by CDW. Password: The password assigned by CDW. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. You can now manually run the rule to pull CDW data into the database. To import new items that you order from CDW, schedule this rule to run in accordance with the time period you selected for the report. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > CDW Import > All Rules folder. Dell Warranty Import 36

37 USER'S GUIDE Warranty data: An option that imports all warranty data, such as start date, end date, description, and so on. Manufacturer parts: An option that imports the parts information (such as hard drive, memory, and so on) that Dell shipped with the ordered device. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Key attribute: The database attribute to send to Dell when this rule looks up the device in inventory. This attribute should be the one that holds the Dell Service Tag. Use proxy: If your server needs to use a proxy to access the Dell website, select this option and fill in the appropriate fields. 37

38 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Dell Warranty Import > All Rules folder. En Pointe Import User: The username assigned by En Pointe. Password: The password assigned by En Pointe. Days to save: The number of days back for which to retrieve data. You can set up one rule that retrieves all historical data and another rule that is scheduled to run once a month to retrieve that month s information. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > En Pointe Import > All Rules folder. eplus Import User: The username assigned by eplus. Password: The password assigned by eplus. Months to save: The number of months back for which to retrieve data. You can set up one rule that retrieves all historical data and another rule that is scheduled to run once a month to retrieve that month s information. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > eplus Import > All Rules folder. Microsoft Volume License Import 38

39 USER'S GUIDE User: The username assigned by Microsoft. Password: The password assigned by Microsoft. Totals only: The total number of licenses that are part of your Microsoft contract. By individual licensing ID: Contract numbers assigned by Microsoft. Enter each licensing ID on its own line. Ignore unresolved: A column in the Microsoft report titled "Unresolved," which typically refers to upgrades or items purchased that are not part of your original contract. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Microsoft Volume License Import > All Rules folder. PDS Import User: The username assigned by PDS. 39

40 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Password: The password assigned by PDS. Months: The number of months back for which to retrieve data. You can set up one rule that retrieves all historical data and another rule that is scheduled to run once a month to retrieve that month s information. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > PDS Import > All Rules folder. Softchoice Import Directory: The directory location where you'll store the.xlsx-formatted report file obtained from the Softchoice website. When this rule runs, the file will import into the inventory database. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Softchoice Import > All Rules folder. Softmart Import Directory: The directory location where you'll store the.xls-formatted report file obtained from the Softmart website. When this rule runs, the file will import into the inventory database. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Softmart Import > All Rules folder. SoftwareONE Import User: The username assigned by SoftwareONE. Password: The password assigned by SoftwareONE. Start date: The date to start collecting data from SoftwareONE. All data from the SoftwareONE volume licensing site will be imported from this date on. End date: The date to stop collecting data from SoftwareONE. Use current date as end date: Select if you want to collect data from the start date on, without cessation. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > SoftwareONE Import> All Rules folder. Verizon Import NOTE: In order to navigate Verizon's website, this rule requires that Adobe Flash be installed on the core 40

41 USER'S GUIDE server. User: The username assigned by Verizon. Password: The password assigned by Verizon. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Gather summary data: Retrieves summary-usage data for your account by taking the monthly summary-usage report from Verizon and importing as far as back as possible, typically 12 months. Gather upgrade data: Pulls upgrade information for each device, such as device type and cost. This option works only on selected devices that you drag and drop onto the rule. Gather current usage data: Retrieves usage data for the current month that hasn't been billed yet. This option works only on selected devices that you drag and drop onto the rule. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Verizon Import > All Rules folder. VMWare B2B Import User: The username assigned by VMWare. Password: The password assigned by VMWare. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > VMWare B2B Import > All Rules folder. Universal B2B import wizard Use this wizard to create a rule that imports report-file data from manufacturers not appearing in the B2B connectors list. Files must have a.csv,.xls, or.xlsx extension to be imported into the inventory database. You can accomplish tasks related to the universal B2B import rule by using the various right-click menus. About the right-click menus In the DTS tree view, right-click the Universal B2B Import folder to access these menus: Edit classes: A list of classes, or categories, DTS can currently import from a manufacturer-supplied report file into one of three places, as listed in the Import type column: Asset Control refers to classes (non-managed devices such as printers, monitors) imported into the Asset Control database. 41

42 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Computer refers to classes (such as computers, laptops) imported into the inventory database. Software refers to classes (software product licenses) imported into SLM. The classes list is used mainly for reference. You can add a new class to the list, but it will be outside the import process until you contact LANDESK Software with a content request to add it. (Classes with this status are listed as "No" in the System column.) Edit manufacturers: A list of manufacturers whose report files DTS can currently import into inventory; used mainly for reference. You can add a new manufacturer to the list, but it will be outside the import process until you contact LANDESK Software with a content request to add it. (Manufacturers with this status are listed as "No" in the System column.) Import part numbers: Enables you to import manufacturers, classes, or part numbers from an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Export part numbers: Enables you to export manufacturers, classes, or part numbers to an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. NOTE: When you first create a universal B2B import rule, you'll see a dialog that asks if you want to upload your anonymous data (manufacturer SKUs, part numbers, and so on) to a LANDESK web service. Click Yes to ensure that the universal B2B import will function efficiently. Unknown items will be uploaded to the web service and processed. If you run the rule again, any items that have been mapped will then be downloaded. If you click No, you will need to do this exception handling yourself. About this page Use this page to select what you want to import using this rule. Import computers: Select to import computer data (such as part numbers, serial numbers, and so on) into the inventory database. Groups: A DTS group that will run after the rule has imported the computer data; useful for post-processing actions. For example, if you import a number of Dell systems, you may also want to get the warranty information. You can set a rule group to run that will retrieve the Dell warranty information after this rule completes. Only run group if device is created: If a new computer record isn't created when this rule is run, the selected DTS group will not run. Import other devices: Select to import data about devices (such as printers, routers, and so on) into the Asset Control database. This data could include part numbers, serial numbers, and so on. Groups: A DTS group that will run after the rule has imported the device data, which is useful for post-processing actions. Only run group if device is created: If a new device record isn't created when this rule is run, the selected DTS group will not run. 42

43 USER'S GUIDE Import software: Select to import software license data into the Management Suite software license monitoring (SLM) console. About the data-source page Use this page to select a data source containing the data you want to import. CSV Excel Filename: The full path of the file to import. If you're importing all files in a directory, enter the name of just one file that can be used to show columns. Headers in the first row: If column headers (names) are in the first row, select this check box. Load all files in directory: Processes all files with a.csv extension. All files must have the same format and columns for this option to work correctly. Delimiter: The column delimiter used in the.csv file, such as a comma or tab. By default, the delimiter is a comma. Use column numbers instead of names: Select this option if the names of the columns may change, but the data in them stays the same. This is useful if the file headers become localized. Character set: The format of the file's character set. U.S. English normally uses the default, which is ANSI. However, other languages need to use a different set to support their own characters. 43

44 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Filename: The full path of the file to import. If you're importing all files in a directory, enter the name of just one file that can be used to show columns. Sheet: The name of a single sheet in the Excel file to read data from. Each rule will read from only one sheet. Leave this option blank to read data from the entire Excel file. Load all files in directory: Processes all files with an.xls or.xlsx extension. All files must have the same format and columns for this option to work correctly. About this page Use this page to match the columns in your file to the various identifiers used to import data for computers, devices, or software product licenses. Part number/sku: A required field; the manufacturer part number or SKU of the computer, device, or software product. Browse file button: Opens the.csv or Excel file to help you match columns to identifiers. Manufacturer: A required field; the name of the computer, device, or software product manufacturer. Class: The class of computer, device, or software product (such as mouse, monitor, server, and so on) that is used if the SKU is unknown. Description: A description for the computer, device, or software product, only used for help with exception handling. Serial number: A required field if you selected to import computer or device data. Without the serial number, it's impossible to import this data. Multiple serial numbers in cell: If the computer or device has more than one serial number, select this option. The default separator between values is a comma. Other columns with multiple values per cell: Click the Add button to open a dialog where you can select the other column(s) in the file that have multiple values per cell. 44

45 USER'S GUIDE About this page If you selected to import computer or device data, use this page to map each file column you want to import to a hardware-specific database attribute. Select a column and click the Edit button to complete the mapping. At least one column must be set as the key, which is used to determine hardware product uniqueness. By default, the serial number column is set as the key. You can change the key column, but it must always have an attribute mapping. 45

46 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page If you selected to import software license data, use this page to map each file column you want to import to a software-license-specific database attribute. Select a column and click the Edit button to complete the mapping. At least one column must be set as a product key to determine the software product that the license data maps to. If multiple columns are selected, the columns are concatenated with spaces between them. By default, the part number/sku column is always set as the product key. Each column designated as a product key must also be mapped to an attribute. You also need to set at least one column as the import key to determine software product uniqueness (for example, the purchase order number). Each column designated as an import key must also be mapped to an attribute. Click the Set Description button to select a column for the software product description, which is used for exception handling only. Finally, you must import the column for license quantity by mapping that column to the Software License.Quantity attribute. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the B2B Connector > Universal B2B Import > All Rules folder. 46

47 USER'S GUIDE Barcode CSV import wizard You can use this wizard to create a rule that automatically copies a.csv file from a barcode scanner or other source, drops it into a specified directory, and then imports the data into the inventory database. Barcode CSV import rules are essentially the same as import data rules. The main difference is that a service is monitoring the directory specified in the rule. If a.csv file is dropped into that directory, the service will process the file by importing the data into the inventory database and then removing it from the directory. About this page File: The full path of the.csv file to import. If you're importing all files in a directory, enter the name of just one file that can be used to show columns. Import all files in this directory: Processes all.csv files in this directory. All files must have the same format and columns for this option to work correctly. Headers in the first row: If column headers (names) are in the first row, select this check box. Delimiter: The column delimiter used in the.csv file, such as a comma or tab. By default, the delimiter is a comma. If device does not exist, create a new one: If a device record doesn't already exist for the imported data, a new one will be created. 47

48 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page This page shows the mappings between columns in the.csv file(s) and database attributes. Click the Edit button to create the mappings. The following columns are shown in this list: Column: A column in the.csv file. Type: The attribute data type, such as STRING, DATE, and so on. Key: The key attribute used to determine uniqueness. At least one attribute must be set as the key. Click the Set as key button to give an attribute this status. Attribute: The database attribute that's mapped to a column in the.csv file. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Barcode CSV Import > All Rules folder. 48

49 USER'S GUIDE About this page From this page, you can create the mappings between columns in the.csv file and the database attributes. Column: The name of the column in the.csv file to map to. Instead of column import value: You can import a number of columns in the file, but then set one attribute to a constant value. By selecting this option, you can enter a static value and ignore the column in the file. Data type: The data type of the file column (STRING, DATE, and so on). VBScript: You can use VBScript to modify the incoming data (optional). Click the Test button to verify that the VBScript works. LANDesk attribute: The attribute in the inventory database to map to. 49

50 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Barcode web-form wizard Use this wizard to create barcode web forms, which help you enter custom data into the inventory database using a web browser. Web forms are especially useful for tracking the status of a device throughout its lifecycle. You can begin a device's life in inventory by entering its barcode into a web form as soon as it arrives at your dock. When it's time to retire a device, you can create forms that move records out of inventory and into Asset Control for archiving. Along the way, you'll have the inventory records needed for reporting and auditing purposes. More about web forms and web groups Web forms are made up of two parts the web form itself and a web group that the form or forms are assigned to. Web form: Use this wizard to create the web forms. Design each form for a specific purpose, such as adding a new Dell system to inventory. On the form, set up one or more fields for entering the device barcode and other identifying information. If you have other system types to add, such as IBM and Acer, you need to create a web form for each of these as well (by either reusing the Dell form or creating a new one based on other inventory requirements). 50

51 USER'S GUIDE Web group: Use the barcode web-group wizard to create a web group specifically for these forms. (Continuing with the above example, you would name the group "Add New System.") A web group is simply a group that is assigned one or more web forms. You can assign the same forms to multiple groups, reusing them as necessary. You can launch a web group by opening the Barcode Web Group > All Rules folder, rightclicking a web-group rule, and selecting Run now. You can then copy the group's URL and use it to access the group form from another device's web browser. From that browser, you can enter information into the form fields about the device you want to inventory, then click the Save button. The web-group rule will run and import the new data into the inventory database. NOTE: You also have the option of using a barcode scanner to obtain the same type of information, which you can then import into inventory using the barcode CSV-import wizard. For more information, see "Barcode CSV import wizard" (47). About this page Use this page to enter a name and description for the web form. Name: Name the web form you're creating. This is the name that will appear on the web page. Description: Provide a description of the web form. Create new device if not exist: A new device record will be created in the inventory database if the key attribute (such as a barcode or serial number) doesn't already exist in the database. About this page 51

52 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Use this page to add the information (database attributes) that will appear on the web form. You can reorder attributes in the list using the arrow buttons. The order that the attributes appear here will be the order they appear on the web form. When you're finished adding all attributes that will appear on the form, click the Finish button. Your new barcode web-form rule will appear in the Barcode Web Form > All Rules folder. To complete the process, you can use the barcode web-group wizard to create a web group for your forms. About this page From this page, you can customize the properties for information fields appearing on the web form. You must complete this page for each field that appears on the form. Attribute: A database attribute that the form will use as a field. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. Display name: The name of the attribute as you want it to appear on the web form. Save after input: Saves the field data after control passes to the next field on the form (by the end user pressing Enter, Tab, or clicking another location). You typically select this option for the last visible field on the form. Link to existing device: The key field that is used to look up a device record in the database. Ordinarily, this is the first field on the form. If a record is found, the form populates with the values for that device. 52

53 USER'S GUIDE Description: The attribute description that will appear on the web form. This option is useful if you need to give more details about an attribute, such as where to find an asset tag or how to enter a model number correctly. Type: The attribute's data type, which is validated as the end user changes fields. Default value: A default value that should appear in the field if no value is present in the database. For example, when creating a form for "Add IBM System," you could make the default value for the Computer.Manufacturer attribute "IBM." When adding a default value, you would also want to select the Static value check box so that end users can't edit the field. Default to current date and time: If the attribute is a DATETIME data type, a time stamp is created indicating when the form was saved. This is useful for when you want to store the time the save occurred, without the field appearing on the form. (In this case, you'd also select the Don't show on form check box). Static value: A field value that the end user can't change. For example, if you add a default value, you would most likely select this option as well. Required: A value that the end user is required to enter for the form to be saved. Don t show on form: A field that should not appear on the form, which is useful for fields that have a Static value that you don t want the end user to see or change. Read only: A field value already stored in the database that the end user can't change. Keep after save: When the form is saved, this value is not cleared. Normally after a save, all values are cleared. This option is useful for an end user who is barcode scanning a lot of similar items at one time. If the values such as manufacturer and model are left up after the form is saved, that person can continue rapidly scanning all similar items instead of editing the form every time. Run a rule group: An option to run a rule group after saving this field. You would normally want to do this on the last field in the form. However, as long as the attributes that will be used in this rule group have already been saved, you can run a group on any field. Running a rule group is useful any time you want a post-processing action to occur. For example, if you add a new Dell computer to inventory, you can call a rule group that will run the warranty and manufacturer parts rules to pull down information about the computer from the web. Validation string: A regular expression that is used to check data entered by the end user. You must use proper regular-expression syntax. Click the Edit button to open a dialog where you can select a validation string to use. Use a list of values: Instead of allowing free-form entry of text, this option requires the end user to select from a drop-down list of values. Link to a table in the database: Link to a column in a database table instead of manually entering all of the values in the list (by selecting the Create a list radio button). For example, if you want to display all login names, you could specify the Computer table and the LoginName column. 53

54 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Link to another field in this form: You may have multiple web-form fields that are related and want to have different drop-down lists depending on what a user selected in another field. For example, one list may be a list of manufacturers, and the linked field may be a list of device types for those manufacturers. It's possible to use database columns in a linked field. Create a list: A list of values that will appear in a drop-down list to the end user. You must manually enter these values by clicking the Add button. Allow free text typing: Allows the end user the option of entering a new value instead of using the drop-down list. 54

55 USER'S GUIDE Barcode web-group wizard Use this wizard to create the web groups that you'll assign your web form(s) to. To create the web forms, you must use the barcode web-form wizard. More about web forms and web groups Web forms are made up of two parts the web form itself and a web group that the form or forms are assigned to. Web form: Use the barcode web-form wizard to create the web forms. Design each form for a specific purpose, such as adding a new Dell system to inventory. On the form, set up one or more fields for entering the device barcode and other identifying information. If you have other system types to add, such as IBM and Acer, you need to create a web form for each of these as well (by either reusing the Dell form or creating a new one based on other inventory requirements). Web group: Use this wizard to create a web group specifically for these forms. (Continuing with the above example, you would name the group "Add New System.") A web group is simply a group that is assigned one or more web forms. You can assign the same forms to multiple groups, reusing them as necessary. The Available rules list shows the barcode web-form rules that are available for adding to the web group. The Selected items list shows the web-form rules that are part of this group. 55

56 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS If you select just one form for a group, the resulting web page will list only the fields on that form. If you select more than one form for a group, the web page will show the name of the group and a drop-down list of other forms in the group. The order of the forms listed here is the order they will appear in the drop-down list. You can reuse forms in as many groups as needed. NOTE: The rule names seen here are the ones that appear in the Barcode Web Form > All Rules folder. The names on the form that the end user will see may be different. Click the OK button. Your new rule will appear in the Barcode Web Group > All Rules folder. To verify that the group form looks the way you want, open the Barcode Web Group > All Rules folder, right-click a rule, and select Run now to view the form as it will appear to an end user. Once you're satisfied with how the group form looks, you can copy its URL and use it to access the form from another device's web browser. From that browser, you can enter information into the form's fields about the device you want to inventory, then click the Save button. The web-group rule will run and import the new data into the inventory database. About the web-group right-click menus When you open the Barcode Web Group > All Rules folder and right-click a rule, you see these menus: Run now: Opens a browser so that you can view the group form. All forms: Opens a browser that shows a comprehensive list of available group forms. You can click on any of the listed groups to open the form associated with it. Copy URL: Copies a group form's URL for pasting into a document or browser. Bulk input wizard You can use a bulk input rule as a quick way to enter custom data for new and existing device records using a spreadsheet-like format. For example, this rule would be useful if you need to update records by adding the departments your organization's devices belong to. Instead of going into inventory for each device and adding that information, you could configure this rule to create a spreadsheet that helps you complete this task efficiently. About this page Add new machines: Enables you create new records for devices that don't already exist in the inventory database. Modify existing machines: Enables you to edit data for existing device records in the inventory database. Database attribute: The key attribute that DTS uses to look up the device record being modified. If the key attribute isn't specified, you'll receive an error message and won't be able to 56

57 USER'S GUIDE make the changes. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. About this page Use this page to select the database attributes you want to edit. In the resulting spreadsheet, if the attribute already exists in the inventory database, its value will become whatever you enter. If the attribute doesn't exist, it will be created and its value will become whatever you enter. The Attribute column shows the name of the attribute you selected as the key attribute (always first in the list and in blue) and any others you added by clicking the Add button. The Type column shows the data type of the attribute (STRING, DATE, and so on). Perform a bulk input right now: Creates the bulk-input spreadsheet as soon as you click the Next button. A spreadsheet will appear where you can enter and save your custom data. Your new rule will appear in the Bulk Input > All Rules folder. If you don't select Perform a bulk input right now, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Bulk Input > All Rules folder. 57

58 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Calculate data wizard You can use a calculate data rule to apply a VBScript to multiple database attributes in order to return a single value to a destination attribute. By default, Data Analytics ships with many of these rules, which you can copy and edit for your specific needs. 58

59 USER'S GUIDE Destination attribute: The database attribute where the rule will return the result. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. VBScript text box: A VBScript that will use database attributes to return a single value to the destination attribute. Each attribute must start and end with an exclamation point (!). To insert the attribute properly, click the Insert attribute button to open the attribute browser and select an attribute. If you're using an attribute such as a string or date, the attribute, including the exclamation points, must have double quotes (") around it. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Calculate Data > All Rules folder. Enterprise aggregators overview You can use DTS to import device data from various enterprise databases into your inventory database. Doing so enables you to apply the features of Data Analytics to the data, making it far more useful for reporting and auditing purposes. DTS imports the data without making any changes to the enterprise databases. Under the Enterprise Aggregators folder in the DTS tree view, you'll find folders for the enterprise databases from which DTS can currently import data. This list will continue to grow over time with new releases of Data Analytics. Importing data from an enterprise database is a two- or three-step process, depending on whether you have customized any of your data. For each enterprise database from which you want to import data, do the following: Configure a rule that provides a way to connect to the enterprise database. Update attribute mappings between the databases in order to move data accurately from one to the other. (This step is only necessary if you've customized data in either the enterprise or inventory database; otherwise, you can skip this process.) Run the rule to import the enterprise data into the inventory database. You can accomplish several tasks related to importing enterprise-database data by accessing the right-click menus from the individual enterprise-database folders. About the right-click menus Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Import group: Imports a group folder from an.xml file. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder. New rule: Opens a wizard for creating a new rule configuration. 59

60 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Update attribute mappings: Enables you to connect to the enterprise database and then update the attribute mappings between the inventory and enterprise databases to ensure data is moved accurately across them. It may be necessary to update the mappings if you've changed the naming conventions for attributes or stored them in different areas. By default, the most commonly used attributes in both schemas are already mapped. Once you connect to the enterprise database, a dialog will open that displays two tree views: one view lists all LANDESK attributes defined in the Management Suite schema, and the other lists all attributes defined in the enterprise database's schema. From here, you can update the attribute mappings. Import attribute mappings: Imports the attribute mappings between an enterprise database and the inventory database from an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Export attribute mappings: Exports the attribute mappings between an enterprise database and the inventory database to an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. For more information, see "Enterprise-aggregator import wizards" (60). Enterprise-aggregator import wizards You can use the enterprise-aggregator import wizard to import data from an enterprise database into inventory, where you can apply the features of Data Analytics to make the data far more useful for reporting and auditing purposes. For each enterprise database, you need to do the following: Configure a rule that provides a way to connect to the enterprise database. Update attribute mappings between the enterprise and inventory databases in order to move data accurately from one to the other. (This step is only necessary if you've customized data in either the enterprise or inventory database; otherwise, you can skip this process.) Run the rule to import the enterprise data into the inventory database. When importing data, no changes are ever made to the existing enterprise databases. For information about configuring a rule for an enterprise aggregator, select one below. AirWatch Import Enter your login information to the AirWatch site server database. Server: The SQL server instance for the site server. Enter the server name or <server>\<instance>,<port>. Database: The name of the site server database, normally SMS <site code>. Use integrated security: Select if you're accessing the SQL server using Windows integrated security. User: The SQL server username. Password: The password for the SQL server username. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Enterprise Aggregators > AirWatch Import > All Rules folder. 60

61 USER'S GUIDE If you customized any data in either the AirWatch or inventory databases, you need to update the attribute mappings between them before running the rule. Right-click AirWatch Import and select Update attribute mappings. Select settings to connect to the correct database, then click the Connect button. The dialog that appears will show a LANDesk tree view listing all attributes defined in the Management Suite schema, and a AirWatch tree view listing all attributes defined in the AirWatch schema. By default, most attributes in both schemas are already mapped. To map an attribute, select an attribute in the LANDesk tree and one in the AirWatch tree and click the Add button. This action will add the attribute to the bottom list. Click the Remove button to delete the highlighted entries from the mapping list. You may need to set more options for an attribute mapping: Set as auto-incrementing value: Use for one-to-many attributes where the key field is a number. This option sets the value of that attribute to an incrementing number. You can also use a VBScript to modify the value coming from the AirWatch database. BigFix Import Enter your login information to the BigFix site server database. SQL OBDC Server: The SQL server instance for the site server. Enter the server name or <server>\<instance>,<port>. Database: The name of the site server database, normally SMS <site code>. Use integrated security: Select if you're accessing the SQL server using Windows integrated security. User: The SQL server username. Password: The password for the SQL server username. DSN: The name of the DSN created. The name must be a System DSN for the rule to work as a scheduled task or at scan time. User: The username, if needed. Password: The password, if needed. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Enterprise Aggregators > BigFix Import > All Rules folder. If you customized any data in either the BigFix or inventory databases, you need to update the attribute mappings between them before running the rule. Right-click BigFix Import and select Update attribute mappings. Select settings to connect to the correct database, then click the Connect button. 61

62 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The dialog that appears will show a LANDesk tree view listing all attributes defined in the Management Suite schema, and a BigFix tree view listing all attributes defined in the BigFix schema. By default, most attributes in both schemas are already mapped. To map an attribute, select an attribute in the LANDesk tree and one in the BigFix tree and click the Add button. This action will add the attribute to the bottom list. Click the Remove button to delete the highlighted entries from the mapping list. You may need to set more options for an attribute mapping: Set as auto-incrementing value: Use for one-to-many attributes where the key field is a number. This option sets the value of that attribute to an incrementing number. You can also use a VBScript to modify the value coming from the BigFix database. JAMF Import Before you can import JAMF database information into inventory, you must first install MySQL drivers on the core server. Do this by setting up a custom install of MySQL client. Set up MySQL client on the core server At your core server, access the MySQL website. Navigate to the page where you can download and run the installer package file mysql-installer-community msi. It's important that you install this version of the.msi file, not a newer version. Open the installer and follow these steps: 1. MySQL Installer Welcome page Click Install MySQL Products. 2. Find Latest Products page Select the Skip the check for updates (not recommended) option. Click the Next button. 3. Setup Type page Select the Custom option and click the Next button. 4. Feature Selection page In the Product Catalog drop-down box, select MySQL 5.6 Community Edition to install. Clear all options on the page except for MySQL Connectors > Connector/NET Click the Next button. 5. Check Requirements page Click the Next button. 6. Installation page Click the Execute button. After installation success, click the Next button. 7. Complete page Click the Finish button. Copy MySQL.Data.dll from \program files\mysql\connector NET 6.7.4\Assemblies\RT\v2.0 to the \program files\landesk\management Suite directory. After completing the MySQL client install, use this page to enter your MySQL connection information to the JAMF site server database. 62

63 USER'S GUIDE Page 2: Server: The MySQL instance for the site server you want to connect to. Port: The MySQL server port number. By default, it's Schema: The MySQL schema you want to connect to. User: The MySQL username. Password: The password for the MySQL username. This page shows a listing of all the collections found in the JAMF database (in the Available Targets pane). For collections that you want pulled into inventory, use the arrow keys to move them to the Selected Targets pane. Page 3: Perform import now: Performs an import immediately after you click the Finish button. This page enables you to update attribute mappings between the JAMF and inventory databases if necessary. If you haven't customized data in either database, you can skip this process. The LANDesk tree view lists all attributes defined in the Management Suite schema, and the JAMF tree view lists all attributes defined in the JAMF schema. By default, most attributes in both schemas are already mapped. To map an attribute, select an attribute in the LANDesk tree and one in the JAMF tree and click the Add button. This action will add the attribute to the bottom list. Click the Remove button to delete the highlighted entries from the mapping list. Page 4: Use this page to set more options for an attribute mapping. 63

64 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Set as auto-incrementing value: Use for one-to-many attributes where the key field is a number. This option sets the value of that attribute to an incrementing number. You can also use a VBScript to modify the value coming from the JAMF database. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Enterprise Aggregators > JAMF Import > All Rules folder. SCCM Import Use this page to enter your login information to the SCCM site server database. Page 2: Server: The SQL server instance for the site server. Enter the server name or <server>\<instance>,<port>. Database: The name of the site server database, normally SMS <site code>. Use integrated security: Select if you're accessing the SQL server using Windows integrated security. User: The SQL server username. Password: The password for the SQL server username. This page shows a listing of all the collections found in the SCCM database (in the Available Targets pane). For collections that you want pulled into inventory, use the arrow keys to move them to the Selected Targets pane. Page 3: Perform import now: Performs an import immediately after you click the Finish button. 64

65 USER'S GUIDE This page enables you to update attribute mappings between the SCCM and inventory databases if necessary. If you haven't customized data in either database, you can skip this process. The LANDesk tree view lists all attributes defined in the Management Suite schema, and the SCCM tree view lists all attributes defined in the SCCM schema. By default, most attributes in both schemas are already mapped. To map an attribute, select an attribute in the LANDesk tree and one in the SCCM tree and click the Add button. This action will add the attribute to the bottom list. Click the Remove button to delete the highlighted entries from the mapping list. Page 4: Use this page to set more options for an attribute mapping. Set as auto-incrementing value: Use for one-to-many attributes where the key field is a number. This option sets the value of that attribute to an incrementing number. You can also use a VBScript to modify the value coming from the SCCM database. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Enterprise Aggregators > SCCM Import > All Rules folder. Export data wizard Use the export data wizard to configure rules that automate the process of exporting information from the inventory database to.csv files or external databases. About this page Use database settings: Select this option to use the inventory database as the export source. You do not need to know the connection information. Type: Select a data-source type as the export destination. If your data source is not listed, you can connect using the ODBC driver from your software provider. The options on this page will change, depending on the data source you select: SQL CSV Server: The instance to connect to. Database: The database to use. User: The SQL username to use to connect. Password: The SQL username password. Filename: The full path of the file to export. Headers in the first row: If column headers (names) are in the first row of the file, select this check box. Delimiter: The column delimiter used in the file, such as a comma or tab. By default, the delimiter is a comma. 65

66 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS ODBC Oracle Delete files before export: Deletes the old data file before exporting the new data. Character set: The format of the file's character set. U.S. English normally uses the default, which is ANSI. Other languages may need a different set to support their characters. DSN: The name of the DSN created. The name must be a System DSN for the rule to work as a scheduled task or at scan time. User: The username, if needed. Password: The password, if needed. TNS server: The name used to connect to the Oracle server. User: The user or schema used to log in to the Oracle server. Password: The password for the user. About this page If you selected a database as your data source, this page appears. Table: The name of the remote database table you want to export data to. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to browse available tables. Where statement: A required statement that matches a record in the inventory database with a record in the remote database table. The statement should include a database attribute (click the Insert Attribute button to use the attribute browser) and a column in the remote database table. 66

67 USER'S GUIDE For example, if you have a table in a remote database with serial numbers listed in a column named "SerialNum," you might enter the following as the where statement:!computer.system.serial Number! = SerialNum NOTE: You can use more than one attribute in the where statement. This statement is passed as is, replacing attributes with values. It's possible to put joins or a sub-select in this statement. Delete data if it no longer exists in remote database: Deletes the record in the inventory database if the same record in the remote database table no longer exists. Insert new record if they do not exist: Adds new data to the remote database table. Otherwise, if there isn't an existing record to be updated, the new inventory data is ignored. About this page From this page, you can map the columns in the remote database table to the attributes you want to use. Click the Add button to create the mappings. NOTE: This page looks slightly different if you selected to export data to a.csv file, but the options are the same. This page shows the following information: Attribute: A database attribute that the table column will be mapped to during export. Req: No longer used in Data Analytics. Disregard. Column: The table column that the attribute will be mapped to during export. Type: The data type of the table column (STRING, DATE, and so on). 67

68 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Key: A key attribute that indicates device uniqueness when mapping an attribute to a column in the table. You must specify at least one column as key. Once you've created your mappings, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Export Data > All Rules folder. About this page From this page, you can create the mappings between database attributes and columns in the remote database table. NOTE: This page looks slightly different if you selected to export data to a.csv file, but the options are the same. LANDesk attribute: The attribute in the inventory database to map to. Remote database information: Column: The column in the remote database table to map to. Data type: The data type of the table column (STRING, DATE, and so on). Instead of column use static value: An option that sets an attribute to a constant value and ignores the remote database table. VBScript textbox: You can use VBScript to modify the outgoing data (optional). Click the Test button to verify that the VBScript works. 68

69 USER'S GUIDE Import data wizard Use the import data wizard to configure rules that automate the process of connecting to different data sources (such as external databases or data files) to import information into the inventory database. About this page Use database settings: Select this option to use the inventory database as the import source. You do not need to know the connection information. Type: Select a data-source type as the export destination. If your data source is not listed, you can connect using the ODBC driver from your software provider. The options on this page will change, depending on the data source you select: SQL Server: The instance to connect to. Database: The database to use. User: The SQL username to use to connect. Password: The SQL username password. 69

70 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS CSV ODBC Oracle Excel Filename: The full path of the file to import. If you're importing all files in a directory, use the name of one file to import that can be used to show columns. Headers in the first row: If column headers (names) are in the first row, select this check box. Delimiter: The column delimiter used in the.csv file, such as a comma or tab. By default, the delimiter is a comma. Import all files in directory: Processes all files with a.csv extension. All files must have the same format and columns for this option to work correctly. Character set: The format of the file's character set. U.S. English normally uses the default, which is ANSI. Other languages may need a different set to support their characters. DSN: The name of the DSN created. The name must be a System DSN for the rule to work as a scheduled task or at scan time. User: The username, if needed. Password: The password, if needed. TNS server: The name used to connect to the Oracle server. User: The user or schema used to log in to the Oracle server. Password: The password for the user. Filename: The full path of the file to import. Sheet: The name of a single sheet in the Excel file to read data from. Each rule will read from only one sheet. Leave this option blank to read data from the entire Excel file. 70

71 USER'S GUIDE About this page If you selected a database as your data source, this page appears. Table: The name of the remote database table you want to import data from. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to browse available tables. Where statement: A required statement that matches a record in the inventory database with a record in the remote database table. The statement should include a database attribute (click the Insert Attribute button to use the attribute browser) and a column in the remote database table. For example, if you have a table in a remote database with serial numbers listed in a column named "SerialNum," you might enter the following as the where statement:!computer.system.serial Number! = SerialNum NOTE: You can use more than one attribute in the where statement. This statement is passed as is, replacing attributes with values. It's possible to put joins or a sub-select in this statement. Delete data if it no longer exists in remote database: Deletes the record in the inventory database if the same record in the remote database table no longer exists. Import all computers: Select in rare cases when you want to use a bulk process to import data that matches a lot of devices. For example, if you want all computers whose manufacturer is HP to get a particular value, this option can greatly speed up the import. 71

72 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page From this page, you can map database attributes to columns you want to import from the remote database table. Click the Add button to create the mappings. NOTE: This page looks slightly different if you selected to import data from a.csv file, but the options are the same. This page shows the following information: Attribute: A database attribute that the table column will be mapped to during import. Req: No longer used in Data Analytics. Disregard. Column: A table column that the attribute will be mapped to during import. Type: The data type of the table column (STRING, DATE, and so on). Key: A key attribute that indicates device uniqueness when mapping an attribute to a column in the table. You must specify at least one column as key. 72

73 USER'S GUIDE About this page From this page, you can create the mappings between database attributes and columns in the remote database table. NOTE: This page looks slightly different if you selected to import data from a.csv file, but the options are the same. LANDesk attribute: The attribute in the inventory database to map to. Remote database information: Column: The table column to map to. Data type: The data type of the table column (STRING, DATE, and so on). Instead of column use static value: An option that sets an attribute to a constant value and ignores the remote database table. VBScript textbox: You can use VBScript to modify the incoming data (optional). Click the Test button to verify the VBScript works. 73

74 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page Use this page to select an optional DTS group from the Groups drop-down list that will run after the rule has imported the device data. This is useful for post-processing actions. For a group to run as part of this rule, you'll need to run the rule manually, not during real-time scanning. Only run group if device is created: The selected group will run only if a new device record is created in the inventory database. 74

75 USER'S GUIDE About this page Use this page to set up how new device records will be added to the inventory database. If computer does not exist, create a new one: A new record will be created if the imported data has no match in the inventory database. Table: A remote database table containing a column that can be used as the key field, which determines if the device exists or not. Column: The table column to use as the key field. Attribute: The key database attribute that is used to link the imported data to a device record in inventory. Alter value found in external database: You can use a VBScript to modify the incoming value. Test both values: Tests both the raw value from the table column and the value modified by the VBScript to see if the record exists. Display name: The attribute imported from the table that will be used as the display name in the Management Suite console. A device record must have a display name. Once you've completed these settings, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Import Data > All Rules folder. 75

76 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS LDAP export wizard You can use an LDAP export rule to export inventory database attributes to an LDAP data source, such as Active Directory. This wizard includes an LDAP browser to help you easily find the proper LDAP container to export the attributes to. About this page Use this page to set up a connection to your LDAP data source. LDAP://: The path for the LDAP server, usually just a server name or IP address. Use anonymous access: An option to connect to the LDAP server anonymously; use only if you're required to. User name: The user name to connect to the LDAP server. For Active Directory, use the format <domain>\<user>. Password: The password for the LDAP user. 76

77 USER'S GUIDE About this page Use this page to select the LDAP container that the rule will map to when exporting the database attributes. LDAP container: The LDAP container you want the rule to map to and search. Click the ellipsis (...) button to open an LDAP browser for searching LDAP objects in the current tree that you have rights to see. This LDAP browser is similar to the Active Directory Users and Computers browser. Browse to an LDAP object, right-click it in the right pane, and select View Properties to view all possible LDAP properties for this object type. Search subcontainers: Subcontainers of the specified LDAP container that the rule will search. To search the entire tree, select this check box and leave the container field blank. It's necessary to map an attribute to the property of an LDAP object type. You can select one of the two default mappings that are configured (User or Computer), or select Other to configure your own mappings. User: Maps the Computer.Login Name attribute to the SAMaccountName property for user objects. Computer: Maps the Computer.Device Name attribute to the cn property for computer objects. Other: Opens a dialog where you can customize the mapping between the database and an LDAP object. For example, you may want to use Computer.Primary Owner instead of Computer.Login Name for the LANDesk attribute. In this dialog, the Object type is the LDAP object to search for, the LANDesk attribute is the database attribute to use as a source for searching, and the LDAP property is a property that must match the attribute value. 77

78 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page This page lists the database attributes you want to export and the LDAP properties they'll be stored in. You can export as many attributes as you want. Click the Add button to include attributes in this list. Once you've added all the attributes you want to export, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the LDAP Export > All Rules folder. 78

79 USER'S GUIDE About this page From this page, you can select the attributes you want to export and the LDAP properties they'll be stored in. LDAP property: The property to store the attribute data in. Instead of property use static value: You may want to add a particular fixed value when exporting, such as where the data should go or the location, regardless of what is in LDAP. Value: The static value to use. Database attribute: The attribute to map to. VBScript textbox: You can use VBScript to modify the returned value (optional). Click the Test button to verify that the VBScript works. 79

80 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS LDAP import wizard You can use an LDAP import rule to connect to an LDAP data source, such as Active Directory, to import the most common types of data into your inventory database. A number of these rules install by default, but you may want to copy and edit them for your own specific needs. This wizard includes an LDAP browser to help you easily find the information you need. NOTE: If you use VDI servers in your work environment, you can use this wizard to import data that helps determine which users need a particular software license. For more information, see "VDI licensing overview" (91). About this page Use this page to set up a connection to your LDAP data source. LDAP://: The path for the LDAP server, usually just a server name or IP address. Use anonymous access: An option to connect to the LDAP server anonymously; use only if you're required to. User name: The user name to connect to LDAP. For Active Directory, enter it in the form <domain>\<user>. Password: The password for the LDAP user. 80

81 USER'S GUIDE About this page Use this page to select the LDAP container that the rule will search in for LDAP property data to import. LDAP container: The LDAP container you want to search. Click the ellipsis (...) button to open an LDAP browser for searching LDAP objects in the current tree that you have rights to see. This LDAP browser is similar to the Active Directory Users and Computers browser. To view all possible LDAP properties for this object type, browse to an LDAP object, right-click it in the right pane, and select View Properties. Search subcontainers: Subcontainers of the specified LDAP container that the rule will search. To search the entire tree, select this check box and leave the container field blank. It's necessary to map an attribute to the property of an LDAP object type. You can select one of the two default mappings that are configured (User or Computer), or select Other to configure your own mappings. User: Maps the Computer.Login Name attribute to the SAMaccountName property for user objects. Computer: Maps the Computer.Device Name attribute to the cn property for computer objects. Other: Opens a dialog where you can customize the mapping between the database and an LDAP object. For example, you may want to use Computer.Primary Owner instead of Computer.Login Name for the LANDesk attribute. In this dialog, the Object type is the LDAP object to search for, the LANDesk attribute is the database attribute to use as a source for searching, and the LDAP property is a property that must match the attribute value. 81

82 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Create object if it does not exist: Creates a new record in the inventory database if one doesn't already match the LDAP object you're importing. Ignore disabled objects: Ignores disabled LDAP objects during an import. About this page This page lists the LDAP property data you're importing and the database attribute the data is mapped to. You can import data from as many LDAP properties as you want. Click the Add button to include an LDAP property in this list. Once you've added all the LDAP property data you want to import, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the LDAP Import > All Rules folder. 82

83 USER'S GUIDE About this page From this page, you can select the LDAP property data you want to import and the attribute it will be mapped to. LDAP property: The property to take the data from. Instead of property use static value: You may want to add a particular fixed value when importing, such as stating where the data came from or the location, regardless of what is in LDAP. Value: The static value to use. Database attribute: The attribute to map to. VBScript textbox: You can use VBScript to modify the returned value (optional). Click the Test button to verify that the VBScript works. 83

84 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Licensed-software rules overview DTS uses a EULA-based method for determining which software products actually need licenses in your environment. For example, Microsoft may allow one license for Office 2010 Professional to also cover a copy of Office 2002 Standard, but not Office 2010 Standard. Regardless of how many of these covered copies of software exist on a device, you need only one license to be compliant. This is known as effective licensing the number of licenses you need versus what you may have installed. DTS uses a flexible, query-based engine to determine effective licensing. You can use the Licensed Software folder in the DTS tree view to configure and organize rules that group software products by shared license information. These rules, listed in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder, gather data for auditing and reporting purposes and show how many licenses are needed for compliance. DTS installs with numerous rules for keeping track of licensed software, but you may want to configure your own rules for specialized software not currently represented. For more information, see "Licensed software wizard" (87). By default, the Data Analytics software-manager service runs nightly to perform software detection and license calculation on all rule configurations in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder. This detection will not occur if you disable a vendor group from being part of the service scan. You have the option of running these rules on demand or as a scheduled task, either by vendor group or individually. To see licensed software rules specific to a vendor, open the Licensed Software > All Vendors folder. 84

85 USER'S GUIDE You can accomplish most tasks related to your licensed software rules by using the various right-click menus. About the right-click menus In the DTS tree view, right-click the Licensed Software folder to access these menus: Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Import group: Imports a group folder from an.xml file. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder. New rule: Opens a wizard to create a new licensed software rule. Show all licensed software detected: Shows an up-to-date list of all scanned, licensed software. Add licensed software to SLM: Manually runs the Data Analytics software-manager service to add product license data to Management Suite s software license monitoring (SLM) console. This action happens automatically each night when the service runs. Do not run this process unless necessary it s resource intensive and could take several hours to complete. Delete licensed software data: Completely deletes software data for all devices out of the inventory database. This data won't appear again in inventory until you create a new rule that enables the Data Analytics software-manager service to detect it during a scan. Assign LDAP groups: Allows you to assign licensed software to LDAP groups, ensuring that users in those groups are counted in license compliance. By assigning LDAP groups, you have a way to track license usage accurately in a Citrix or Terminal Server VDI-licensing environment where users remotely access software and aren't using a device with the LANDESK agent installed. Export LDAP groups: Exports an LDAP group as an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Import LDAP groups: Imports an LDAP group as an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Modify approved software: Enables you to choose which products are part of the corporate standard for your network environment. This is a global list that the Data Analytics softwaremanager service uses to verify that all devices are standardized and running companyapproved software. Open the Licensed Software folder and right-click the All Vendors folder to access these menus: Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. 85

86 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Add root group: Creates a group folder, at the root of the tree view, that you can use for organizing rules. Drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Import group: Imports a group folder from an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder. Export group: Exports a group folder and its contents as an.xml file, which is useful in a multicore environment. Schedule: Schedules the rules in All Vendors to run now or at a later time against the inventory database. The task will show up in the Scheduled folder, and a script is created in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks. The script name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify them there. Rules don't have to be active in order to schedule them. Run now: Runs rules for all vendors right now, instead of waiting for them to run during a service scan. Set group run order: This option only appears for vendor group rules that you've created under All Vendors. It sets the run order for rules in a vendor group folder. The top rule runs first, and the others follow in descending order. Use the arrow keys to change the run order. Run order is important, because some rules are dependent on other rules for information. For example, if you're interested in obtaining warranty data for your Dell devices, you would first run a Dell Warranty rule to scan the data initially into the database, and then run the Last Warranty End Date rule, which scans more specific data about that warranty. Open the Licensed Software > All Vendors folder and right-click a vendor group to access a variety of menus (explained above) and this menu: Disable/enable group: Disables a group and its rules from being run as part of the nightly Data Analytics software-manager service scan. When a group is disabled, the service skips that group and doesn t run its rules. This feature is useful if the default rules for a vendor don't represent the specific license agreement your organization has with that vendor. For example, if you have a deal with Microsoft that's different from their standard license downgrade rights, you can disable the Licensed Software > All Vendors > Microsoft group and create a new group called "YourCompany Microsoft." In that group, you would configure new rules that are specific to your organization's use of Microsoft products, reflecting the true nature of your license agreement with that vendor. Open the Licensed Software > All Vendors > any vendor group folder and right-click a rule to access a variety of menus (explained above) and this menu: Update usage: Manually activates this rule to run. 86

87 USER'S GUIDE Licensed software wizard You can use a licensed software rule to group related software products that a single license can typically cover. A number of these rules install by default, but you may want create new ones for your own specific needs. For more information about licensed software rules, see "Licensed-software rules overview" (84). NOTE: DTS also has a software-license import wizard; don't confuse that wizard with this one. Softwarelicense import rules enable you to import software licenses from.csv files into Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) tool. About this page Use this page to create a list of related software products that can be grouped to share a single license. Do not run this rule if matches query: Enables you to include a query that will skip this rule completely if another rule already covers this product. Click the ellipsis (...) button to build or import an existing LANDESK query. Check all software: Scans all listed products and returns all that are found. This option is useful when grouping products together that don't share licenses. For example, each version of Autodesk Autocad requires its own license, but you may find Autocad easier to manage if all versions are grouped into one rule. Click the Add button to define the software products that you want to group in this list. As you add products, use the up/down arrows to reorder them in the list. The products are searched from top to bottom, so order is significant. Put the product with the most comprehensive license at the top and order them appropriately. For example, list Microsoft Office Professional Plus first, followed by Professional, then Standard, and so on. Groups drop-down list: Runs a DTS group if no product is found in the list (optional). When you're done, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder. 87

88 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page Use this dialog to define each product that you added to the licensed software list. The most important element is the product ID and its components, which provide built-in normalization. Normalization helps standardize product names, which is necessary for accurate reporting. Because DTS is integrated with Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) tool, all found products that match the criteria below will be automatically added as products in the SLM console. Vendor, Name, and Version text boxes: Enter the name of the software vendor, the product name (including edition information; for example, Office Professional), and the product version. The information you enter will make up the ID, which is the critical value returned. The ID must be unique for all products. Advanced button: Switches the values-returned area into a fully customizable values area. You still need the above listed items, but you can customize them to return other attributes as well. 88

89 USER'S GUIDE Delete values before checking: Deletes the licensed software values before the rule checks to see if they exist (optional). Query: Click the Edit button to build a query that determines if the product is installed. For example, if a suite is to be detected, but each application is installed separately, you may need to have a group of AND statements for each part of the suite. Exclusion query: Click the ellipsis (...) button to build a query that determines if a device does not need to check for this software. For example, if a suite is installed and is already detected, you may not need to check for an individual part of the suite. Stop running rules if matches query: Stops the rule from searching for any more of the listed products if the exclusion query matches. Date shipped: Select the date that the vendor started shipping the product (optional). Groups: Select a DTS group that will run when the software is found (optional). Files for usage: Click the Add button to add one or more executable files that check for product usage. Note that these files do not determine if the product is installed. License downgrade products: Click the Add button to select the software products that this license can be downgraded to. The list is made of products for which rules have already been configured and is recursive. For example, if you add Microsoft Office Pro 2010 to your product, all products that Office Pro 2010 can downgrade to will be added as well. List order is important, because the downgrade occurs by cost and how products are listed; if costs are the same, the list order takes precedence. Do not allow downgrade to flow down: Select if you don't want DTS to do recursive downgrades. In most cases, you will not want to select this option. By allowing recursive license downgrades, you don t have to list every possible downgrade. View effective downgrades button: Click to view all products that this license can downgrade to. The list order here is the order the licenses will be added to SLM and the order that licenses will be loaned. Cost: Select a price that represents the relative value of the product, which may or may not match the actual price paid. This option is designed to allow you to sort the downgrade licenses. License downgrades are applied to the most expensive product first. 89

90 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page From this dialog, you can select the executable files that check for product usage. File name: Click the ellipsis (...) button to add the file(s). If there's more than one version of the executable file(s) you've chosen: In the Other conditions text box, click the Add button to add the file version to be used to determine usage. You may have multiple versions of an executable on a device, such as several versions of Microsoft Office's Winword.exe. However, with effective licensing, most of the time it doesn't matter which version of a file is executed, just that any file licensed by that product or its downgrades was used. NOTE: While it's possible to use many attributes to check for a file (such as date, size, and so on), we recommend just searching for a particular filename, which is the only required entry in this dialog. 90

91 USER'S GUIDE VDI licensing overview Software licensing compliance can be challenging in a VDI environment. It s likely that you've moved at least some end users in your organization to virtual desktops. These users may have their own device, or share a device, and remotely connect to a Terminal Server, Citrix Server, or some other VDI server to run their applications. With traditional installation-based licensing, each installation on a device requires a license. In a VDI environment, just one or a few servers have an installation, with each user requiring their own license. Licenses are counted more than once if users have access to a VDI server while also using a device with an installation. Most VDI environments grant access based on Active Directory group membership, adding the number of users in the group to the number of installations Management Suite has discovered. While this gives you license coverage, it also causes duplication, potentially causing you to over purchase. Data Analytics solves this problem with a series of rules that collect this information and remove any duplicate licenses. 91

92 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Finding duplicate licenses To find duplicate licenses using Data Analytics, you're required to use Active Directory groups to determine which users need a particular software license. Once these groups are configured, you ll need to import group membership into the inventory database. The process You must first configure a rule that pulls Active Directory group membership into inventory. Do this by opening the LDAP Import > All Rules folder and copying and editing the rule named LDAP groups the logged in user is a member of. Enter a user with access to Active Directory to read the group membership for all users. For immediate feedback, import the information by running this edited rule. The rule will search for every user in the Active Directory tree and then match each user to a device in the inventory database. By default, the rule will do the matching based on the Computer.LoginName and the Active Directory samaccountname, ignoring disabled users. If the rule finds that a user in Active Directory does not have a device with that login name, it will create a new object in the database of type "user." This action will inflate the object count in your database for any users that do not have a device in the database. Next, you need to schedule a task using the script file named Data Analytics Import and delete users to import information regularly so that it remains up-to-date. This script performs three actions: Executes the LDAP import. Determines if any users that were previously imported now have a device, preventing overcounting. Runs a rule to delete the user objects that now have a device. You can schedule this task as often as needed for the data to remain accurate. In a large Active Directory environment, the task may take a long time to run, so you may want to run it only once a week. Once the import is complete, map the Active Directory groups to your licensed software products so that proper licensing can occur. To do so, right-click the Licensed Software folder and select Assign LDAP Groups. A dialog opens with Licensed Software Products on the left and all LDAP Groups that exist in the database on the right. Find the product on the left and highlight it. Then highlight all groups on the right that will grant access to it, and move the groups to the left. You may have many groups that grant access to one product, or one group that will grant access to many products; both ways are possible. 92

93 USER'S GUIDE Once you've mapped the groups and software, click the Save button to store the information in the inventory database. The results By default, the Data Analytics software-manager service runs nightly to perform software detection and license calculation. To see the results immediately, open the Licensed Software folder, right-click All Vendors, and select Run Now. Note that on a large database, this process may take a long time. To test against just a few devices, you can drag and drop them onto the All Vendors group. You can see the results of the detection and calculation process in two places: To see the software that was assigned via the Active Directory group to a single device or user object, open the inventory for that object and look under Software Licensed Software. 93

94 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS To see a software reconciliation report, go to the Executive Report Pack console and open the ERP > Software Compliance folder. Run the SLM Report with Expandable Detail report to see all products (and user objects) and their license compliance, as well as all devices the software was detected on. Map data wizard You can use a map data rule to manipulate data in a variety of ways, such as copying a database attribute from one place to another. Data Analytics ships with a large number of these rules by default. However, you may want to copy and then modify them to gather additional or customized data. You'll commonly use map data rules for actions related to standardization. A good example of this is the Standardize Serial Number rule, which installs with Data Analytics. Because hardware manufacturers haven't standardized a location in the BIOS where the system serial number is stored, it could be in one of several locations in inventory. This rule searches seven different areas in inventory and then copies the serial number to a standardized location. By having one consistent location for serial numbers, you can more easily link your inventory data to other data sources as well. You can also use map data rules to search for a value in one field to populate another field with more useful data. For example, many organizations start their device names with several characters representing the office where the device is located. It's possible to analyze the characters and then populate another field with the name of the actual office location. About this page Database attribute: Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the destination database attribute, which is the location in inventory where the rule will copy the new data. About this page 94

95 USER'S GUIDE Click the Add button to create a list of source attributes, which are locations in inventory that the rule will check for data. Source attributes are processed in the order listed. You can map any combination of one-to-one and one-to-many attributes. NOTE: A one-to-one attribute has just one entry in inventory. For example, a computer can have only one set of physical memory, so Computer.Memory.Physical is a one-to-one attribute. A one-to-many attribute has more than one entry in inventory. For example, if you look at Computer.Software.Package, you'll see many entries, because a computer has many files. The other columns in this list are: Validation: Shows a validation string that you add to determine if the found value is valid or should be ignored. The string is created using regular expression syntax. Return: Shows the value that's returned. Children: Shows "Yes" if the return value is appended or pre-pended onto the current value. About this page This page appears if you selected a one-to-many source attribute. With a one-to-many, you may want to specify which of the entries the rule should check, because attempting to put a one-to-many in a column set or query result can create duplicate records. Use another attribute from the component: The source attribute may not be the one that the rule needs to check. Select a different entry from the one-to-many attribute. 95

96 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Where value: You can specify either = or like. In the case of like, you can use % as a wildcard. Get min\max value: Instead of specifying the value of another attribute, you can specify that you want to select the attribute with the highest or lowest value. Use as key: In the case of copying a one-to-many attribute to another one-to-many, you need to specify the destination record the rule will copy to. You can use any other attribute in the current oneto-many as the destination key. The key field is used to determine uniqueness. Modify value with VBScript: You can use VBScript to modify the value that will be used as the key. Use attribute as destination key: Instead of using the normal key field for the destination one-tomany attribute, you can select another attribute that will then be matched to the Use as key field. This option is useful in situations where the target may have a simple value (such as a number) as the key field, but the source may not have a matching number field. One of the other fields may be unique. About this page When matching a source attribute, you can specify a condition it must meet. The condition helps determine if a found value is valid or should be ignored. For example, if you're trying to find a valid Lenovo serial number, you know that it needs to be a 7- or 8-digit, alpha-numeric string. In the Validation text box, enter a validation string in one of two ways: 96

97 USER'S GUIDE Click the Browse values button to match exact values from a list already in the database. Select from a number of sample strings in the Sample validation strings scroll box. Doubleclick a sample string to automatically add it as properly formatted to the validation string. (The syntax for this validation uses regular expressions. For information about regular expressions, see the Microsoft help.) About this page If a source attribute is matched, you can specify that the rule will run a DTS rule group (optional). For example, if the match is a Dell computer, you may want also to initiate the Dell Warranty rule to pull information from the Dell website. Note that groups will only run when you run this rule manually, not when it's run during real-time scanning. 97

98 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page By default, a map data rule will return just the value that it finds. You can also specify a simple prefix to add to the beginning or a suffix to append to the end of the value that's returned. If you want to return a value that's completely different from what is found, clear the Value found check box and enter a value in the Prefix or Suffix field. Manual button: Allows you to use regular expression parsing and VBScript to modify the returned value. If you just want to use VBScript, leave $0 in the regular expression box (see Microsoft regular expression and VBScript help references for help with these items). You can click the Test button to verify that your script works. Children button: Performs a function similar to running a specific group, where additional map data rules can be run with the return value appended or pre-pended onto the current value. Children values are rarely used. 98

99 USER'S GUIDE About this page Enter a value that you want returned if no source attributes match. This value must be the same data type (string, date, int, and so on) as the destination attribute. If you leave this field blank, the rule won't return a value. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Map Data > All Rules folder. 99

100 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Map list wizard You can use a map list rule as a quick way to create a new attribute based on a different attribute. For example, if you have a number of subnets in your network, each one can be mapped to a particular city. You can then map each default gateway to a city. About this page Source: The database attribute used to map the values. Continuing with the prior example, this would be Computer.Network.TCPIP.Default Gateway Address. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. Destination: The database attribute where the mapped values will be stored. For example, this might be Computer.Location.City. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. About this page On this page, you'll find Destination and Source panes, which show the attributes that you selected on the previous page. You can add more attributes to either pane by clicking the ellipsis ( ) button. Add map button: Opens a dialog where you can enter a new mapped value, which is a destination value. For example, if you're mapping default gateways to cities, this might be Boston. 100

101 USER'S GUIDE Add value button: Adds the values that cause the mapped values to be written to the destination attribute. First select a mapped value in the Destination pane, and then select a value in the Source pane. Click Add value to add the value below the mapped value in the Destination pane's tree structure. Continuing with the prior example, the value might be a gateway of Click the Finish button. Your new rule should appear in the Map List > All Rules folder. Model attributes dialog One of the strengths of the inventory database is that it's automatically extendable. If the LANDESK agent on a device discovers new information, the LANDESK inventory service can add it to the database without requiring you to reconfigure anything. This process is handled by a catch-all table where unknown or unmodeled attributes are placed. Unmodeled attributes can become an issue if you're using SQL or a third-party tool to access the inventory database directly. To read the data properly for an unmodeled attribute, the database requires a 5-table join, which most people can't create unless they're familiar with SQL. With DTS's Model attributes dialog, you can model this data, so that it's no longer stored in an UNMODELEDDATA1 table but rather in its own column in a table that you can easily query using an application such as Crystal Reports. The Model attributes dialog also enables you to change the data type of an attribute. When an attribute is created via a scan file, by default it's added as a string to the inventory database. However, you may want the attribute stored as integer for sorting and comparison purposes. On the DTS toolbar, click the Model Attributes icon to open the dialog. 101

102 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About the Model Attributes dialog Attributes in the database in unmodeled data list box: This list shows all components in the database that currently have unmodeled attributes. The attribute data type is also shown. Select the attribute you want modeled. Model for me button: Click this button to map the unmodeled attribute to the proper table in the inventory database. The attribute will use the data type it was assigned. After clicking the Model for me button, the following New table information will auto-populate: Component: The component in the database (for example, Computer or Computer.Memory) associated with the unmodeled attribute. Table name: The name of the table that the unmodeled-attribute data will be moved to. If the component is not part of an existing table, a name such as UNMODELEDDATA1 will appear. Change this name to something meaningful to create a new table. If the component is part of an existing table, do not change the name. One-to-many class: If the component is a one-to-many, this option is automatically selected. In this case, you'll need to add special columns to the table using your own DATAMART.XML file, not this tool. (DATAMART.XML is the file that contains all of the database table information for Management Suite. It's used in conjunction with COREDBUTIL.EXE to create tables in the database.) Add to existing table: If a table already exists for this component, select this option to add a new column to it for the unmodeled-attribute data. 102

103 USER'S GUIDE The resulting list shows all modeled and unmodeled attributes for the component in this particular table. Unmodeled attributes are in bold. Attributes that already exist as columns in the table are not in bold and cannot be edited. Click the Model now button to add the unmodeled attribute(s) "as is" to the specified table. You can also click the Edit button to modify an attribute's values, or click the Add button to add other attributes to the table as well. The attributes list shows these columns: Attribute: The name of the attribute as it will appear in the Management Suite console. Column: The name of the column that will be created in the table. Data Type: The DBMS data type of the new column. Size: The length of the new column, in characters. Mask: A read-only column in this list, which shows a display mask that modifies how the data appears. Key: A read-only column in this list. For one-to-many attributes, one field must be set as the key. Move existing data: In the case of an UNMODELEDDATA1 table, this option moves the data to the new table you specified. The data will then be deleted from the UNMODELEDDATA1 table. Model now button: Updates the table with the changes you specified. Clear all button: Clears all of the information for one component so that you can choose another one with attributes to model. 103

104 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About the Define Attribute dialog In this dialog, you can edit the values of the unmodeled attribute selected from the previous dialog or add a new attribute to this table: Name: The attribute name that users will see and that the LANDESK inventory service will look for. Do not change this name unless you're creating a new attribute. Column: The name of the table column. Data type: The DBMS data type, such as VARCHAR, INT, CHAR, and so on. Length: The length of the data-type string. For VARCHAR, CHAR, and NVARCHAR, you can set the length. For other data types, the length is fixed. Type: Set the value to "99" to prevent the LANDESK inventory service from ever deleting the attribute from inventory. Otherwise, you would typically want to set the value to "1." 104

105 USER'S GUIDE Normalize wizard Much of the inventory data that is gathered by DTS is not in a report-ready format. Many vendors have few standards for naming their hardware, software, or company, making it difficult to create a clean report that shows all of the manufacturers, models, and software in inventory. The inventory database can only report back to you what the device reports to it. A hardware vendor may report that its name is just "Vendor" on one device, Vendor Inc. on another device, and Vendor Incorporated on a third. By normalizing or standardizing the data, you make it easily reportable. Data Analytics ships with a variety of rules that normalize data, but you may need to create your own rules for manufacturers not currently represented. You can copy and edit existing rules for your particular environment. About this page Database attribute: Select the database attribute you want to normalize with this rule. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to select the attribute from the attribute browser. 105

106 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page Use this dialog to move the selected attribute's current values in inventory to the mapped values list, where you can normalize them. Mapped values pane: Shows a list of new, normalized values that will be used for this particular attribute. This list is empty until you select an existing value and click the Add map button to move it over. Once a value is in this list, it can be normalized by adding any number of values under it that are variations of its name. To add a value to the list, right-click the mapped value and select Add value. You don't need to list each permutation of the value you're normalizing. Instead, you can use two wildcards: <Char> matches a single character. <Any> matches any number of characters, zero or more. For example, if you're normalizing system manufacturers, you may want to use Dell<Any> to match any device that starts with "Dell." Existing values pane: Shows a list of existing values in inventory for this particular attribute. Add map button: Moves the selected existing value over to the Mapped values list for normalizing. Add value button: Moves the selected existing value to the Mapped values list under the value you're normalizing, as one of its values. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Normalize > All Rules folder. 106

107 USER'S GUIDE Software-license importing overview You can use the Software License Import folder in the DTS tree view to configure and organize rules that import software license data into the Management Suite software license monitoring (SLM) console. You can accomplish several tasks related to importing software licenses by accessing the right-click menus for this folder. About the right-click menus Right-click the Software License Import folder to access these menu items: Add group: Creates a group folder that you can use for organizing rules; drag and drop the rules from other folders into this new one. Grouping is useful for running a series of rules together. Import group: Imports a group folder from an.xml file, which is useful in a multi-core environment. This action doesn't import the group's rule configurations, just the definition of which rules are in the group. You must import the rule configuration files separately into the target databases; otherwise, you'll be importing an empty group folder. New rule: Opens the wizard for configuring a new software license import rule. 107

108 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Add software license lookup entry: Adds a new product value to the software license look-up table that DTS uses to map products to licenses. The lists that are built for vendor, product, and version come from the licensed software rules. When running a license import, if you receive the message Product is not defined for row xyz, this means that the product was not defined in the look-up table, and you must add it. Delete software license lookup entry: Deletes a product value from the software license lookup table that DTS uses to map products to licenses. Import software license lookup information: Imports new product values from an.xml file into the software license look-up table that DTS uses to map products to licenses. Export software license lookup information: Exports product values as an.xml file from the software license look-up table that DTS uses to map products to licenses. Assign computer groups: Assigns computer groups to a software license, which limits the scope of the license. These groups are ones you've defined using the software license monitoring (SLM) tool. Export computer groups: Exports computer groups (defined in SLM) for use in a software license look-up table in another database, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Import computer groups: Imports computer groups (defined in SLM) from a software license look-up table in another database, which is useful in a multi-core environment. Open the Software License Import > All Rules folders and right-click a rule to access these menu items: Delete: Deletes a rule. If you delete a system-generated rule, you can reinstall the Data Analytics database to retrieve it, or wait for it to reappear when the LANDesk content update service publishes updates. Edit: Edits a rule you created on your own. With rules that ship by default with DTS, you must first copy and then edit them. Copy: Creates a copy of a rule in the same folder. You can then rename and edit the copy. Export: Exports a rule as an.xml file. Run now: Runs the selected rule immediately, instead of waiting for it to run during a service scan. Schedule: Schedules a rule to run as a task against the inventory database. The task will show up in the DTS Scheduled folder, and a script is created in the Management Suite console's Scheduled Tasks. The script name is normally <rulename>_<rule idn>.ini. If you want to change the scheduled settings, go into Scheduled Tasks and modify them there. Rules don't have to be active in order to schedule them. Run now with exception handling: Runs the selected rule with exceptions, which means you must identify the software you're trying to import while the rule is running. This option is useful for importing software licenses for products that DTS may not recognize. 108

109 USER'S GUIDE Importing software licenses Importing software licenses can be difficult, especially from an external source. You must accurately match up a license with a licensed software product. A report file containing license data from a manufacturer or a website (obtained using a B2B connector rule) may look very different from one coming from another source. You also need a "key" that correctly links each inventory record to a product. Because CDW might call a product ADB CS 6 MC, and En Pointe might call the same product Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection 6, it's best practice to ensure that the license import file contains the manufacturer part number as a key. This way, the manufacturer is recognized consistently. When importing software licenses, DTS uses a look-up table to map the manufacturer part number to a licensed software product. Many part numbers are included in this table, and more are added each time the LANDesk content update service publishes updates to Data Analytics. On occasion, you may need to update the look-up table manually with part numbers that don't already exist. For more information, see "Software-license import wizard" (111) Updating the software license look-up table If the software license look-up table needs to be updated after you run a license import, you'll receive the message Product is not defined for row xyz. This message means the product was not defined in the look-up table, and you must add it. If you want to see which product values are already defined in the table, right-click the Software License Import folder and select Delete software license lookup entry. The list that appears will show all of the look-up values currently defined. If your organization has stopped using a software product and license information is no longer needed, you can also delete a value from the look-up table. Add a product value to the look-up table 1. In the DTS tree view, right-click the Software License Import folder and select Add software license lookup entry. In the Assign product lookup value dialog, you can assign the product to a look-up value. The lists that are built for Vendor, Product, and Version come from the licensed software rules that are already configured. It may be necessary to configure a new licensed software rule if your product is not in the list. 2. Select the Vendor, Product and Version for this particular entry in your license import file. 3. Select Multiple products for this value and click the Add button to assign more than one product to this value. 4. Select Ignore this value to ensure that this value or values won't be assigned to any product in the license import file. For example, some SKUs in a purchase report may not be for a license, but rather for the physical media, such as the disk set. You want to ignore those values. 109

110 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 5. Copy the look-up value, such as a manufacturer part number, into the Value text box. If you have many values for the same product, enter them on separate lines. For example, Adobe can have thousands of part numbers for the same product, depending on how you purchase the product. 6. Select Each line makes its own entry to ensure that each value is its own entry in the license import file. This is useful if you're mapping a lot of SKUs and want to paste them in at once. 7. For Number of licenses for this entry, select the number of licenses for this particular SKU. Most SKUs are only one license, but some vendors will sell a 50-pack SKU, for example. 8. For License type, select the type from a drop-down list. 9. Click the Save button to add the values to the database. When you rerun the software license import rule, the line should be imported. 10. Click the Close button. Delete a product value from the look-up table 1. In the DTS tree view, right-click the Software License Import folder and select Delete software license lookup entry. A dialog displays all products, their part-number values as currently listed in the look-up table, the number of licenses purchased, and the license compliance type. 2. Select a product from the list and click the Delete button. You will not be asked to confirm the delete, so make sure you actually want to delete the product before clicking the button. 3. Click the Close button. Assigning computer groups to limit the scope of a software license You can use computer groups to limit the scope of a software license. These are groups that you've already defined in the database using Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) tool. For example, if you want a particular license to apply only to computers in a New York office, you can do so by creating a query and then using a computer group to reference it. Similar to the mappings in the software look-up table, DTS needs to know how to map the name that represents the computer group in the license import file to the actual computer group you've defined in the database. The names do not have to be the same; you just need to set up a mapping. Assign computer groups 1. In the DTS tree view, right-click the Software License Import folder and select Assign Computer Groups. A tree view appears listing all of the computer groups you've defined inside SLM. 2. Right-click the computer group name and select Add Value. Enter a name for the value. A particular value can only be assigned to one computer group at a time. However, a computer group can have many values assigned to it. 110

111 USER'S GUIDE Once you've configured the mapping, you must also configure a column in a particular product's license import file to point to Software License.Computer Group. The license will then be assigned to that group. Software-license import wizard You can use this wizard to create a rule that imports software licenses from.csv files, Excel files, and other data sources into Management Suite's software license monitoring (SLM) console. For more information about importing software licenses using DTS, see "Software-license importing overview" (107). NOTE: DTS also has a licensed software wizard; don't confuse that wizard with this one. Licensed software rules detect the software installed on your devices and group related products by shared licenses. About this page Type: The data-source type. If your data source is not listed, you can connect using the ODBC driver from your software provider. The options on this page will change, depending on the data source you select: CSV Excel ODBC Oracle Filename: The full path of the file to import. Headers in the first row: If column headers (names) are in the first row, select this check box. Delimiter: The column delimiter used in the.csv file, such as a comma or tab. By default, the delimiter is a comma. Use column numbers instead of names: Select this option if the column names may change, but the data in them stays the same. This is useful if the file headers become localized. Character set: The format of the file's character set. U.S. English normally uses the default, which is ANSI. Other languages may need a different set to support their characters. Filename: The full path to the Excel file to connect to. Sheet: The name of a single sheet in the Excel file to read data from. Each rule will read from only one sheet. DSN: The name of the DSN created. The name must be a System DSN for the rule to work as a scheduled task or at scan time. User: The username, if needed. Password: The password, if needed. TNS server: The name used to connect to the Oracle server. User: The user or schema used to log in to the Oracle server. 111

112 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Password: The password for the user. SQL Server: The instance to connect to. Database: The database to use. User: The SQL username to use to connect. Password: The SQL username password. About this page If you selected ODBC, Oracle, or SQL as your data source, this page appears. From here, you can select a table in the remote database that you want to import from. Table: The name of the database table you want to import data from. Click the ellipsis ( ) button to browse tables in the remote database. Where statement: Use a where statement if you want to limit the table rows that will be imported. 112

113 USER'S GUIDE About this page This page lists all columns found in the selected.csv file, Excel file, or remote database table. You must map at least two columns to attributes in the inventory database one column must determine uniqueness (along with the product name) and the other must determine the license quantity. Click the Add button to create the mappings. This page shows the following information: Column: All columns in the remote database table,.csv file, or Excel file. Type: The data type of the column (STRING, DATE, and so on). Import key: The column(s) used to determine software product uniqueness; for example, the purchase order number is often a good choice. You must mark at least one column as the import key; each one must also be mapped to an attribute. Click the Set import key button to give a column this status. License field: The attribute mapping for a column. At least one of the columns must be mapped to the Software.License.Quantity attribute. Product key: The column(s) used to determine the software product that the license maps to. If multiple columns are selected, the columns are concatenated with spaces between them. You must mark at least one column as the product key, and the manufacturer's SKU is recommended. Click the Set product key button to give a column this status. Description: The column used to describe the software product (for exception handling only). Click the Set description button to give a column this status. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Software License Import > All Rules folder. 113

114 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page If you're importing from a.csv or Excel file, this page will look different, but the information you need to enter remains the same. You essentially need to map a column in the table or file to a database attribute, while also specifying some details. LANDesk attribute: The attribute in the inventory database to map to. Don't overwrite existing value: If a value for the attribute is already in the database, this option prevents it from being overwritten. Remote database information: Column: The column in the table to map to. Data type: The data type of the column (STRING, DATE, and so on). Instead of column use static value: You can import a number of columns, but set one attribute to a constant value. By selecting this option, you can enter a static value, such as the name of the vendor, and ignore the remote database table. VBScript: You can use VBScript to modify the incoming data (optional). Click the Test button to verify that the VBScript works. 114

115 USER'S GUIDE SQL command wizard You can use this wizard to create a rule that directly writes SQL to modify the inventory database. 115

116 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Use the text box to enter any valid SQL command or series of commands. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the SQL Command > All Rules folder. Virtual-licensing rules overview To save on infrastructure costs, many organizations use virtualized environments. Because vendors have different licensing policies when it comes to virtualization, these environments can present a challenge for ensuring software licensing compliance and for finding your organization's most costeffective licensing options. DTS can help resolve these issues. Getting started To manage licenses within your virtualized environment, you'll need to configure two types of rules: 1. VMWare vcenter rules connect to your vcenter database and import ESX host server and virtual device information into the inventory database. 2. Datacenter product rules apply a vendor's advanced licensing policies to your software, finding the most cost-effective licensing options for your organization. Configuring VMWare vcenter rules The first issue in handling a virtualized environment is configuring a rule that imports your vcenter database information into the inventory database. You must do this to determine which devices are virtual and the ESX host server they're associated with. DTS will need read-only access to the vcenter database. As this rule runs, it will perform the following tasks: 116

117 USER'S GUIDE Create inventory records for all ESX host servers in the vcenter database by collecting the data necessary to perform software licensing, such as processors, cores, and images currently assigned to each virtual host. These new records will appear in the network view under Virtual OS Hosts. Determine which records in the database are assigned to which virtual host server. When you look at the inventory for a virtual host, you'll see a new attribute under Virtual Host Data, the Host Name attribute will be populated. Create records of the processors and cores that have been assigned to the virtual host server. The key field imported is Computer.Process.Features.Total Cores, which is the number of cores that have been assigned to the image. For more information, see "VMWare vcenter import wizard" (125). Configuring Datacenter product rules The second issue in handling virtualization is configuring a rule that applies a vendor s advanced licensing policies to the software in such an environment, helping you find the most cost-effective licensing scenario. The key concept is that a vendor s license may cover more than one device; for example, if you have a virtual host in inventory and many images in the database that run on that host, you may need just one license to cover all of the images. For more information, see "Datacenter product wizard" (121). How these rules work together To better understand how these two rule types work, you can take a look at a Datacenter product rule that ships by default with DTS. Open the Datacenter Products > All Rules folder, double-click the Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter Virtual Environment Consolidation rule, and click the View only button. Viewing the rule configuration This rule encodes the following Microsoft licensing policy: If you have an ESX server running a Windows Server image, you can buy one Windows Server Datacenter license instead of a license for each Windows Server image. A Datacenter license enables you to run as many Windows Server images as you want on that physical device, eliminating the need to buy a license for each processor in the host. You'll notice that the first wizard page shows the product you're licensing, in this case, Microsoft Windows Server Datacenter 64-bit The list below the product includes the software to look for that is covered by this license, in this case, all Windows Server OSes. 117

118 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS You'll notice the next page enables you to run this rule against your vcenter rules. In this case, you're running it against all configured vcenter rules. 118

119 USER'S GUIDE The next page shows a query that links multiple records in the database. In this example, you re concerned with devices where the host s Computer.Network.TCPIP.Host Name is the same as the virtual image s Computer.Virtual Host Data.Host Name. 119

120 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The final wizard page displays the threshold values for assigning Datacenter software to "collapse" the licenses. In this case, Count the number of devices matching is selected, which means the number of devices that are assigned to this host that have a Windows Server OS installed. 120

121 USER'S GUIDE Before and after running the rule By default, the nightly Data Analytics software-manager service performs a licensed-software detection on all rules in the Licensed Software > All Rules folder; in this example, the service picks up all images and the Windows OS licenses they need. Before you run this rule, if you look in inventory under Licensed Software or in the Executive Report Pack report for OSes, you'll see all the virtual devices listed with the proper OS. After you run the rule, a different result occurs. At that point, if a virtual host has at least one Windows Server OS product associated with it, the host will be assigned a copy of Windows Server Datacenter 64-bit 2012 and the associated virtual images will have their Licensed Software Windows OS entry removed. You should be able see the results in the same report as well. Datacenter product wizard You can use this rule to apply a vendor's advanced licensing policies to your licensed software products, which can help determine the most cost-effective licensing options for your organization. 121

122 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The key concept is that a vendor s license may cover more than one device; for example, if you have a virtual host in inventory and many images in the database that run on that host, you may need just one Datacenter license to cover all of the images. NOTE: If you're using this rule type to manage licensing in a virtualized environment, you must first configure a VMWare vcenter rule to import your vcenter database information into the inventory database. For more information, see Virtual-licensing rules overview. About this page Software: Select the software product that you're licensing. Software to search for: Select the software products that are covered by this license. You can add or remove products based on license policies that are specific to your organization. About this page Groups: If you want to run a DTS rule group before running this rule, select it here (optional). Run against all vcenter rules: This rule will run against each VMWare vcenter rule you've configured. This option is selected by default. 122

123 USER'S GUIDE Run against selected vcenter rules: To run this rule against one or more of your VMWare vcenter rules, click the Add button and select the rule(s) from the list. Do not run any vcenter rules: Use this option if you want to run this rule against the inventory database only, not a vcenter database. About this page Click the Edit button on this page to build a new query or import an existing LANDesk query that will "link" or match multiple records in the database. For example, if you want to find devices in a virtualized environment where the host's name is the same as the virtual image's name, you would query for Computer.Network.TCPIP.Host Name and Computer.Virtual Host Data.Host Name. 123

124 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page Use this page to create a threshold field, which is a value the rule will use to determine if it can assign Datacenter software to "collapse" the licenses. Count the number of devices matching: The number of devices that match the query you entered on the previous page. Total items: The total number of cores or processors that match the query. For example, for a virtualized environment, you could select "Processors" to add just the number of processors in your virtual images. Or, you can select any other database attribute for the query to match by clicking the ellipsis (...) button. The threshold value is the value that needs to be exceeded for this rule to run. Fixed value: A number set to "0" means that if the rule finds more than zero devices that match this query (at least one), the rule will run. Attribute: An attribute, such as Computer.Process.Features.Total Cores, that must be exceeded for the rule to run. For one server, the total number of cores might be 10, and in another, it might be 20. The rule looks up the attribute value in the database, and then uses it as the threshold to exceed. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Datacenter Product > All Rules folder. 124

125 USER'S GUIDE VMWare vcenter import wizard You can use this rule to connect to your vcenter database in order to import information about ESX host servers and their associated virtual devices into the inventory database. You'll need to create a rule for each of your vcenter databases. NOTE: Setting up rules for virtual licensing is a two-step process. After configuring this rule type, you'll also need to configure a Datacenter product rule. A Datacenter rule will apply a vendor's advanced licensing policies to the software in your virtualized environment, finding the most cost-effective licensing options for your organization. For more information, see Virtual-licensing rules overview. DTS will need read-only access to the vcenter database. 125

126 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Type: Select the data-source type and enter the connection information. You can configure as many of these connections as needed. DTS currently supports Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle databases. If your data source is not listed, you can connect using the ODBC driver from your software provider. SQL Oracle ODBC Server: The instance to connect to. Database: The database to use. User: The SQL username to use to connect. Password: The SQL username password. TNS server: The name used to connect to the Oracle server. User: The user or schema used to log in to the Oracle server. Password: The password for the user. DSN: The name of the DSN created. The name must be a System DSN for the rule to work as a 126

127 USER'S GUIDE scheduled task or at scan time. User: The username, if needed. Password: The password, if needed. Click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the VMWare vcenter Import > All Rules folder. What happens when a vcenter rule runs As this rule runs, it will perform the following tasks: Create inventory records for all ESX host servers in the vcenter database by collecting the data necessary to perform software licensing, such as processors, cores, and images currently assigned to each virtual host. These new records will appear in the network view under Virtual OS Hosts. Determine which records in the database are assigned to which virtual host server. When you look at the inventory for a virtual host, you'll see a new attribute under Virtual Host Data, the Host Name attribute will be populated. Create records of the processors and cores that have been assigned to the virtual host server. The key field imported is Computer.Process.Features.Total Cores, which is the number of cores that have been assigned to the image. Web custom data wizard This help topic is currently under construction. Web import wizard You can use the web import wizard as a tool for collecting data from the Internet or an intranet by specifying a website to go to and what information to gather. The rule you create can be as simple as going to a single website, or as complex as browsing a number of web pages to find to the data you're looking for. The most popular web import rules perform manufacturer warranty look-ups. Web import rules can also be used for internal purposes such as pulling information from the web pages of devices. Many of these rules install by default with Data Analytics and are ready for you to run. You can also copy and edit them for your own specific needs. About this page Use this page to enter information that will connect you to a website where you can import data into inventory. URL: The start location for the web import rule. It's also possible to use an attribute value from the device you're running the rule against by putting the full attribute path with %% on both sides of it. Use anonymous connection: The normal option. If a website uses integrated security where a pop-up asks for a username and password, you'll need to enter the User and Password. If the website has fields where you log in, you still connect as anonymous. 127

128 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Use proxy: If you're not using Internet Explorer, you may need to specify proxy settings. We recommend that you use Internet Explorer; it has the most comprehensive settings to handle the variety of proxies. Use IE and its settings: Uses Internet Explorer as the browser. Most of the time you'll want to use IE, because it allows full website functionality. Many sites have scripts or cookies that need to be passed, and Internet Explorer allows those to work seamlessly. Timeout: Depending on how much data you retrieve and the speed of your connection, you may need to increase the timeout value. Values are listed in seconds. About this page Use this page to select and configure the forms containing data that will be passed to the website. In the pane, right-click and select Add web form. You can also define a condition for a form. To do so, first configure a form, then right-click it and select Add Condition. From this page, you can also right-click the form name and select Add returns to specify the data that will be searched for and returned from the website. When you're finished configuring all options, click the Finish button. Your new rule will appear in the Web Import > All Rules folder. 128

129 USER'S GUIDE About this page Use this page to define the data that is being passed to the website. New URL: If it's necessary to switch URLs after loading the previous page, you can specify a new page to go to. Normally, you'll have a link on the page to click instead, which is preferred. Send data to server as: When passing client data to a form, it can be sent on the URL line (query string) or in a form (form data). Query string performs a GET while form data performs a POST. If needed, you can specify the data to be passed to the server, which requires both the field name and value to be passed. You can use a database attribute to populate the field. Submit properties: Specifies how control is passed to the next page: by submitting a form, clicking a link, or just loading the page. Form name: Performs a submit on the form. Enter the name of the form as it should appear on the page. Button: Allows a link or button to be clicked. 129

130 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Tag: The type of object, such as a for a link, button for a button, or input for a text field. Type: Type of field. Use a for a link or submit for an input field of type submit. Field: Field name to search for; allows you to search a field to find the proper one to click on. Value: The value to search for in the field. For example, if you're looking for a link that references a page called computer.htm, you would put href in the field and computer.htm in the value. Look for inner text: Allows the text between the start and end tag to be searched instead of an attribute of the tag. Only load page: Simply loads the page instead of performing any action on it. Delete cookies with text in name: Necessary if information is kept that causes web pages to perform differently. For example, a web page may save the last serial number searched for its warranty and then bring up the warranty page by default instead of a page asking for the serial number. Wait for initial page load: Because of performance or simply how web pages function, the browser may report the page as loaded when, in fact, only one of its sub-pages is. In this case, you may need to have DTS wait for the entire page to load before attempting to populate the form data. Text to appear: Text to search for in the return page. Putting WAIT here will simply cause DTS to wait. Max wait: Maximum number of seconds to wait for the page. Wait after page load: Causes DTS to pause before moving onto the next step. If you're performing another post back step, this can be handled by waiting for initial page load on the next page. If you're not performing another post back step, then you may need to wait for the data to appear before searching for the return data. Text to appear: Text to search for in the return page. Putting WAIT here will simply cause DTS to wait. Max wait: Maximum number of seconds to wait for the page. 130

131 USER'S GUIDE About this page Use this page to add as many attributes as you want. You may only pull elements for one one-to-many component, however. Click the Add button to begin adding the attributes. Treat dates as US format: Show dates in month/day/year format. 131

132 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS About this page Use this page to add the attributes to the return page. Attribute: The database attribute where the data will be stored. Click the ellipsis button (...) to open the attributes browser. Use regular expressions: Use a regular expression to search the website for data (see Microsoft Regular Expression help for syntax). Return as many instances as are found: Used for one-to-many attributes where multiple items are present. For example, certain hardware vendors list the parts that were shipped in the system. Every X: When finding matches, skip over X number of matches to find the next. Set item 0: Useful for setting the first value. Used in warranties to assign the first item (0) as the last expiring warranty. Return as item 0: Use the largest or smallest first value as item 0. End at: Stop searching the page when a certain text string is found. VBScript text box: You can use a VBScript to perform certain operations on the value. Search for string: The more commonly used method of searching a website is a value. Some of the options may not be useful in all situations. We strongly recommend that you use text in tags for these fields. Visible text may be localized depending on the website or OS language. Using the text in tags normally does not change for localization. 132

133 USER'S GUIDE Case insensitive: It's often useful to set this option, because different browsers and websites will return different cases. Header: The first text string to search for. Header is useful in cases of a one-to-many component, a string that will either show up only once, or the next time it shows up, is past the point you want to search for. Search for header once: Only look for the header once for a one-to-many attribute. Find: A string to search for that is after the header. Look for: Another string to search for, either forward or backward. It can also be found a variable Number of Times. For example, if a table has a number of cells (<TD> tag), you may want to go to the fourth cell. Advance to: Similar to Look for, but the search only goes forward. Putting a "0" in Number of Times will stay at the Look for location. Capture until: Grab text until this string is encountered. 133

134 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Database Doctor Database Doctor is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that provides database protection, migration, and lifecycle maintenance to ensure the integrity of your inventory data. You can use Database Doctor to protect the inventory database by removing corrupt or unwanted fields and classes, as well as removing and archiving duplicate records, all on demand or as scheduled. Once duplicates are removed, you can schedule data-integrity configurations to run on a regular basis, assuring on-going protection from data corruption. Database Doctor also helps with database migration, preserving key inventory data and settings when you upgrade or restore your LANDESK core server. Before a rebuild, protect your inventory data by exporting (as scan files) inventory records, queries, policy details, and other configuration information. After the rebuild, you can import the data back into the database. This export, rebuild, and import technique not only helps with upgrades and disaster recovery but also avoids the instability of an overlay installation. Finally, you can use Database Doctor to help with database-lifecycle maintenance. As devices age and require removal from the inventory database, use Database Doctor to archive them to an off-line state by saving device data as scan files in a directory. You'll have a complete record of retired assets that aren't included in Management Suite license calculations. About the Database Doctor view When you first open Database Doctor, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a toolbar and a tasks view where you can complete various inventoryprotection and clean-up tasks. About the toolbar icons Export computers: Exports device data to a scan file, preserving the data so that you can import it back into the inventory database. Delete attributes: Deletes any unwanted attributes in the inventory database that are obsolete or irrelevant. 134

135 USER'S GUIDE Delete duplicate computers: Deletes duplicate entries for a device in the inventory database. Duplicate entries for the same device can occur when devices are moved around from location to location or from user to user. This is especially true of re-imaged computers. You can add attributes that define what is unique about each device. Delete old computers: Deletes and archives old device data from the inventory database. Before you can remove the data, you must first define what constitutes an old device by specifying the number of days since the device was last updated. Archive computers: Archives device data by deleting the data from the inventory database and exporting it to a scan file. Import: Imports all scan files of exported device data from a single directory back into the inventory database. Delete user: Removes and reassigns user objects. Once users are created inside Management Suite, they can create and own many different kinds of objects. Before you can remove a user, you must first find and remove all of the user's objects manually. Check scan files: Analyzes error scans that are not allowed into the inventory database. If a problem is recognized, information will be provided about whether the error is normal. Enable real-time processing: Enables real-time processing for inventory scans. Edit properties: Allows you to edit the properties of a configuration that appears in the Database Doctor tasks view. Delete: Deletes a configuration from the Database Doctor tasks view. Toggle active/inactive: Makes a configuration active or inactive. An active configuration runs when the core server receives the scan file. For active mode to work, real-time processing must also be enabled. To do this, make sure the green stoplight is visible on the Database Doctor toolbar. You can only use toggle at a Management Suite console on the core server. If you're at a remote console, this option is dimmed. Schedule: Schedules a configuration to run now or at a later time against the inventory database by creating a script in Scheduled Tasks. If you want to change the scheduled settings, open the Scheduled Tasks tool and modify them there. Export configurations: Exports configuration information from the inventory database to an.xml file. Import configurations: Imports configuration information from an.xml file into the inventory database. Refresh list: Refreshes the tasks view. Run order: Sets the run order for your configurations. The top configuration runs first, and the others follow in descending order. Use the arrow keys to change the run order. You can only set the run order on active configurations. To make a configuration active, you must be at a Management Suite console on the core server. Large icon: Changes the Database Doctor tasks view to large icons. 135

136 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Small icons: Changes the Database Doctor tasks view to small icons. List: Changes the Database Doctor tasks view to a list format. Details: Changes the Database Doctor tasks view to a detailed columns-list format. Getting started Read the following sections to learn about tasks you can perform using Database Doctor. Exporting device data and configurations At times, you'll need to reset the inventory database. Exporting all scan and configuration information beforehand saves time and preserves your custom data. Export device data (as a scan file) You can export all or just a few device records in the inventory database to a scan file. If you choose to export data found by using a query, you need to create the query first. (For instructions, see "Creating database queries" in the LANDESK Management Suite Help.) By default, the exported scan file is named <Computer.Device ID>-<date>.scn. During the export process, you can change the database attribute used to name the file (instead of the default attribute of Computer.Device ID). 1. On the toolbar, click the Export computers icon. 2. In the Export Computers dialog, select one of the following check boxes and click the Next button: For All computers in database, continue to the next step. For Only selected computers, you must click the Add button to select one or more devices from the resulting list. Click the Next button. For Computers in a query, you must select a saved query that will export all devices found by the query. Click the Next button. 3. In the Directory text box, enter the location where you want the resulting scan (.SCN) file to be saved. Click the ellipsis (...) button to browse to a location. 4. In the Attribute text box, use the default or enter a different attribute for naming the scan file. 5. To save the configuration and run it later, click the Finish button. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. Otherwise, select Perform export now and click the Finish button to export the device data immediately. NOTE: You can also export device data by right-clicking devices in the Management Suite network view and selecting Export. Export configuration information 136

137 USER'S GUIDE If you encounter problems with the inventory database and need to reset it at some point, you'll first want to export the configurations you've created in Database Doctor and Data Translation Services to prevent this data from being lost. Using Database Doctor, you can export these custom configurations to an.xml file. 1. On the toolbar, click the Export configurations icon. 2. Scroll through the list of configurations to export. If you don't want to include a configuration for export, select it and click the Remove button. 3. Click the ellipsis (...) button to select a directory location for the.xml file. 4. Click the OK button to export the configurations to the.xml file. Exported configuration information includes the following: Configuration and rule data Scopes Users Queries Tasks and scheduling information Scripts Reports Groups Policies Unmanaged device information Software compliance information (including LDAPPL files to search for and exclude) Packages Delivery methods Dashboards Client configurations Column sets Certain key files (keys and certs) Deleting attributes, duplicate and old computers, and users You can use Database Doctor for the following clean-up tasks. Delete attributes Over time, the inventory database can become populated with many attributes that are obsolete or irrelevant. You can use Database Doctor to delete these unwanted attributes. 137

138 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 1. On the toolbar, click the Delete attributes icon. 2. Browse to the database attribute you want to delete. 3. To delete one or more attributes, select the check box next to each attribute you want to delete. 4. To delete an attribute and all of its child attributes, select the check box next to the parent. 5. To delete all non-default attributes, leaving only those attributes that were initially installed with Management Suite, click the Select non-defaults button. 6. Click the Next button. The dialog displays a list of all attributes you selected for deletion. To see if any devices currently have one of these attributes associated with them, select an attribute in the list and click the Computers button. 7. To save the configuration and run it later, click the Finish button. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. Otherwise, click the Delete now button to remove the attributes from the database immediately. Delete duplicate computers In a large company, devices are often moved from location to location or from user to user, possibly creating duplicate entries in the inventory database for the same device. This is especially true of reimaged computers. You can use Database Doctor to prevent this problem by specifying attributes that define what is unique about each device. NOTE: We recommend that you use an attribute that is normally unique for all devices, such as Computer.Network.NIC Address. When adding an attribute, you can choose to exclude certain values from the duplicate check. For example, there may be times when a device's Computer.Network.NIC Address may show up as This is not a value you want compared to other devices' NIC addresses, so you can exclude that value. Any devices with a NIC address of will not be treated as duplicates. 1. On the toolbar, click the Delete duplicate computers icon. 2. Click the Add button to open the attribute browser. Browse to the unique attribute that you want to use to identify duplicate devices. 3. If you want to exclude certain values from the duplicate check, select an attribute and click the Exclude button. For example, certain devices will return as the NIC Address, so you may want to exclude that to prevent those devices from being deleted. 4. If other attributes are necessary to define uniqueness, repeat steps 2-3. When you have selected all attributes, click the Next button. 5. Select the attribute that will determine which devices to keep. By default, Last updated by inventory server is the attribute used. You can choose another attribute, but it must be a date attribute. Click the Next button to continue. 138

139 USER'S GUIDE 6. To save the device's information to a scan file before deleting, select Export computers, then enter the path or browse to the location where you want to save the scan file. 7. In the Attribute text box, use the default or enter a different attribute for naming the scan file. 8. To save the configuration and perform the deletion later, click the Finish button. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. 9. To delete the duplicate devices now, select Perform delete duplicates now and click the Next button. 10. If you chose to delete immediately, a dialog appears with a list of devices to be deleted. Database Doctor assumes that the device with the most recent attribute from step 5 is the correct device to keep. The list displays only the duplicates (those with an older date). 11. Select one or more devices in the list and click the Remove button to delete them. 12. Click the Finish button to save the configuration. NOTE: You may want to schedule this configuration as a task to remove duplicate devices every day or on a periodic basis. Delete old computers In a large company, devices are often decommissioned and need to be removed from the inventory database. One way to do this is to remove device records that have not been scanned in a certain time period. Database Doctor provides a convenient tool to clean up the inventory database while still saving the old device information. To use this tool, you must define what constitutes an old device by choosing the number of days since the device was last updated. 1. On the toolbar, click the Delete old computers icon. 2. Select the attribute to use to determine how to age out computers. By default, Last updated by inventory server is selected. 3. Choose the number of days since the device was last updated. Any devices not updated within that number of days will be included in the "old" list. 4. If you want to export the data from these devices to a scan file, select Export computers and then enter the path or browse to the location where you want to save the scan file. 5. In the Attribute text box, use the default or enter a different attribute for naming the scan file. 6. Click the Next button to continue. 7. To delete the device records now, highlight one or more devices in the list and click the Remove button; otherwise, you can perform the deletion later. 8. Click the Finish button to save the configuration. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. 139

140 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS NOTE: You may want to schedule this configuration as a task to remove old devices every day or on a periodic basis. Delete users and reassign their objects Once users are created inside Management Suite, they can create and own many different kinds of objects. If you want to delete a user, you must first find and remove all of the user's objects manually. Database Doctor provides a simple tool for removing and reassigning user objects. 1. On the toolbar, click the Delete user icon. 2. From the list, select the users you want to delete. 3. Select Delete the users. Also select Change ownership of objects to a different user if you want to reassign their objects. From the drop-down list, select the new user that will own the objects. 4. Click the OK button. A dialog will appear if any problems occur. Archiving device records Database Doctor provides a convenient way to archive device records by enabling you to export the data to a scan file and delete it from the inventory database. Archive device records 1. On the toolbar, click the Archive computers icon. 2. In the Archive Computers dialog, select one of the following check boxes and click the Next button: For Select conditions, you must click the Add button to add an attribute and the value conditions that have been defined for that attribute. For example, as part of an asset-management process, custom data may be associated with a device that shows its status. This data could be imported from another database using Data Translation Services. When the field Computer.Status is set to Surplused, the device can be removed from the database. To select additional conditions, repeat this step. For Only selected computers, click the Add button to select one or more devices to archive. If you selected Computers in a query, you can choose to archive all devices found by a saved query. If necessary, create the query in the Management Suite network view before you begin this task. 3. Click the Next button to continue. 4. In the Directory text box, enter the location where you want the resulting scan (.SCN) file to be saved. (Click the ellipsis (...) button to browse to a location.) 5. In the Attribute text box, use the default or enter a different attribute for naming the scan file. 140

141 USER'S GUIDE 6. To save the archive configuration, click the Finish button. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. 7. To archive the computers now, select Perform archive now and click the Finish button. NOTE: You can also archive devices by right-clicking them in the Management Suite network view and selecting Archive. This is similar to the Export menu option but will delete the device from the database. Importing exported data back into the inventory database Most of the tools in Database Doctor enable you to export information, which is particularly useful if you need to reset your database. Database Doctor also provides an easy method for importing that saved information back into the inventory database. Import all scan files in a directory Data for exported devices resides in scan files. You can import all scan files from a single directory back into the inventory database. 1. On the toolbar, click the Import icon. 2. In the Import Data dialog, select All computers in directory and click the Next button. 3. In the Directory text box, enter the location where the exported scan (.SCN) file was saved. (Click the ellipsis (...) button to browse to a location.) 4. To save the import configuration, click the Finish button. The configuration will appear in the Database Doctor tasks view, where you can name and run it at a later time. 5. To perform the import immediately, select Import now and click the Finish button. Import configuration information If you used the Export configurations toolbar icon to export your Database Doctor or Data Translation Services configurations to an.xml file, you can import that file data back into the inventory database at any time. NOTE: To import configuration information associated with devices, such as Scheduled Task status information, you must first import the device data back into the inventory database. 1. On the toolbar, click the Import configurations icon. 2. In the File text box, click the ellipsis (...) button to find the location of the.xml file you want to import back into the inventory database. 3. Click the OK button to perform the import immediately. Checking scan files Database Doctor provides a simple way to analyze error scans that are not allowed into the inventory database. If a problem is recognized, Database Doctor will include a solution or information about whether it is normal. 141

142 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The scan-file folders are the same as the folders on the core server: Errorscan: Scan files that list random errors. ErrorBigScan: Scan files that were too large for the inventory service to handle. ErrorTrans: Scan files that caused an error during transfer from client to server. Check scan files 1. On the toolbar, click the Check scan files icon. The Database Doctor view changes to a directory tree on the left and a file listing on the right. 2. In the tree list, open a folder to display a list of the scan files it contains on the right. 3. On the toolbar, click the Analyze scans icon. Running this process may take a while, after which you can see a list of errors and other issues with the scan files. NOTE: To view more detailed error information, right-click the scan file and select Show error info. If there is a recognized error and an associated action you can take, it will be listed in the error information. You can also look at the scan file or the inventory for the device. 142

143 USER'S GUIDE Discovery Services Discovery Services is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that helps you gather data about devices for which Management Suite has no agent, such as printers, switches, routers, and so on. You can also use Discovery Services to gather inventory data from devices that you've chosen not to deploy the LANDESK agent to. Discovery Services uses an SNMP or WMI scan configuration to connect to these devices, then gathers and stores the available inventory data in either the Asset Control database (for SNMP-enabled devices) or the inventory database (for WMI-enabled devices). Once the scan configuration has run, you can view and query the resulting inventory data in either database, and use the licensed-software rules in Data Translation Services to convert the data into more meaningful information. Discovery Services is also useful for gathering additional data that's not attainable with a normal network scan. For example, you can use a scan configuration, along with the Data Translation Services licensed-software rules, to determine the edition type of your software products, such as Microsoft SQL Server. For more information, see "Microsoft SQL Server edition discovery" (149). About the Discovery Services view When you open Discovery Services, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a tree structure that lists various folders. About the tree-list folders The tree list contains these main folders: Addresses: Shows the network addresses you want to scan to discover devices. These addresses can be found via an IP address range, UDD devices or groups, an Asset Control or Management Suite query, or Active Directory. If you scan for UDD or Asset Control devices, the IP addresses associated with these entries will be used. 143

144 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Logins: Shows the login information Discovery Services needs to connect to and scan SNMP- or WMI-enabled devices. For SNMP connections, the minimum needed is the read community string, though additional information may be necessary depending on your environment. You may need to create multiple logins. For WMI connections, you need to configure a Windows login. MIBs: Shows the data that may be available on your devices, used only for reference or for limiting the scope of data retrieved from the scan. While it's helpful to load MIBs that apply to your hardware, they're not necessary for retrieving the data or interpreting it. WMI: Shows the data that may be available on your WMI-enabled devices. Use WMI groups to limit the scope of data retrieved from the scan. Remote Scanners: Shows devices that are remote scanners. Remote scanners offload the scanning process from the core server and are most useful for scanning subnets that are not accessible from the core. The Remote Scanners folder remains empty until you set up any number of devices as a remote scanners. Configurations: Shows the scan configurations you've created. After configuring addresses and logins and deploying remote scanners, you need to map them to each other to pull inventory data from devices. About the toolbar icons Refresh: Refreshes the tree list. Delete: Deletes an item from the tree list. Settings: Enables you to define settings for threads and for preventing duplicate records. Use the Threads tab to select how many addresses to scan for at once; ten is the recommended number. For information about the Duplicates tab, see "Detecting duplicate inventory records" (148). Getting started To use Discovery Services, you need to complete the following tasks in the order listed. The final task will be to create a scan configuration that uses the information you set up in these tasks to pull data from UDD devices or other devices. Configure addresses to scan To discover unmanaged devices with Discovery Services, you must configure the network addresses you want to scan. These addresses can be found via an IP address range, UDD devices or groups, an Asset Control or Management Suite query, or Active Directory. If you scan for UDD or Asset Control devices, the IP addresses associated with these entries will be used. You can configure as many addresses as you want and create groups of addresses as well. To update any of the addresses defined in the Addresses sub-folders, right-click Addresses and select Update network addresses. To configure addresses to scan 144

145 USER'S GUIDE 1. In the tree view, expand Addresses. 2. Right-click All Addresses and select Add Address. 3. Enter a name for the address configuration, then select one of the options below for the specific type of address you're adding: IP Address Range: Enter a Start IP address. If you do not enter an End, Discovery Services will only scan the one address. Asset Control query: Click the ellipsis (...) button to select a query from the list. These queries are created in the Asset Control view. Windows domain: Enter a Server name, User, and Password. Select a Container and select Search subcontainers to search for addresses in those places. UDD Device: Click the ellipsis (...) button to select a single device address from the inventory database. UDD Group: From the drop-down list, select a UDD group to scan. Management Suite query: From the drop-down list, select an existing LANDESK query. 4. For Maximum time for retrieving data, the recommended time is 600 seconds. 5. Click the OK button. Configure login information For SNMP connections, the minimum needed is the read community string, though additional information may be necessary depending on your environment. You may need to create multiple logins. To configure SNMP login information 1. In the tree view, right-click Logins and select Add SNMP Login. 2. Enter a Name for this login configuration. 3. Enter the Community string (by default, this is public). 4. Set the other options as necessary for your environment. 5. Click the Save button. For WMI connections, you need to configure a Windows login. To configure Windows (WMI) login information 1. In the tree view, right-click Logins and select Add Windows Login. 2. Enter a Name for this login configuration. 3. Enter the User as <domain>\<login> for domain accounts or \<login> for local accounts. 4. Enter the user's Password for this login. 5. Click the OK button. Browse MIB information SNMP uses MIBs to define what data is stored and how that data is accessed. The data uses a "." 145

146 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS notation (for example, ) in the sysdescription field. The MIB tree that's visible in Discovery Services is used only for reference or for limiting the scope of information retrieved from the scan. While it's helpful to load MIBs that apply to your hardware, if a MIB is not loaded, network scanning isn't affected. You can browse the tree to see what information may be available on your devices. NOTE: Use the MIBS folder right-click menu to load a MIB file, export the MIBs list to an.xml file, or import MIBs from an.xml file. While there are literally thousands of different attributes defined in the standard MIBs, and many more that are specific to manufacturers and models, it's up to a manufacturer to decide what information is actually available on a particular device. Discovery Services uses MIB groups, which are simply collections of OIDs, for scanning. You can create MIB groups and use them for different scans (for example, in a full scan one day but in a scan that only gathers toner information the next day). Configuring different MIB groups allows you to change the information that's scanned. When you add an OID, the scanner will collect that OID and all OIDs that start with that number. For example, by entering , all items starting with that value will be scanned. However, or any OID starting with a different value will not be scanned. To create a MIB group and add OIDs 1. In the tree view, expand MIBs, right-click MIB groups, and select Create group. Name the group. 2. Add OIDs by right-clicking the group folder and selecting Add OID. 3. In the Select MIB entries dialog, expand the available MIB entries to add an OID. 4. Click the OK button. Repeat the procedure as necessary to build a collection of OIDs for this MIB group. All defined MIB groups will be available as part of the scan configuration creation process. Configure WMI groups and rules There are two main reasons to create a Discovery Services scan configuration for WMI-enabled devices: When you've chosen not to deploy the LANDESK agent to devices, yet you want inventory data about them. When you want additional data that's not attainable with a normal network scan, such as the edition type of your software products. For information, see "Microsoft SQL Server edition discovery" (149). In either case, the resulting data will appear in the Management Suite inventory database. 146

147 USER'S GUIDE You can use the WMI folder to view existing WMI groups, create new ones, and customize groups by adding WMI rules that specify the data want you want to find in the scan. All defined WMI groups will be available as part of the scan configuration creation process. Deploy remote scanners A remote scanner is a device that offloads the scanning process from the core server. It can run a complete network scan and is most useful for scanning subnets that are not accessible from the core. Remote scanners receive the scan configurations (that you create below) from the core server and run them every 24 hours by default. For a device to be a remote scanner, it must have two agents deployed to it: the LANDESK agent and the LANDESK Data Analytics Discovery Services Remote Agent. The LANDESK Data Analytics Discovery Services Remote Agent installs with Data Analytics as a scheduled task and is available to deploy to devices from the Scheduled Tasks tool. For the agent to run successfully, devices must already be in the inventory database. You can deploy the agent to as many devices as needed. In a scan configuration, if you assign a specific remote scanner to run, it will run the entire configuration. If you select Autodistribute by subnet, the scanner will run only the configurations that contain a subnet that the scanner is directly connected to. When the remote scanner receives the configuration, it will only scan directly connected networks; all other items in the configuration will be ignored. While a remote scanner is run as a service, you can initiate it manually by running MANAGEDPLANET.DISCOVERYSERVICES.REMOTESCANNER.EXE /NOSERVICE from the installation directory. NOTE: Remote-scanner log files can be found be default in the C:\Program Files (x86)\landesk\data Analytics\Discovery Services\ directory. Create, run, and schedule scan configurations After completing the tasks above, you need to combine the information into a scan configuration that will pull data from UDD devices or other devices. To create a scan configuation 1. In the tree view, expand Configurations. 2. Right-click All Configs and select Add Config. 3. Enter a Name and Description for the configuration. For SNMP-enabled devices, select Use SNMP. Only select Add to database if responds to ping if you want to add every address to the database that responds to a ping. In most cases, you won't want to select this option. For WMI-enabled devices, select Use WMI. 4. Select the addresses you want to add to this configuration by clicking the Add button and highlighting the addresses you want. 147

148 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 5. Add logins to the configuration by clicking the Add button and highlighting the logins you want. The order of the logins in the list is the order the remote scanner will use when attempting to connect to the devices. 6. For SNMP-enabled devices: Select specific OIDs or MIB groups to search for by clicking the Add button. If you don't add anything, the scanner will return all OIDs that the login has access to. The scan process can take a long time with large MIB databases, such as large routers or switches, but generally this will not cause a problem. For WMI-enabled devices: Select the WMI groups to search for by clicking the Add button. If you don't add anything, the scanner will return all groups that the login has access to. 7. Select whether the configuration will be made available to remote scanners and which ones. If you select Autodistribute by subnet, the agent will only run configurations that contain a subnet that the scanner is directly connected to. The agent will also only run those subnets that are directly connected to the remote scanner. 8. Click the Finish button. To immediately gather information from a configuration 1. Right-click the configuration. 2. Select Run now. After running a configuration, new inventory data will appear in either the Asset Control view (for SNMP-enabled devices) or the network view (for WMI-enabled devices). Two files are created during the process a log file, which lets you know if the configuration succeeded or failed and an.xml file, which contains the actual inventory data. By default, the files are located in these directories: Log file C:\Program Files (x86)\landesk\managementsuite\mp_log. The filename will appear as Discovery - <configuration name> - <date><time>.log..xml file C:\Program Files (x86)\landesk\managementsuite\mp_temp\discserv\processed. To schedule periodic scans using a configuration It's important to periodically scan devices for any changes. You can automate this process by doing the following. 1. Right-click the configuration and select Schedule. 2. Name and configure the task. Click the Save button to add the task to the Scheduled Tasks tool in the Management Suite console. Detecting duplicate inventory records Discovery Services performs network scans that gather data about SNMP-enabled devices for which Management Suite has no agent, such as printers, switches, and routers. In the scan, the key used to determine uniqueness is the IP address that SNMP responds on. 148

149 USER'S GUIDE For most of these devices, even ones with more than one IP address, SNMP usually responds on the administrative address. For other devices with multiple IP addresses, such as some Cisco switches, SNMP responds on multiple addresses. To prevent duplicate records from being created for these devices, Discovery Services uses duplicate-detection rules to check any values returned in the scan against existing records. For Cisco switches, the serial number is checked to see if a switch with that same serial number already exists in the database. If it does, the scan data is then merged into the existing record. By default, Discovery Services installs with a Cisco Serial Number duplicate-detection rule already configured. To configure other, similar rules, see the following procedure. Configure duplicate record detection 1. On the Discovery Services toolbar, click the Settings icon. 2. Click the Duplicates tab. 3. If you've already created a duplicate-detection rule that would work here, click the Import button and follow the prompts. To create a new rule, click the Add button and enter a name for the rule. 4. Click the Add button to add an attribute to search for in the scan file. 5. Click the ellipsis (...) button to search for an attribute in the database. Normally, SNMP scan files return only Device.SNMP Entries records. In most cases, you'll select the Device.SNMP Entries.Value attribute. 6. If you selected a one-to-many attribute, which Device.SNMP Entries is, use the text box to enter another attribute to use as the key field. For example, you might want to use Device.SNMP.Entries.OID as a key. 7. In the where value box, select LIKE if you're looking for more than one attribute; otherwise, select = as an operator. 8. Enter the value you're looking for next to the operator. 9. For How many to match, select All or At least. If you selected At least, enter the number that should match. 10. Click the Done button, then click Done again. 11. Click the OK button. Discovery Services will use all listed rules to check values returned in a scan against existing database records. Microsoft SQL Server edition discovery One product that's challenging to license properly is Microsoft SQL Server. When you install SQL Server on any of your network servers, it creates the same Programs entries or registry values regardless of the edition. The same executable files are run whether you install Enterprise, Standard, Developer, or Express, so querying off the inventory database is nearly impossible when determining the edition of SQL Server to purchase. 149

150 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS The one place in the registry where the current edition of SQL Server is stored is in the instance description. The problem here is that the registry key to search for is tied to the instance name. You don t have a good way of knowing what the exact key will be ahead of time, so you can t configure the inventory scanner to scan for it. The solution is to create a scan configuration in Discovery Services that gathers this information, which then enables the licensed-software rules in Data Translation Services to correctly assign the edition of SQL Server being used. NOTE: You must have administrator access to the SQL Server devices you're configuring discovery for. Configure SQL Server edition discovery 1. Go to the Discovery Services > Addresses folder, right-click All Addresses, and select Add Address to configure an address object that will run discovery only on devices running SQL Server. 2. Give the address object a name. 3. Select Management Suite Query as the type of address. From the drop-down list, select All SQL Server Machines, which is a prebuilt query that installed with Discovery Services. Click the OK button. 4. Right-click the Logins folder and select Add Windows Login to create an object that will connect to your SQL Servers via WMI to read the registry. Create as many login objects as needed. These logins need administrator access to the SQL servers. Click the OK button. 5. Right-click the Configuration folder and select Add Config. 6. Give the configuration a name, select Use WMI, and click the Next button. 7. Select where this configuration will be stored. Click the Next button. 8. Click the Add button to select the address created above, and then click the Next button. 9. Click the Add button to select the logins created above, and then click the Next button. 10. In the WMI groups dialog, delete Full Scan from the list and click the Add button. Select the SQL Server Instances group to gather only the SQL Server instance information, not all of the information of a full scan. Click the Next button. 11. Finish creating the configuration and run it. The configuration will scan all devices in the query, and if it can connect, pull back the instance information (stored under the Computer.Managed Planet.SQL Instances class in inventory). The Data Translation Services licensed-software rules will then use the Edition attribute to determine the SQL Server installation type. The software-manager service runs these rules nightly. To keep the data current, it's good practice to schedule this configuration to run periodically. 150

151 USER'S GUIDE Executive Report Pack Executive Report Pack (ERP) is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that provides useful, time-saving reporting features such as scheduled report publishing and organization-driven reports. ERP gives you detailed control over your Management Suite queries, enabling you to edit them with SQL to create reports that contain the data most meaningful to you. ERP installs with a number of reports already defined and ready to run. Executive Report Pack features ERP provides the following features, which you can apply to existing Management Suite reports as well: Report refinement Refine your software and hardware reports with the include/exclude feature. Select software titles and vendors without complex queries. Easily ignore unwanted values for data. Name and reuse common selections. Report organization Organize your reports by mapping them to specific departments in your organization. End users can then select any report or query for their department only. Managers at different levels can select an appropriate view for their reports. Report publishing Publish your reports, once refined and organized, on a regular basis via the scheduled report feature. About the Executive Report Pack view When you open Executive Report Pack, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane consists of a tree structure and a series of toolbar icons. 151

152 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS To navigate ERP, click one of the six main toolbar icons (found on the right-side of the toolbar and explained below) to open new panes that relate directly to the icon selected. These six icons are constant and act as gateways to the functionality within ERP. The left-side icons change when you select one of the six main ("parent") icons. These other icons are described in the sections below as they relate to their parent icon. About the toolbar icons The six main toolbar icons are: Run reports: Run, create, and edit reports in ERP. Manage reports: View all of your saved and scheduled ERP reports from one web location (called the Report Store), as well as schedule and edit reports. Organizations: Organize report data using an organizational structure created in ERP, imported from an LDAP source, or made from a combination of both. Include/exclude lists: Customize reports by including or excluding database attributes that make up the information included within the report. Monitor tasks: Set up options for ing reports to individuals or departments within your organization. Power sort: Customize data sorting within reports. Another constant toolbar icon is: Enable real-time processing: Enables or disables real-time scan processing. You will want to enable this option. Getting started To use ERP, your first task should be to configure the global report settings. After these settings are configured, you can run existing reports, create your own, and schedule reports to run at regular intervals. To further customize reports, you can also create organizational structures, set up include/exclude lists, and sort report data. Global report settings You can configure global settings to create reports from multiple core servers, send reports via , and track scheduled tasks and patch history. Set up multiple-core reporting You can set up ERP to run reports against multiple databases at the same time, avoiding the need to create a roll-up database for gathering data from more than one database in the same report. Currently, this option is only supported if all databases are Microsoft SQL Server. 152

153 USER'S GUIDE To enable multiple-core reporting, you must complete two procedures. First, configure a linked server on the SQL server that's associated with the core server you'll use as the main core. Next, configure ERP to report on multiple databases. 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. On the toolbar, click the Settings icon. 3. On the Multiple cores tab, click the Add button. 4. Enter the name of the Core server associated with the remote database. 5. Enter the name of the Database server for the remote database (most of these settings should be the same as ones you already entered). 6. Enter the Database name for the remote database. 7. Enter the Database user for the remote database. 8. Enter the Database password for the remote database. 9. Enter the Tables owner of the database tables (normally this is dbo). 10. Enter the Link name you created in the first procedure. 11. Click the OK button. For reports that support multiple cores, you will now see a new option in the report header called Enable Multiple Cores, where you can select any of the cores you want to report against. Data from the multiple databases will be combined in the results. NOTE: If you're using include/exclude lists in your reports, you don't need to duplicate that information out to the remote core servers. The lists used are the ones configured on the main core server. Configure settings To send via ERP, you must have access to an SMTP Gateway that the web server can send to. After configuring these settings, you can then reports when you schedule them to run at regular intervals. 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. On the toolbar, click the Settings icon. 3. In the Report Settings dialog, click the settings tab. 4. Enter the From address that will appear in s. 5. Enter the SMTP server name or address and login information. 6. Enter any other information and click the OK button. Turn on/off Task Listener service The Task Listener service tracks scheduled tasks and patch history, storing the data in tables in the 153

154 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS inventory database. NOTE: We recommend that you enable this service only when using the patch reports that need data. This service can significantly increase the size of your database and impact performance. 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. On the toolbar, click the Settings icon. 3. In the Report Settings dialog, click the Task service tab. 4. From the drop-down list, select Yes or No to enable/disable the service. Running, creating, and scheduling reports ERP installs with a number of reports by default. To view those reports, create new ones, and edit global report settings, click the Run reports toolbar icon. About the tree-list folders Under Reports in the tree list, you'll see folders that contain a number of predefined reports: Asset Control: Reports showing data for devices currently in the Asset Control database. Combined: Reports showing data for devices in both the Asset Control and Management Suite inventory databases. DBDR: Reports showing Database Doctor activity. DTS: Reports showing data gathered using Data Translation Services rules. ERP: Reports showing data that ERP obtains from device records in the inventory database. User: User-created reports automatically go into this folder. About the toolbar icons After you click the Run reports toolbar icon, the left-side icons that appear are: Run: Runs the selected report. Create report: Opens a dialog that begins the process of creating a report. 154

155 USER'S GUIDE Create group: Creates a report group folder under the User folder, which is where you can store and organize reports that you create. All user-created reports must go in the User folder. Edit report: Enables you to edit a user-created report. Reports that install with ERP are not editable. All user-created reports are stored in the User folder. Delete: Enables you to delete a user-created report. Reports that install with ERP are not deletable. All user-created reports are stored in the User folder. Refresh: Refreshes the list display. Settings: Opens a dialog for customizing report settings that relate to using multiple core servers, setting up , and enabling/disabling a service that tracks scheduled tasks and patch history. Running reports To run a report: after you click the Run reports icon, expand the tree-list folders and double-click the report you want to run. A web page will appear with reporting options you can select before actually running the report. Click the Run report button to run the report with the options you select. From this same access page, you can save the report or schedule it to run at regular intervals as a task. Reporting options Once you've accessed a report, you'll see a number of options that you can apply to improve usability. For some of these options to appear, you must first set them up. Show computers: Provides a report column that includes device-specific details. This option is report dependent. Enable organizations: Enables you to select organizational structures you've configured. For more information, see Organizing report data by hierarchy. Enable include/exclude: Enables you to select include/exclude options you've configured. For more information, see Customizing report data with include/exclude lists. Enable multiple cores: Enables you to gather report data from any of the core servers appearing in the list. For more information, see Multiple-core reporting. Dates: Some reports include an option to filter on dates. Graphs: Some reports have graphs associated with them. Formatting options: Show totals only: Displays the standard columns with totals. This is the default display. Show all fields in grid: Displays a spreadsheet-type look that enables you to sort and filter data. You can view all saved or scheduled reports from a single web location called the Report Store. To view a report from this page, you must first run the report, then save and/or schedule it. View reports from a single location To access the Report Store, a user must be a member of the LANDESK Management Suite group. 155

156 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Alternately, you can grant a user read rights to the \remote\report directory. The actual report files are saved in the \remote\report\files directory. 1. On the toolbar, click the Manage reports icon. 2. Click the Report store toolbar icon. 3. Click the All Reports folder to browse the reports. To access the Report Store directly, enter the following URL in a browser: Creating new reports You can use ERP to create a new report from scratch, from an existing report, or by importing data from a query. The four types of reports are: Simple text: Shows all of the information in rows and columns and is how most reports are formatted. Simple text makes it very easy to use additional settings, such as organizations, in your report. Graph: Displays a graph of the different items in the report. You can then drill down on the details for each of the values. Summary: Shows information about one device. A summary is also available from the right-click menu of a device object. Query/Totals: Uses Management Suite queries and operations in the cells to generate a spreadsheet-like report that contains totals and calculated data. All user-created reports appear under the User folder. You can edit a report by selecting it and rightclicking Edit. Reports that install with ERP are not editable. If needed, you can organize new reports within custom groups you create. Create a new group by clicking the Create Group toolbar icon and naming the group. All new groups appear under the User folder as well. To organize reports in these groups, drag and drop them into the groups. Create a simple text report 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. Click the Create report toolbar icon. The Create Report dialog displays. 3. To copy from an existing report, select Copy from an existing report, and then choose the report. 4. To import a query from which to start a report, select Create from an existing query, and then choose the query. Click Text. 5. To create a new report, select Create a new report and click Text. 6. Click the Next button. 7. Enter a unique name and a description for the report. If you want to use a company logo on the report, enter the directory path to an image file as well. 156

157 USER'S GUIDE 8. Click the Next button. 9. Select the type of data you want to report on (Management Suite, Asset Control, or Combined) and click the Next button. 10. Click theadd button to open the Select Attribute dialog. 11. Browse to the attribute you want to report on. (For example, browse to Computer.Display Name.) 12. Click the attribute. The Display name text box shows the column name that will display on the report for that attribute. Optionally, you can edit the display name to display a name that will be more meaningful. 13. Click the OK button. 14. Repeat these steps for each attribute you want to include in the report. The list shows the attributes that you added, and the display name for each. The list order is how the attributes will display from left to right as columns in the report. Click the up/down arrows to reorder the list. 15. Click the Next button. 16. If you want to enter conditions for the report, click the Edit button. For example, you might want the report to display only hard drives that are the first drive in the device system. This would mean that the Computer.Network Adapters.Network Adapter.Number attribute is equal to zero. 17. To create additional conditions, repeat these steps as necessary. 18. Click the Next button. 19. If you used an SQL statement, you need to specify the data type for each attribute in the report. Click an attribute in the list. From the Type drop-down list, select a data type. 20. Click the Next button. 21. You can select attributes for sorting, which also allows you to display totals for the columns you sort on. Later in this procedure, you can then select to show just the sorted columns in a report, or show the sorted and unsorted columns. Select the attribute(s) that you want to sort on and click the Sort button. 22. Click the Next button. 23. You can now choose several additional options for the report. To display the totals for the attributes that you previously chose to sort on, select Display totals next to sorted attributes. 24. To allow the organizations that you set up to be available for this report, select Enable organizations. 25. To set an attribute that will be used to build Include lists for this report, select Enable include/exclude list, and then select the attribute from the list. 26. To show items in the report that do not match the conditions you set for the report, select Show not exist option. 157

158 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 27. If you have a date attribute in the report, select Show start and end date fields and enter those dates. 28. If you have attributes that are not sorted, select Enable show additional details. 29. To add an additional filter on the report, select Show number attr. Note that the field does not need to be a number, but the operations available are designed for one. 30. To enable power sorting, select Allow power sort and select an attribute from the drop-down list. 31. Click the Finish button. Your newly created report will appear under the User folder. Once you save or schedule the report, it will also appear in the Manage Reports view. From there, you can view the report on the Report Store web page or schedule it to run at a different time. Modify queries for new reports When you create a report from an existing query, the SQL statement that the query generates can become quite complex. You may find it's easier to modify an existing query-generated SQL statement than to create your own. You can use ERP to view and edit these query-generated SQL statements for new reports. 1. On the toolbar, click the Create report icon. 2. Select Create from an existing query and select a query that you'd like to modify for a new report. 3. Select Text and click the Next button. 4. Name the report and click the Next button. 5. Select Management Suite and click the Next button. 6. Select the attributes to report on and click the Next button. 7. Select Use SQL and click the Build SQL button. You can modify the SQL statement for this report or copy it for use in other locations. The only way to change the report so it will no longer use the SQL statement is to delete it from the conditions text area. 8. Continue with whatever additional items or changes you want to make to the report. Scheduling reports to run You can schedule reports to run at regular intervals as a task. As part of the scheduling process, you can also configure settings to have the report sent to others. Before a report can be sent via , you need to configure the global settings for ERP. For more information, see Global settings. ERP also enables you to monitor the progress of a report as a scheduled task. Schedule reports 158

159 USER'S GUIDE 1. Run the report that you want to save or schedule. 2. Click the Schedule report button at the top of the report. The Schedule Report page appears. 3. In the File info area, click Save as and enter a unique name for the report. This is the name that will appear in the ERP view. 4. Enter the subject (optional), body, and a description. The description is for your use only. The URL text box shows the report that is currently running. 5. Choose the format to save the report in: HTML, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, a commaseparated value (CSV) file, or an XML file. 6. In the Save the output as file text box, enter a unique name for the report. 7. In the area, enter the address of each person to whom you want to send the report. Use commas to separate each address. You may include a space after the comma (for example, name@anycompany.com, anothername@anycompany.com). 8. To send the entire report file, select File. To send only a link to the file (which is useful when the output file is very large), select Link. 9. In the Start time area, select when you want to start the report, either now or later. 10. In the Reschedule list, choose how often you want this report to run: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. 11. In the Retry area, choose the number of times that you want the system to retry running the report if the report fails to run. 12. Click the Save and schedule script button. NOTE: By default, all reports are saved on the web console server in the \remote\report\files directory. Monitor scheduled reports Once you've scheduled a report to be sent to various end users or departments, you can monitor the task to ensure the job completes. 1. On the toolbar, click the Monitor tasks icon. 2. In the left pane, find the report you've scheduled as a task. 3. Drag and drop the task from the left pane into the Monitored tasks pane (middle pane). 4. Once the task is in the middle pane, you can select various options to ensure it's fully monitored. The monitor options are: when job is complete: Sends a message to the specified address(es) when the task completes. as job is running: Sends a message to the specified address(es) as the task is running for the time frame you specify. Send data about all machines: Sends a message to the specified address(es) providing a status about all devices included in the report. 159

160 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Allow reschedule of failed computers when job is done: Reschedules the same task to run again, only targeting the devices that failed. Job type: Monitors just this job or monitors all jobs scheduled for this task (for example, if the task is used more than once to target different sets of devices). Organizing report data by hierarchy You can use ERP to generate customized reports that offer the most meaning for departments within your organization. All of the options that you configure (such as the organizations or the include list to be used) will be saved when the report is saved. This means that you can configure a different software report for each department in your organization, each with a different list of applications. To begin setting up organizational structures for your report data, click the Organizations toolbar icon. Run a report using organizations After setting up your organizational structures, you can run a report using them. 1. Access a report. 2. In the top area of the report header, click the Report settings tab and select the Enable organizations check box. 3. Click the Organization options button. The Organization Options area appears. 4. Select the organization type you want to report on from the drop-down list. 5. For Select the organizations to report on, do one of the following: To report on all organizational levels, leave the drop-down lists at the All setting. To restrict the report to only certain organizational levels, choose the levels that you want to report on from the drop-down lists. Logically, this will perform an OR operation. (For example, it will report on organizations in Org X or Org Y or Org Z.) 6. For Select how you want the data sorted, do one of the following: To show all the levels in the hierarchy, leave all levels in the Selected options list. (This is the default.) To remove an item from the report display, remove it from the Selected options list. If you want to run a report for a child organization without seeing the parent organization name, move the organization level to the Available options list. 7. Run the report. The report shows data separated into organizations, according to the chosen settings. Totals are given at each level to help make the report more useful. Organizing using an LDAP directory You can create an organizational structure for your report data using an LDAP directory to organize your devices. Organize report data using an LDAP directory 160

161 USER'S GUIDE 1. On the toolbar, click the Organizations icon, and then click the LDAP sychronization icon. 2. In the LDAP Wizard dialog, select the organization type you want to import your LDAP organizational units into. Click the Next button. 3. Enter the appropriate server and login information. If you're using a Data Translation Services mapping rule (see step 6), this information will be used to maintain LDAP data in the inventory database. Click the Next button. 4. To select the container that you want to start importing from, click the ellipsis (...) button to browse and select the container. 5. To import the entire LDAP tree, leave the text box blank. Only items defined as Organizational Units will be imported. 6. If you want to create a Data Translation Services mapping rule, select Create mapping tool; otherwise, continue with step To create a rule, choose one of the following: To create a rule where the user is located inside LDAP, choose Base on user location. To create a rule where the device is located inside LDAP, choose Base on computer location. 8. If you want LDAP information for the device to be imported as the scan is processed, select the Set rule active box. Click the Next button. 9. Click Sync now to start the import process. The text box will show many informational messages during the import. When the import is finished, ERP will display the organizational structure in a tree diagram. 10. If you want to add new organizations to the tree that was imported, click the Add organizations icon in the toolbar. NOTE: The syncing process is intelligent in that it remembers which containers came from LDAP. If you perform an LDAP Synchronization later, any new containers will be added and any that have been removed from LDAP will be deleted from Management Suite. Creating your own organizations Instead of importing organizations from LDAP, you may want to create your own organizational structures. Or, if you've already imported a structure using LDAP Synchronization, you can still add your own organizations to that structure. You can have multiple organizational structures, called organization types. The key difference between organization types is that each type has its own attribute that its structure is based around. For example, you may want to report on devices by department; to do this, you would use the Computer.Owner.Department attribute. However, you may also want to report on computers by site; to do this, you might use the Computer.Network.TCPIP.Default Gateway Address attribute. 161

162 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Most organizations will have many different departments at one physical location, and one department will likely be represented at different locations. By using different organization types with different attributes, you're able to create separate organizational structures for your different reporting needs. Set the attribute for an organization type 1. On the toolbar, click the Organizations icon. 2. Right-click the organization type you want to change the attribute for and select Change attribute. 3. A message appears confirming that you want to change the attribute. Click Yes. 4. To use your Management Suite scopes as an organizational structure, select Scopes, or select Attribute and click the ellipsis button (...) to browse to the attribute you want. 5. To select an attribute for devices in the Asset Control database, click the Advanced button. 6. Click the OK button. NOTE: If you're using Asset Control, you can configure the same organizational structure to work for both Management Suite and Asset Control devices by clicking the Advanced button. For example, you can use an IP address for both by selecting Computer.Network.TCPIP.Address for Management Suite and Device.Network.TCPIP.Address for Asset Control. Create your own organizations 1. On the toolbar, click the Organizations icon. 2. Right-click the organization type you want to create an organizational structure for and select Add organization. Repeat this step to build your organizational tree. 3. Add values to the containers in the organizational tree: Highlight an organization in the left tree view and drag and drop values from the Available values list onto the organization you want to assign them to. For example, suppose you want any devices that have a Default Gateway Address of , , or to belong to the Marketing organization. First, you would highlight Marketing in the organizational tree. Then you would drag each gateway address from Available values list to the Marketing container. This information is as current as the last scan date for the device. If the state of the device changes after you create the organization, the device will be assigned automatically to the correct organization on the next scan. For example, if you're using a gateway address as the value, the default gateway address in the database would be updated for a device moved from one subnet to another as soon as a hardware scan was performed. Then, when a report is run, the device would show up in the appropriate organization. 162

163 USER'S GUIDE Setting organizational-level names in reports When a report is run, the names of your different organizational-tree levels become the header names of the report columns. By default, they are simply Level 1, Level 2, and so on. You can change the names that will be displayed in reports. Set organizational-level names in reports 1. On the toolbar, click the Organizations icon, then click the Set level names toolbar icon. 2. For each name you want to edit, select the name and click the Rename button. 3. Enter the new name. From here, you can also change the order the names (columns) will appear in the report. 4. When you're finished, click the OK button. NOTE: Changing these names or the order of the names will not affect what you have defined in the main organizational page. This task changes only the names that will be displayed in reports. Customizing report data with include/exclude lists ERP gives you the ability to use include and exclude lists to report on just a subset of items in the inventory database. For example, instead of running a report showing every software package in the database, you can choose to include just those applications you care about, such as Microsoft Office applications. As new items are added to the inventory database, they appear by default in the Unknown list. You can then review the new items and decide whether to add them to the Included or Excluded list. Create include and exclude lists Add every item you want to report on to the Included list. Add items that you'll never want to report on to the Excluded list. 1. On the toolbar, click the Include/exclude Lists icon. The left pane shows the database attributes for different reports. For example, reports that focus on Software Application Names (going to Software.Package in the console) use the Software.Package.Name attribute. Reports based on the Software.Application Suites use the Software.Application Suites.Application Suites.Name attribute. 2. To view the different lists that have been created for an attribute, expand the attribute in the tree view. Expand the lists to display the Excluded, Included, and Unknown categories. 3. To create a new list, right-click an attribute and select Add list. You can create as many lists as you want. 4. To include an item in your reports, drag and drop the item from the Unknown list to the Included list. 163

164 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 5. If you never want to include an item in your reports, drag and drop it from the Unknown list to the Exclude list. 6. If you're not sure about an item, leave it in the Unknown list. You can repeat this procedure later to move the item to another list. When the report runs, only the items in the Included list are reported on; any item in the Excluded or Unknown lists are not reported on. NOTE: You can move items from one list to another when you're running a report. However, you can only create new lists in the ERP view. Run a report using include and exclude lists When you run a report, you can move attributes from the Include list to the Exclude list, and vice versa. 1. Access a report. 2. In the top area of the report header, click the Report settings tab and select the Enable include/exclude check box. 3. Click the Include options button. The Include/Exclude Options area appears. 4. In the Use settings of list, select a list that you created in ERP. 5. If you want to move an item from Included to Excluded (or vice versa), select the item, then click the arrow to move the item to the other list. 6. If you want to move an item from the Unknown list to the Included or Excluded, select the item, then click the Included or Excluded button at the bottom of the list. 7. Click the Run report button. Whatever Included list has been selected will be used to run the report. NOTE: Not all reports have Included lists. Sorting data within reports Certain database attributes are difficult to report on accurately because default sorting doesn't work. For example, Computer.Software.Package.Version is a string attribute, which SQL Server is configured to sort lexically. As an example, you may have software package versions 2, 3, and 10 in your inventory database. However, if you sort on the version, 10 is less than 2 and 3 because it's sorted like a string instead of a number. ERP's Power Sort reports enable you to choose how you want to sort. 164

165 USER'S GUIDE Configure your own sort order 1. On the toolbar, click the Power sort icon. 2. In the left pane, click the database attribute you will be sorting on. By default, Computer.Software.Add or Remove Programs.Program.Version and Computer.Software.Package.Version appear. The first time you click the attribute, values currently in the database will be sorted in lexical order. Only entries in the Sorted values list will be used in the power sort routine. If you have a third pane, these are new Unsorted values. You must drag and drop them to the Sorted Values list before power sort will use them. 3. Move values to where they should be in the Sorted values list, either by dragging and dropping or cutting and pasting. Run a Power Sort report using your sort order 1. In the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. In the tree view, expand ERP > Power Sort. 3. In the right pane, double-click a Power Sort report. 4. On the resulting web page, click the Report settings tab and select the Use power sort check box. 5. Click the Run report button. The report data will now be sorted using the order you specified. Use max value in a Power Sort report There are often cases where more than one version of a software package exists on a device. However, you may only need to know what the latest version is. Use the max-value option to display only the last version of software on the device instead of all versions. 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. In the tree view, expand ERP > Power Sort. 3. In the right pane, double-click a Power Sort report. 165

166 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS 4. On the resulting web page, select the Power sort and Only return max value check boxes. 5. Click the Run report button. The report data will now be sorted using the order you specified and will also show only the highest value for each item found. Use operations in a Power Sort report You may be interested in finding all devices that have an old version of an application so that you can upgrade it. However, because the versions are lexically sorted, you need to use power sort to sort them. 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. In the tree view, expand ERP > Power Sort. 3. In the right pane, double-click a Power Sort report. 4. On the resulting web page, click the Report settings tab, and select the Use power sort check box. If you want to find devices whose latest version is older than a certain version number, you must select the Only return max value check box. Otherwise, it will return all devices with any older version, even if they have a newer version as well. 5. Select an operation from the list (in this case, <=). 6. Enter a value in the blank text box after the operator. You must enter a value that exists in the power sort Sorted values list or no results will be returned. 7. Click the Run report button. Use a Power Sort report to create groups for scheduling Once you determine which devices have an old version of an application, you may want to target a distribution to those devices. NOTE: This option is report dependent, meaning it only appears for reports that include a targeting capability (where the first column is Computer.ID). 1. On the toolbar, click the Run reports icon. 2. In the tree view, expand ERP > Power Sort. 3. In the right pane, double-click a Power Sort report and configure the report with the settings you want. 4. Click the Run report button. 5. On the top right of the report results, click the Create group button. 6. Enter a Group name. 166

167 USER'S GUIDE 7. Select where the group should be created, under Public or User devices. 8. Click the Create group button. Go to the Management Suite console. You'll see a group that has been created under either Public Devices or User Devices that you can target a distribution to. 167

168 LANDESK DATA ANALYTICS Rapid Deployment Rapid Deployment is a Data Analytics tool for LANDESK Management Suite that automates the deployment of LANDESK agents to unmanaged devices on your network. One of the most time-consuming tasks for a LANDESK administrator is to deploy the appropriate LANDESK agent to new or existing devices. The most common way to do this is via Management Suite's Unmanaged Device Discovery (UDD) tool, which requires you to discover new devices on the network, drag and drop those devices to the appropriate scheduled client deployment, and then push the agent out to them. There are other methods as well, but Rapid Deployment helps you automate this process with a client-configuration query that uses UDD to discover devices and install the agent in one procedure. About the Rapid Deployment view When you open Rapid Deployment, a pane appears across the bottom of the Management Suite console. This pane lists default client configurations for each type of unmanaged device you might want to query for and deploy an agent to. About the toolbar icons Add: Creates a query for a particular client configuration. Edit: Edits a query for a particular client configuration. Delete: Deletes a query for a particular client configuration. Refresh: Refreshes the Rapid Deployment client-configuration list and settings. Settings: Enables you to configure the global settings for all client configurations deployed from here. Getting started To use Rapid Deployment to automate LANDESK agent deployment, you need to do these tasks: 168