The Flexera SaaS Manager Connector

FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2 (On-Premises)

Assuming that you have licensed both products, FlexNet Manager Suite allows you to make a connection to Flexera SaaS Manager – even though your FlexNet Manager Suite implementation is on-premises and Flexera SaaS Manager is a cloud-only product – so that you can import data, and unify all your licensing information in the one place (sometimes called having "a single pane of glass" to see all your licensing data).

The data flow with this connector is strictly one way (from Flexera SaaS Manager into FlexNet Manager Suite), and any changes you make locally after the import are not reflected back into the source data in Flexera SaaS Manager. So data maintenance remains separate, and happens in the product where you created the records. For example, if you renegotiate your SaaS license for a product to increase your entitlements, record the new number in Flexera SaaS Manager, because that is the source of truth for this license. The information for display in FlexNet Manager Suite is automatically updated in the nightly full inventory import and license reconciliation calculations.

To make it easier to switch contexts, the properties for every license imported from Flexera SaaS Manager display a link to that product from within FlexNet Manager Suite (direct to the matching license record, if you are already logged in). There is also a general link you can display in the top bar of FlexNet Manager Suite to make switching back easy, even without opening any license properties.

For more information about setting up the Flexera SaaS Manager connector, and enabling the display of the top bar link, see the summary in Configuring SaaS Manager Connector.

Even though the data flow is strictly one way, there are some changes you may choose to make within your FlexNet Manager Suite record that are preserved during any update through the nightly imports:

• If you wish, you can customize the license name. For example, you might choose to add "from FSM" at the end of the imported license name, to make it easier to identify or group these licenses in general listings. Since the license name is not used for record matching, your customization is preserved through each nightly import.
• You may still link purchases or contracts to your imported licenses. However, it is important to understand that these are now for information only, and have no impact on the available license entitlements or the nightly license reconciliation. Your entitlements are part of the one-directional import, and consumption is counted exclusively against the entitlements recorded in Flexera SaaS Manager (and imported from there).
• You may still choose to record details like ownership responsibility or group assignments against the imported licenses, and these additions are preserved.

If you have previously been using other SaaS-related connectors, once you have switched over you should consider retiring those connectors, since their data overlaps with the imports from Flexera SaaS Manager. To avoid possible confusion between licenses created by various connectors, you might also consider some data clean-up to normalize your environment. For more information, see Deprecating Other Connectors.

This chapter concludes with some technical details about the data imported from Flexera SaaS Manager, where it is staged in the FlexNet Manager Suite database, and where you can look in the web interface to review the imported data (see Imported Data Mapping).