Evidence Tab: Suite and Member Evidence

FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2 (On-Premises)

Application evidence is used for tracking application suites (for example, Microsoft Excel is an application, which may be evidence of the Microsoft Office suite). Suites are a collection of applications that are sold as a combined unit (although sometimes the individual applications are also sold separately).

For applications created from the Application Recognition Library (General tab Source displays either Flexera or Flexera (Extended)), the first selection on this tab is not editable. For an application record created within your enterprise (Source displays Local), on this tab, you can specify whether this application is either:

• A suite that contains other applications (for example, Adobe Creative Suite)
• An application that is (or can be sold as) a member of a suite (for example, Adobe Photoshop)
• Neither of these.

This corrects your license consumption calculations, and helps clean up your evidence lists (for more details, see Do I Need to Set Up a Suite of Applications?).

From the Application suite type list on the Suite and member tab, you can select any one of the following:

• Standalone application (default) — means that this application is neither a suite nor a member of any other suite. With this setting, the rest of this tab has no further purpose.
• Member of a suite — indicates that the application you are creating or editing can be a member of a suite of applications. When you make this selection, a Suite membership section is displayed. To identify the application's parent suite:
  1. Optionally enter part of the suite's name in the search field (good practice, since there are thousands of suites).
  2. Click Search.
  3. Select a record from the list of results.
  4. Click Add suite or application.
     Tip: It is possible to select multiple suites from a page of search results, if the application can genuinely be a member of more than one suite. However, only suites selected from one page can be added at a time. To include suites from multiple pages of the results listing, add one page's selection, navigate to the next page and add, and so on.
• Suite containing applications — indicates that the application record you are creating or editing is a suite itself. With this selection, an Application evidence section is displayed. To link the suite to its member applications:
  1. Optionally enter part of an application's name in the search field.
  2. Click Search.
  3. Select one or more application records from the displayed list of results.
  4. Click Add evidence.
  5. Repeat for other application names until all suite members are identified.
  Remember: If you selected Suite containing applications, you can optionally use the presence of its member applications to detect the installation of the suite (especially for cases where the suite does not leave distinct installer evidence). To do this, use either or both of these controls:

  • Enter a value into the Minimum installations for suite recognition field. This indicates the minimum number of applications associated with the suite that must be present for that suite to be recognized as installed. For example, if you add four applications, and type in 3 into the Minimum installations for suite recognition field, then the presence of any three of these four applications causes recognition of the installed suite. However, where only two member applications are found (or any number less than the specified minimum), these consume from their own separate licenses, and not from the suite license.
    Tip: Suites identified by the Application Recognition Library default to requiring all the member applications of the suite for recognition by this method. Adjust the number to suit your circumstances. The value set in the ARL is displayed for reference to the right.
  • From the Choose columns dialog box, you can add the Required column, and select those member applications that must all be present for the suite to be recognized as installed. When any application marked as required is missing, the suite is not recognized.

  You can use these controls in combination: for example, a minimum requirement of three of the four linked applications, with one of these marked as required. The suite is then recognized when the required application and any two of the remaining three applications are present. You can also ignore these settings, and use other kinds of evidence, such as installer evidence, to recognize the suite.

Suite recognition from application evidence is based on the presence of all required applications and the Minimum installations for suite recognition setting (whether Required or not). This has special implications for the Installed count, for which see details below.

The software that is sold as a suite is not very different from a single application in terms of licensing workflows. Therefore in FlexNet Manager Suite, a suite of applications is treated as a special case of an application with additional evidence records where applicable. For more information on bundles and suites, see Multi-Product License.

The following table lists all columns available on the Suite and member tab.

Added application

This column displays Yes if an operator manually associated an application with the evidence. No is displayed if the application is provided through the Application Recognition Library.

Added suite

This column displays Yes if an operator manually assigned an application to a suite as its member (by selecting Member of a suite on the Evidence tab). No displays if it is assigned through Application Recognition Library.

Category

The broad function of the application, by default from the UN Standard Products and Services Code.

For local applications, this field is editable in the General tab of the application properties. (Additional custom categories can be created in Enterprise > Categories.)

Classification

The type of software, especially as it relates to licensing (freeware, commercial, component, and so on).

Visible on the General tab of the application properties. It is editable only for applications with a Source value of Local.

Edition

The edition of an application, as specified by the publisher of this application.

Note: Many applications do not specify an edition.

Visible on the General tab of the application properties. It is editable only for applications with a Source value of Local.

Installed

The count of installations of this application, calculated from evidence matched in the last imported inventory.

Important: The installation counts shown against individual applications on this tab are for installations recognized as stand-alone applications that are not part of any suite (neither the one you are examining now, nor any other suite of which the same applications might be members). These 'left-over' standalone applications occur on devices where conditions for suite recognition are not met (for example, fewer applications installed than your minimum requirement, or mandatory applications missing; or other forms of suite evidence are not present). Application installations that are part of this suite are on inventory devices listed in the Devices tab, as that tab lists the installations where the suite has been recognized at the last reconciliation calculation (date/time shown in the top right corner). To get the total installation count for an application, then, even in the simplest case, you may need to add the count (nn results returned) of suite installations shown on the Devices tab to the individual application installations shown in this column of the Evidence tab. For example, suppose this is a record for legacy Adobe Creative Suite, and:

• The Devices tab lists 23 inventory devices where the suite is installed
• On this Evidence tab (for Suite and member), nine applications are checked as Required, so that all nine must be present for the suite to be recognized by its member applications
• In that same list, Adobe Photoshop individually shows an Installed count of 11.

This means your installations of Adobe Photoshop actually total 34, with 23 of those being counted as part of the full suite installation, and another 11 being installed separately (where there are insufficient other applications installed for it to count as being the suite). In the real world, this may be further complicated by there being multiple suites than might contain the same application. For example, if your enterprise had been using the Creative Suite Design Standard for entry-level designers, and Create Suite Master Collection for experienced designers (both suites containing Adobe Photoshop), you would now have to add together:

• The count on the Devices tab of the Design Standard suite properties (say, 23)
• The count on the Devices tab of the Master Collection suite properties (say, 6)
• The Installed count shown on this Evidence tab for Photoshop (say 11) – but only from one of the property sheets, as they would both be showing the same count of 'left-over' standalone installations that had not been swept up as part of any suite. Don't double-count.

It is far simpler to ignore this column other than to notice that there are some stand-alone application installations (not part of any suite). Then make sure that you have a separate application license in place to cover those stand-alone installations; and take your consumption counts from the relevant suite and stand-alone licenses.

Not editable. The installed count is recalculated after each inventory import.

Name

The application's name, which may be:

• Set by the Application Recognition Library, and not editable (for applications with Source: Flexera)
• Derived from the evidence values for Product, Version, and Edition properties (when generated by FlexNet Manager Suite), and editable to suit your corporate standards.

You can edit this on the General tab of the application properties when Local is displayed in the Source column (which means the application was added manually by an operator).

Product

The basic name of the application, excluding the publisher and references to versions or editions. This field displays the value Multiple products for multi-product licenses that have multiple primary products. See Multi-Product License.

Product names are supplied by the Application Recognition Library and are not editable. New product names created within your enterprise are editable in the General tab of the application properties.

Publisher

The name of the publisher of this software, responsible for its development and distribution.

For application records that you create manually, Publisher is editable in the General tab of the application properties. For applications supplied through the Application Recognition Library, the Publisher field is not editable.

Required

From the Choose columns dialog box, you can add the Required column, and select those member applications that must all be present for the suite to be recognized as installed.

Source

The origin of an application record:

• Flexera — Shown when the application is downloaded in Application Recognition Library (if so, you cannot edit any of the application’s properties, but can link it to additional evidence).
• Local — Shown when an operator in your enterprise created the record for this application.
• Flexera (Extended) — Shown when an operator added additional evidence to the original record from Application Recognition Library.

Status

Indicates your assessment and processing of an application. It can have any of the following values:

• Authorized
• Deferred
• Ignored
• Inactive
• Unmanaged.

Editable in the General tab of the application's properties, or by selecting the application and using the Change status button in any of the following lists:

• Installed Applications
• Unmanaged Applications
• Managed Applications
• Deferred Applications
• Ignored Applications
• All Applications.

Version

The release number (or release identifier) of an application.

Visible in the Version field in General tab of the application properties. Editable for applications with a Source value of Local. For applications from the Application Recognition Library, it is not editable.