Uploading Purchases from Microsoft License Statement

FlexNet Manager Suite 2020 R2 (On-Premises)
The Microsoft License Statement (MLS) is a useful document for managing Microsoft software assets. The MLS is a report published by Microsoft that represents its understanding of the software titles and the number of licenses (or license entitlements) purchased by your organization. The Pivot Data tab of an MLS report is used by FlexNet Manager Suite to generate the license position for Microsoft.
Tip: Regrettably, the MLS import supports only a US English MLS spreadsheet. MLS spreadsheets for other locales may be edited to allow values to be imported. In the Pivot Data tab, the following conditions must be met:
  1. The tab itself must be named in English "Pivot Data", rather than any local translation (such as "Pivot-Daten" in German, or even "Pivotdata" [without a space] in Danish). Only data from the Pivot Data tab is imported.
  2. The American spelling of "license" must be used. You may manually change the British spelling "licence" to "license" in the Pivot Data tab.
  3. The calculation date value is expected to appear in cell K3 (in some localized versions, it may appear in L3 or other cells); and is normally in the format YYYY/MM/DD.
  4. The column names in row 10 must have the following English titles, and appear in this order:
    • Product Pool
    • License Product Family
    • License Version
    • Effective License Quantity
    • Upgrade License Quantity
    • Upgrade License Quantity (w/ Maintenance)
    • Active SA Quantity
    • Country of Usage (only the rows containing the value All Countries in this column are imported)
    • Expiring SA 0 - 12 Months
    • Expiring SA 12 - 24 Months
    • Expiring SA > 24 Months
  5. For rows that have the Country of Usage value equal to All countries (the only rows that matter), there must be no rows that duplicate the primary key formed by all of the following columns combined together:
    • Product Pool
    • License Product
    • License Product Family
    • License Version.
You can use MLS to establish a baseline for Microsoft purchases in FlexNet Manager Suite.
Important: The MLS (and its import) have the following limitations:
  • The MLS excludes the details of OEM and retail software, which must be separately recorded in appropriate purchase records.
  • Commercial, government, and academic organizations with 250 or more users/devices may have a Microsoft Product and Services Agreement (MPSA). Information on the MPSA tab of the MLS is not included in the License Summary nor Pivot Data tab, and is not imported into FlexNet Manager Suite as part of the process described below. License purchases under an MPSA must be recorded through appropriate purchase records.
  • A purchase record created from Microsoft License Statement is not typically accepted as a proof of entitlement during system audits. You may have to find and enter matching original purchase records into FlexNet Manager Suite later on.

FlexNet Manager Suite requires license records that are typically created from purchase records. As an alternative to recording details of all your historical Microsoft purchases, the Microsoft License Statement option provides a way to import an MLS statement and establish a set of Microsoft licenses in FlexNet Manager Suite. In addition to creating new purchase and license records, an MLS upload may also modify existing purchase or license records. For example, entitlements from purchases linked to existing licenses may be disabled when a new MLS is imported.

If you select the Accept recommendations and process purchases option, FlexNet Manager Suite uses automatic recommendations to create license records (from Microsoft License Statement) that match the entitlements recorded in the MLS.
Note: For automatic processing to occur, you will also need to have the Automatically process purchases option enabled from the System Settings page, in the Purchases tab, under Automation. Enabling this option will open additional configuration settings. See System Settings: Purchases Tab

For each MLS upload, a pop-up message indicates the number of standard purchases, maintenance purchases, and upgrade purchases created as a result of the upload. The same information is also displayed in the Last 5 uploads section of the page. You can click the Download log link to download the log file to get an audit trail of the events. The MLS upload task is given the name of the MLS file. You can also view this task on the System Tasks page.

The processed purchases appear in the Processed Purchases page. The purchases that were created but not processed for any reason appear on the Unprocessed Purchases page with no recommendations.

The MLS upload can be used in any of the following scenarios:

To get an initial baseline position

To get a quick initial baseline position for Microsoft licenses, you can upload an Microsoft License Statement to create the purchase records of the type Software baseline from the Pivot Data tab of the uploaded Microsoft License Statement. This option is useful when no Microsoft license records exist in FlexNet Manager Suite and you want to set the first baseline position. When you upload the first MLS with the Import and process baseline purchases option selected, FlexNet Manager Suite creates new purchase and license records, and links the purchase records to appropriate license records. You can review or modify these changes on any of the following pages:
  • The Licenses tab on the Purchase Properties page. See Linking a License to This Purchase.
  • The Purchases tab on the License Properties page. See Purchases Tab.

    Some purchases may remain unprocessed due to multiple reasons like the product name in the MLS document does not match any existing application records or names in the Application Recognition Library; or a software license definition matches multiple licenses in the system. All such purchases appear on the Unprocessed Purchases page and need to be processed manually or through the purchase processing wizard. See Unprocessed Purchases.

To get an updated baseline position

You may need to update the Microsoft license position when you get a new MLS from Microsoft. In this case, FlexNet Manager Suite detects a new baseline import by comparing the date field in existing Software baseline purchases with the date of the MLS document being uploaded. FlexNet Manager Suite:
  • Disables the licenses linked to the old baseline.
  • Disables any purchases linked to the licenses that are older than the date of new baseline purchase. The License entitlements column in the Purchases tab of the License Properties page shows a value 0, and the original number of entitlements (in braces) before the purchase was disabled. You can manually enable these purchases through the Entitlement Status column of the Purchases list. Purchases with an Always enabled entitlement status are not affected by the baseline import. When you click the Purchases tab in the license properties of the affected licenses, a pop-up message displays the total number of purchases for which the license entitlements have been disabled.
  • Disables the purchase and license records for which no baseline records are found in the newly uploaded MLS, excluding those with Entitlement status set to Always enabled.
  • Attaches the uploaded MLS document to the Documents tab of the license properties of each affected license.
If you want to keep new purchases unaffected by any future MLS imports, you can set the Entitlement status column in the Purchases tab of the License Properties page to Always enabled for such purchases. For example, you made an over-the-counter purchase of three different Microsoft licenses after you have set an initial baseline through an MLS import. When you update the license position by importing another MLS, the licenses would be disabled if the related purchase date is older or the same as the new baseline date.

You can always use the Unprocessed Purchases page to process the unprocessed purchases. See Unprocessed Purchases. You can also link purchases to licenses as mentioned in the section above. For details, see Linking a License to This Purchase and Purchases Tab.

Note: If you have different MLS documents for different organizational locations (such as Europe and Asia), you need to merge these statements to a single file and then upload it to set a baseline position.

Importing Purchases After a Baseline Import

You can create or import new purchases after a baseline has been already imported. The new purchases can be manually created and linked to licenses, or they can be processed through purchase processing (see Unprocessed Purchases). If the newly added purchase has a date older or the same as the baseline, its assigned entitlements are disabled and do not contribute to the entitlement count for the linked licenses. The Entitlement status column in the Purchases tab of the License Properties page shows a value of Disabled for such purchases. The entitlement counts for disabled purchases are not counted when calculating the number of entitlements for the linked licenses.

If a purchase has a date newer than the baseline date, it contributes entitlements for the linked license. The License entitlements column in the Purchases tab of the License Properties page for the affected license shows a non-zero number.

Details Displayed in the Last 5 uploads Section

The following controls (in alphabetical order) are available:

Property Description
Task/Step

The name of the system task. For example, if the task type is Purchase Order Upload, the name of the upload file is displayed as task name. If a task involves multiple sub-tasks, FlexNet Manager Suite displays a + icon before the task name. You can click the + icon to expand the task details. For example, a purchase order or MLS import task will have a sub-task for uploading the file and another one to import purchases.
Beacon

The name of an inventory beacon involved in this task. One or more inventory beacons may be involved in a task.

Editable in the General tab of the inventory beacon properties.
Connection type
The type of the connection used for this task. It can have any of the following values:
  • CSV
  • One-off upload
  • Other
  • PowerShell
  • SQL Server
Note: You cannot currently filter for these values.
Created by

The name of a operator who started this task or step.
End date

The date and time when this step or task was completed.
Logs Displays a link to download the log file (if any) for this step.
Server name

The name of the inventory beacon or central application server where this task or step is running.
Start date

The date and time when this step or task was initiated.
Status
The status of this step or system task. It can have any of the following values:
  • Completed
  • Completed with errors
  • Failed
  • In progress
  • In progress with errors
  • Pending
  • Scheduled
  • Skipped
  • Started
  • Timed out
  • Unknown.
    Tip: An overnight clean-up process marks any individual step as timed out if it has already been running for more than 24 hours. The parent system task is marked as timed out as soon as any individual child step has timed out.
Summary

A more detailed summary of the task. The summary information depends on the task type. For example, for a discovery and inventory rule execution task, this field displays the number of beacons reported and the task status like in progress, completed, completed with errors, or timed out. For purchase order upload tasks, it shows the details of the total number of purchases created as a result of the upload. You may also notice the See details link for some tasks. You can click this link to view a detailed summary of activities performed within that task.

Task type
The type of the task that is monitored. It can have any of the following values:
  • Active Directory
  • ARL import
  • Business import
  • Data warehouse export
  • Discovery and Inventory rule
  • Enterprise group one-off upload
  • Inventory import
  • Purchase order one-off upload
  • PVU Import (deprecated)
  • Reconciliation
  • SAP import
  • SAP license position
  • User assignment one-off upload.

FlexNet Manager Suite (On-Premises)

2020 R2