Preface

"Business adapters" are ways of connecting to data sources in your enterprise and extracting relevant data for import into FlexNet Manager Suite. The name means that:
  • They deal with business data, and specifically not inventory of software and hardware (those kinds of data are handled by inventory adapters)
  • They adapt the business information from the formats where it is normally stored into the formats needed by FlexNet Manager Suite.
This document covers two separate aspects of using business adapters:
  • Part I covers use of the FlexNet Business Importer, a utility for importing data from common business sources into FlexNet Manager Suite. These imports make use of existing business adapters, whether these are ones that you have developed previously, or ones built for you by a consultant. Examples of common business data include:
    • Purchase records
    • HR data, including organizational structures
    • License data
    • Contract information
    • Publishers and suppliers.
  • Part II, for more advanced readers, covers creation of new business adapters using a tool called the Business Adapter Studio. This tool specifies both the connections to external data sources, and the mapping of external to internal field names. (The FlexNet Business Importer may also be triggered automatically by the Business Adapter Studio for testing adapters as you develop your adapters.)
For brevity throughout this document, the FlexNet Business Importer is simply called the Business Importer. Unless otherwise clarified, all discussion of 'adapters' in this document relate to business adapters (as distinct from inventory adapters).
Important: Beware of using a business adapter to set properties that are also set by built-in import functionality. If you set these properties through a business adapter, and you use a different value than the one imported by default, the property value toggles back and forth between the two values, depending on which import type ran most recently. Some examples of properties that can be updated in conflicting ways are:
  • Several properties of assets, when the asset has been linked with an inventory device from which some properties are imported.
    Tip: For more about links between assets and inventory devices, see Customizing the Asset-Device Linkage.
    Commonly affected are these properties from the Asset table in the compliance database:
    • Asset.ShortDescription
    • Asset.ModelNo
    • Asset.Manufacturer.
  • ComplianceUser.UserName, which is imported from Active Directory on Windows devices.

2022 R1