Reporting on Applications Linked to Technopedia

FlexNet Manager Suite 2022 R1 (On-Premises)

To review the data imported from Technopedia, and how it relates to the applications installed in your computing estate, there are two reporting options:

• Review the standard Installed Applications Linked to Technopedia report
• Create a custom crosswalk report that focuses on the dimensions you want to review (or, if necessary, create multiple specialized reports).

There is no display of the Technopedia data within the FlexNet Manager Suite web interface other than through these reporting options.

Using the standard report

In single-tenant on-premises implementations only, this report is available under Reports > License Compliance > Applications > Installed Applications Linked to Technopedia. It is displayed in the index only when data is available, meaning that both:

• You have nightly imports and compliance calculations available, so that there is an established list of application installations for your environment
• You have configured, and run, your Technopedia connector on a suitable inventory beacon, and the resulting uploads have been imported into your compliance database.

As well, ensure that both your ARL downloads and your Technopedia library updates are current, as new products and applications are frequently updated with the FlexeraID values.

Tip: This report is not a full review of all the many thousands of records in these two libraries. It is automatically filtered down to only those applications that are installed in your computing estate, and that are recognized by evidence recorded in the Application Recognition Library (ARL). Any installed applications that are recognized only through locally-created application evidence records (outside the ARL) are not included. Nevertheless, it is likely to be a very large report, so consider hiding less essential columns in the column chooser, and filtering to show only those rows that are important for your current investigation. Remember that you can also save various configurations of standard reports for future use.

Full details of this report are available in the online help.

Creating custom report(s)

You may prefer to create one or more custom crosswalk reports that focus more precisely on your requirements. You create a custom crosswalk report using the same process as for any other custom report; and the process is summarized below for convenience.

Tip: With a custom report, you can side-step the requirement for the application to be installed, and can therefore report more broadly on the mapping of the two libraries. Keep in mind that you could create a very large dataset, so give some thought to the details you really need, and the number of records you want to handle at any one time.

To create a custom crosswalk report:

1. Click the Reports button located in the top modal menu.
   The Reports Index page displays.
2. Navigate to the folder where you want your new report to appear.
   Best practice is to avoid confusing your custom reports with the inbuilt reports by creating your own folder structure for all your custom reports. Use the Create a folder, Rename folder, and Delete folder icons on this page to manage custom folders (you cannot rename or delete system-provided folders).
3. Click the Create a report icon located on the top right corner of the report index.
   The Report Builder page displays.
4. In the Configure section, in the first drop-down menu (the object picker), select - Application, and then click Add.
   The Application object, along with its most commonly-used properties (Name, Publisher, and Product) are added.

   • If any of the default properties are not wanted in your customer report, click x (the Delete icon) on the right of its card.
   • If a property should be searchable in your finished report, select Include in search below its name.

   A second drop-down menu now displays the list of properties of the application that may be included in the report.
5. In the properties drop-down menu, to include a property in your report, click the + (Add icon) to the right of its name. As before, select Include in search for those whose values you want to be searchable in your finished report. Repeat until all your desired application properties are selected.
   If you want to limit the report to applications that are actually installed within your computing estate, be sure to include the Installations (number) property from the application set.

   Tip: Don't worry about the order of properties yet. Ordering your report columns comes a little later.
6. In the object picker (now moved to the right of the Application object), select Technopedia products/releases, and click Add.
7. In the properties drop-down menu for Technopedia, click + next to those imported properties you want included in your report, and select Include in search when appropriate.
   For details of those imported properties, see the online help for the standard Installed Applications Linked to Technopedia report.
8. Once you have selected all your required columns for the two objects, click Preview and filter.
9. In the Preview and Filter section:
   1. Drag the report columns into the desired order.
      Tip: The order of columns cannot be changed in the published report.
   2. Click Add Filter and apply one or more filters to limit the values returned in specific columns.
      If you want this report limited to those applications that are shown as installed somewhere in your computing estate, be sure to filter the Installations (number) column with a value of 0 and a filter condition of Is greater than.

      Tip: Use filters wisely to limit the possible number of returned rows to less than a million. Filters applied now, during design, cannot be removed in the published report; but people reading the report can add more filters to further refine the results.
10. Click Save as to save your report. (Alternatively, you may click Create to return to the Configure page and change the columns to display in the report.) In the Save As section, complete the following details:
    1. Make the Title brief but meaningful to stand out in the reports index.
    2. The Description is optional, but helpful to other operators (and perhaps even to you over time).
    3. For Access to view, select the Private (just me) option to allow only yourself (the current operator) to see this report; or select Public to allow all operators to see the report.
    4. In the Save to group, navigate to and select the existing folder of the reports index where you want to save your report.
11. Click Save to finalize, and move to the new report page. (Alternatively, you may click Preview and filter to go back to fine-tuning the report.)
12. On the new [REPORT NAME] page, click Run report to display results. Remember that it may take a little time to process a large number of records.

If, as you use your new report, you think of improvements, you can return to the process by clicking the Edit link. If you are making any future changes, on the Save Report As page, use the same report title to update the existing report, or change the title to save the changes as a new report.