Activating and Using New Features

Some new features in the 2024 R1 release are available now that you have:

Improved IBM PVU sub-capacity calculations (upgrading from 2017 R1 or earlier)

The improvements both to sub-capacity calculations for IBM PVU licenses and to the robustness of compliance calculations introduced with the 2017 R2 release are based on significant changes to the database schema. Therefore, if you are upgrading from release 2017 R1 or earlier, the IBM PVU high-frequency mode is blocked until after your first, post-upgrade, full compliance calculation, which populates the required data in the updated schema. As these calculations are typically scheduled to happen overnight, you can either wait for the normal schedule; or, as an operator in a role granting you administrator privileges, you can trigger a full compliance calculation ahead of schedule by navigating to License Compliance > Reconcile, selecting Update inventory for reconciliation, and clicking Reconcile.

Improved purchase processing (upgrading from 2015 R2 SP5 or earlier)

An important area of enhancement is around purchase processing, especially the handling of license subscriptions or maintenance purchases. To support these changes, from release 2016 R1 the Unprocessed Purchases listing has improved logic that checks for any Available quantity on each purchase (that is, any shortfall in total assignments to licenses compared with the purchased quantity). Depending on your past work practices, this enhancement may cause some historical purchase records to reappear in the Unprocessed Purchases listing. For full details and a remediation process, see Enhancement for Purchase Records.

Improved inventory gathering (upgrading from 2015 R2 SP5 or earlier)

Some items of new or improved functionality requires updates to your deployed FlexNet Inventory Agents. These include:
  • Gathering access evidence used for managing Microsoft User CALs and Device CALs
  • Enhanced Oracle inventory gathering.
After an upgrade of your system, the deployed FlexNet Inventory Agents are not upgraded automatically, so that you can separately control the timing of this stage. Therefore, to take advantage of the new inventory functionality, you must first allow self-updates of your installed FlexNet Inventory Agents. For details, see Configure Updates to Inventory Agents.

Increased reporting from inventory beacons (upgrading from any 2014 release)

If you are upgrading from a 2014 release (prior to 2015 R1), and you wish to take advantage of other new features (including the increased reporting from inventory beacons), your next inventory import and license consumption calculation must include a full (non-differential) import of FlexNet inventory. The command line to achieve this is shown below. Notice the particular use of the dash characters:
BatchProcessTask.exe run InventoryImport ---f
For more explanation, see Optional: Perform a Full Import.

Adapter upgrades

Some adapters require special handling, or additional configuration or upgrade from earlier releases:
  • BMC Discovery — If you are using this adapter and running it on your application server (rather than on a free-standing inventory beacon), you should ensure that all devices are updated for sociability with FlexNet inventory. You achieve this by making your next import and compliance calculation a full (non-differential) import, as described above.
  • The ServiceNow integration package was entirely reworked in the 2016 R1 release. For details, see the relevant part in FlexNet Manager Suite Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference.
  • Citrix XenApp server adapter (see Update the XenApp Server Adapter).
  • Virtual Desktops adapter (see Update the Virtual Desktops Adapter).
These last two adapters require upgrading to match the new architecture that Citrix has released since version 7 of those products.