Reviewing IT Visibility Inventory Beacon Status

Important:The inventory beacon information in this section is specific to IT Visibility only. For related information, refer to Uploading Inventory Data into IT Visibility. For help using inventory beacons with IT Asset Management, refer to Using IT Asset Management Inventory Beacons to Collect Inventory.

You can check on the operational status of your inventory beacons at any time, including when an inventory beacon is first installed. There are two different ways to check status:

You can validate the general operations of the inventory beacon itself
You can inspect the history of data imports through the connection on your inventory beacon.

Both approaches also allow you to drill through for more detailed information. This description gives a quick summary of both review methods.

To review the operational status of an inventory beacon:

1. If you are not currently logged in, use your web browser to navigate to the web interface for Flexera One (North America: https://app.flexera.com, EU: https://app.flexera.eu, APAC: https://app.flexera.au)and use your preferred method to sign in.
2. Navigate to the IT Visibility Beacons page (Data Collection > IT Visibility Inventory Tasks > IT Visibility Beacons).
3. In the list of your existing inventory beacons, locate the name of your preferred inventory beacon to review.

The key factors for operation of your inventory beacon are displayed in this listing. Possible values and first troubleshooting steps are:

Connection Status reports on the network link from your inventory beacon to Flexera One.

Value

Response

Check connectivity

On your inventory beacon, in the FlexNet Beacon interface, check results in the Beacon configuration > Parent connection page. Also, have you downloaded and imported the configuration file for this inventory beacon? (For details, see Configuring IT Visibility Beacon to Upload Inventory to Flexera One.)

Connected

The link from the inventory beacon appears to be operational —no action needed.

Beacon Status tracks operational readiness of the inventory beacon, with a special focus on its uploads.

Value

Response

Disabled at server

The inventory beacon is reporting its status, but showing that it has been disabled on the inventory beacon itself. To re-enable, log into FlexNet Beacon as administrator, navigate to Beacon configuration > Parent connection, and select the Enable parent connection check box. After you make a change of this kind, it may take 15 minutes or so for the new status to be displayed in Flexera One (you may need to refresh this Beacons page).

Idle

The inventory beacon is operational, and awaiting its next scheduled trigger—no action needed.

Never reported

This inventory beacon has not yet uploaded its first status report. This may be normal if FlexNet Beacon has just been installed; but uploads should commence within about 15 minutes (you may need to refresh this page to see new information, as once open, it does not update automatically). This is also a likely value if the Connection Status is showing Check connectivity. If the value persists, visit the inventory beacon and check that the FlexNet Beacon Engine service is running. Also check that the Microsoft Windows scheduled task Upload FlexNet logs and inventories is running (by default, this should fire every 10 minutes throughout the day).

Not reporting normally

This inventory beacon has uploaded its status report previously, but is now overdue for an update. On the inventory beacon, check that the FlexNet Beacon Engine service is running, and the scheduled task Upload FlexNet logs and inventories is running.

Policy Status reports on the delivery of “beacon policy”, an XML file that carries settings, version control (for automatic self-upgrades or downgrades of FlexNet Beacon), and information to hand off to installed copies of FlexNet inventory agent as “device policy”. By default, each inventory beacon “phones home” to check for any updates to beacon policy every 15 minutes.

Value

Response

No policy

Beacon policy has not yet been requested by, and downloaded to, this inventory beacon. This is typically because FlexNet Beacon has only just been installed, or because there is a connectivity issue to solve, or because the beacon service is not running correctly on the inventory beacon.

Out of date

Beacon policy is being delivered to this inventory beacon; but since its last request to check for updates, there is a change that requires a download of updated policy. By default, this should be fixed automatically within about 15 minutes, when the inventory beacon next checks for updates (remember, you may need to refresh this page to see updated data).

Up to date

Operation is normal—there has been no change since the last policy download to this inventory beacon. No action needed.

4. Optionally, click the Name of the inventory beacon to inspect other properties.

In the Details tab of the inventory beacon properties, the additional details include the dates/times of the last download of beacon policy, and the last upload of a report from the inventory beacon. The Web Server Status is particularly important in parent inventory beacons that have others reporting to them, because this web server defines the download and reporting (upload) locations used by child inventory beacons, as well as the web service used to accept uploads.

5. Optionally, select the Upload Status tab in the beacon properties page.

This page lists two kinds of “heartbeat” reports that each inventory beacon attempts to upload. If there are upload difficulties, these small files are saved on the inventory beacon for subsequent retries. Therefore, when this page shows zeros in the Files to Upload column, everything is working normally; and information from these heartbeat uploads is populating the fields in the Details tab of the inventory beacon properties. On the other hand, if files are backed up, you can see the file count, the sum of file sizes for all backed up files, and start and end dates for the issue.

6. To review the history of inventory uploads, in the navigation panel on the left, click Imports.

Each import is named for the connection that collected the inventory data in the first place. A successful inventory import shows Completed in the Status column for each of these groups:

Extract Into Beacon reports on the collection of the inventory data from the source database (such as Microsoft SCCM) and then staging the data file on the inventory beacon in %CommonAppData%\Flexera\Beacon\IntermediateData.
Upload to Flexera reports on the file upload to Flexera One. The uploaded content is received by a web service that hands the data directly to the appropriate service(s).
Normalize reports on the process of matching the raw inventory data against known patterns to recognize the hardware details and the installed software applications, and saving the resulting normalized records in the appropriate database.

Other values in these columns may be blank (this process has not started), In Progress, or Failed.

Tip:Other columns are available to help your investigations and assessment. Click the Columns chooser on the right-hand side of the table of imports, and select the columns to display. For example, in the Import group, you may select another Status column, which summarizes the overall results of the three status columns described above.