Scheduling Inventory Imports

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.

Data imports must be scheduled on the same inventory beacon where the connection for the import was defined. All schedules for activities on the inventory beacon are interpreted as local time on each inventory beacon.

Tip:The schedules discussed here apply only to connections configured on the inventory beacon.

There are two parts to scheduling the collection of inventory through a connection configured on your inventory beacon:

Create the schedule—A schedule is a stand-alone entity that may be used to trigger many different tasks, if there are several tasks that you want running at the same time. As well, you may configure multiple different schedules on an inventory beacon for running different sets of tasks.

Link the connection/task to the schedule—Once at least one schedule exists, you choose the schedule you want to use for each connection.

Both these parts are included in the process below. (If you have an existing schedule, and only want to use it to trigger collection through a new connection, skip forward to step 5.)

You commence this process still logged in (as administrator) to the FlexNet Beacon interface.

To schedule inventory imports through your connection:

From the Data collection group in the navigation pane, choose Scheduling.

Click New....

The Edit Schedule dialog appears.

Complete the details:

Make the Schedule name distinct within the first few characters, as you may need to choose this schedule from a list with fairly narrow columns.

Select the radio button for the kind of schedule you want (from every few minutes, through hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly) and set the time the schedule triggers any linked tasks. This is local time on the inventory beacon.

Tip:The Not scheduled setting is equivalent to turning off any tasks linked to this schedule, since it will never trigger any tasks.

Click OK to write the schedule into the list on the Scheduling page.

The list of schedules now contains unsaved information, and the Scheduling* entry in the navigation bar displays a trailing asterisk to show that you have information to save. You may save now, or you can apply your newly- created schedule to a task (as follows) before saving.

From the Data collection group in the navigation pane, choose the page for the kind of task you want to schedule.

For example, select Inventory systems to collect third-party inventory, such as from Microsoft SCCM.

Select the individual connection from the list, and click Schedule....

In the Select schedule dialog, choose the appropriate schedule from the set you have already created, and click OK.

Tip:As you select each schedule from the list, the area below displays a summary of the schedule settings and the expected Next run time for this schedule. If you have several schedules, this may help you choose the correct one from your list.

When you are satisfied with your changes, click Save at the bottom of the panel to store the details.

The list of connections is updated, and the Next run column for your selected connection shows the projected run time from the schedule you just attached.