Merged Devices Issues Analysis Report

The Merged Devices Issues Analysis report provides details on the inventory devices imported from same or multiple sources that have been merged and can cause false positives in application installations.

IT Asset Management has a functionality that merges devices from same or multiple inventory sources into a unique device record in the Web user interface (UI), when they share the same serial number for instance. The ImportedComputer table is the staging table where the raw data coming from multiple inventory sources is stored, before the data is merged into the ComplianceComputer table which contains the data visible in the Web UI.

When members of a merged device group are aging, they can cause false positives in recognized applications as their evidence are mixed with the evidence of other merged devices. Note that starting from release 2020 R2, the inventory import only keeps the evidence of the most recently imported device for recognition when there are merged devices from a given connection. However, there are cases when the evidence from multiple devices for a given inventory source is mixed (see the Import fails to ignore older evidence column in this report).

The Merged Devices Issues Analysis report provides information of the merged devices (when at least two records in the ImportedComputer table share the same external key to the ComplianceComputer table), which allows the user to identify the devices that cause issues and need to be deleted along with all their related records. This information includes inventory date, number of installer evidence, merging reason, priority, and so on.

Note:This report retrieves a lot of data that may be hard to interpret. If you filter on Priority = 1, you will get all the records in the ImportedComputer table that are causing application false positives. The easiest way to delete these records is to go to the Obsolete inventory section on the Inventory tab of the IT Asset Management Settings General page and delete the records that are older than X days. If this data cleanup method is not applicable to you (for example, DMZ devices are not reported often and you want to keep the inventory data), another option is to open a support ticket.

Generating the report

To generate the report, perform the following steps.

To generate a Merged Devices Issues Analysis report:

1.

Go to the Merged Devices Issues Analysis page (Reporting > Operations > Merged Devices Issues Analysis). You can also access this report by going to the Saved Reports page (Reporting > Saved Reports & Views > Saved Reports), navigating to the “SAM Operations” folder, and clicking Merged Devices Issues Analysis.

2.

Click Run report.

Reading the report

This report combines properties of:

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Computer Properties

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Imported Computer Properties

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Stand-alone Properties

To clarify the report, the properties are grouped under headers that identify their underlying database object. Similarly, this list of properties is grouped first by the database object (alphabetically ordered), and then the related properties (also sorted alphabetically). Some of these columns are not displayed by default; however, you can make them visible by moving them out of the column chooser.

Compliance Computer Properties

The following Compliance computer properties are displayed.

Column name	Description
Device name	The name of the device as displayed in the Web UI after the merge.
Installer evidence	The number of the installer evidence that will be used for recognition. If there are much more installer evidence than raw installer evidence for a record, it is a sign of possible duplicated records.
Inventory device type	The type of the inventory device after the merge.
Last inventory date	The inventory date as displayed in the Web UI after the merge.
Matching rule	The rule used during inventory import that caused the current raw inventory to be matched to the current inventory record in the compliance database. For details about all the possible matching rules, see Identifying Related Inventory in Gathering FlexNet Inventory available at doc.flexera.com.
Serial number	The serial number of the device after the merge.
Status	The inventory device status as displayed in the Web UI. To avoid unnecessary noise, this report is focused only on the Active devices.

Imported Computer Properties

The following Imported computer properties are displayed.

Column name	Description
Agent	The inventory source.
Agent version	The version number of the FlexNet inventory agent that has collected the data. This information is useful because sometimes an upgrade of the agent to certain versions can be a cause for duplicated records. Version numbers may not be reported for inventory sources other than the FlexNet inventory agent.
ComplianceComputerID	The database ID of the final device in the ComplianceComputer table. This column provides information about which imported devices have been merged.
Computer type	The type of the inventory reported by the inventory source.
Device name	The name of the device reported by the inventory gathering tool in the ImportedComputer table.
Domain	The name of the domain reported by the inventory source.
Firmware serial number	Displays the firmware serial number of an inventory device. This is a unique identification number for an inventory device. Information in this column can help with the identification of the device and the understanding of the merging logic.
Hardware inventory date	The raw date when the hardware scan was performed. This date is often same as the Last inventory date.
Imported installer evidence	The number of the raw installer evidence records. This is an indicator of the possible impact of the “to be deleted” source records.
Inventory source	The display name of the inventory connection. These names were created when the inventory connection was originally set up.
Last inventory date	The raw inventory date reported by the inventory source.
Matching rule	The rule used during inventory import that caused the current raw inventory to be matched to the current inventory device record in the ImportedComputer table. For details about all the possible matching rules, see Identifying Related Inventory in Gathering FlexNet Inventory available at doc.flexera.com.
Operating system	The operating system as reported by the inventory source. This column can be useful for filtering data.
Serial number	The serial number of the device reported by the inventory gathering tool in the ImportedComputer table.
Services inventory date	The inventory date for Oracle instances or VMWare.
UUID	The unique ID of the inventory device.

Stand-alone Properties

The following properties are displayed without being under any groups.

Column name	Description
Comment	The summary of the issues analysis.
ComplianceConnectionID	The ID in the database of the inventory connection. This information can be useful for troubleshooting.
ExternalID	The database ID of the device in the inventory source. This information can be useful for executing a deletion script.
Import fails to ignore older evidence	This is a Yes/No flag. This flag is important in indicating whether the mechanism to avoid duplicated records may have failed. The failure can occur when inconsistent dates (for example, Hardware inventory date, Last inventory date, and Services inventory date) exist for the merged records.
Installer evidence exceed installer evidences by more than 30%	This is a Yes/No flag. This flag indicates whether there are big differences between the number of recognized installer evidence and raw installer evidence. A value of Yes indicates possible false positive applications.
Priority	The priority of the issue. Possible values are: • Priority 1 (high priority), if either of the following conditions is met: • Multiple devices from the same inventory source have been merged with installer evidence. The record is older than other merged records and contributes to the application recognition with its evidence. The filtering mechanism that the inventory import only keeps evidence of the most recently imported device for recognition when there are merged devices from a given connection is not efficient on this imported device. • The record has been merged with another record imported from a different inventory source that has installer evidence and the inventory date difference is more than two weeks. • Priority 2 (lower priority), if the following conditions met: • The record is less recent than another record merged from the same inventory source but does not contribute to application recognition.
Requires deletion	Indicates that this record needs to be deleted because it is duplicated with another record that has been inventoried more recently. Note:A record that needs to be deleted does not always cause false positives as the import will ignore the oldest evidence set when a device has two merged records from the same inventory source. You need to focus on the deletion of the Priority 1 records.