Business Data Tab

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

This tab reports results for recent business data imports. You can also prepare one-off data imports for foundational information not regularly updated.

Tip: To access this tab, your operator account must be assigned to at least one role that grants the Allow right to the Import business data feature – and no other role that separately sets a Deny for the same feature. (To access these settings, Search for the IT Asset Accounts page then switch to the Roles tab.)

Through your FlexNet Beacon interface, you can schedule regular imports of both inventory data (from computer systems, on the Inventory Data tab) and related business data (from other systems such as purchase orders). At other times, you may need to import some data manually, such as purchases, or the baseline for your enterprise structure, or a set of user names. You can download the standard templates from IT Asset Management, populate data, and import them into IT Asset Management. You can directly upload IBM Passport Advantage reports and Microsoft License Statement. You can monitor both scheduled, and one-off, business imports from this page.

Available actions

These actions are available to operators with sufficient privileges. In contrast, for an operator with view-only privileges, the One-off upload and Process imports buttons are permanently disabled.

• To show or hide details of a recent import of business data, click the row that summarizes its results (a small gray expander arrow appears at its far right).
• To prepare for, or perform, a one-time upload of business data in a spreadsheet (or CSV) file, click One-off upload. For simple handling, these templates are available as .xslx spreadsheet files or .csv templates for comma-separated value files. The following topics give guidance on completing the available templates:
  • Purchase Order Upload
  • Enterprise Group Upload
  • User Assignment Upload.
• In general, you no longer need to click Process imports, because as every business upload is completed, a message to the process scheduler is automatically queued. Clicking this button also inserts a message into the same queue, so that there is no net change. The one scenario for using this button is where you have inconsistent connectivity from the relevant inventory beacon, such that after an upload (which is resilient to interruptions and the like), the 'task completed' signal from the inventory beacon to the central application server is lost. You can then manually intervene to schedule the data import from the uploaded package.

Header row information

The header row provides the minimum information to identify each import and its status:

Name

The name you gave to the import at the time of defining the relevant adapter and connection.

Beacon

The name of the inventory beacon on which this adapter was exercised (where the connection is defined). For one-off imports through the central application server, this space is left blank.

Task status

The high level summary of the overall status of the task. It may display:

• Completed
• Completed with errors
• Failed
• In progress
• In progress with errors
• Timed out
• Unknown.

Clicking on one of these header rows opens (and thereafter closes) a display of further details about the business import and its results.

Expanded items

After expanding a header row of any business import, the following additional information is available.

Tip: The same information is also available through the System Tasks page (mixed with other types of import).

Task type

Always displays the value Business import on this tab.

Types of data

Displays a comma-separated list of the database objects affected by this import. This summary list is also repeated in the table of Results shown a little further down the page.

Last run

The date and time of the last attempted import from this connection.

Rows read from source

The number of data rows that were imported from the source in the last completed import. (If you have not yet successfully completed any business import on this connection, this shows Not available.)

Tip: It is valuable to keep clear the distinction between rows of data and the number of objects that may be affected by each row. Thus, for example, any one row may generate multiple rejection messages, based on the many objects it affects.

Status

Generally, when the last import was successful, this is a repeat of the task status value from the summary bar (see above). However, the two values may be different when the current import (summarized in the title bar) has not yet completed, and this Status shows the results of the last completed business import.

Duration

The running time taken for processing this business import. This does not include the processing time on the inventory beacon, the upload time, or the wait time before its processing commenced. The field is not displayed if the last import did not complete (for example, if it has a status of Timed out).

Rows with rejection messages

Displayed only if at least one row in the last completed import generated rejection messages during the process of importing the data. It shows the number of rows, within the total import read from the source (see above), which generated one or more rejection messages. Any number here is a hyperlink: click it to navigate to the Business Import Rejection Messages page (see Business Import Rejection Messages Page), which provides details of the individual rejection messages.

Show/hide task status and history

Click this hyperlink to toggle the appearance of the Task status and history list.

Task status and history list

When you reveal the Task status and history list, the following columns are available (some by default, and others available in the column chooser):

Column	Comments
Task/step	The name of the import (at the highest level). Once you click the + expander to the left of the task name, the individual steps involved in the import are listed here.
Beacon	The name of the inventory beacon on which this task (or step) ran. This is the same inventory beacon identified in the summary row for this business import.
Connection type	Always blank for business imports (this column is used for inventory imports only).
Created by	Always blank for business imports (this column is used for inventory imports only).
Logs	Where logs of an action are available (such as for collecting the business data on the inventory beacon) this column contains a hyperlink allowing you to Download log to your local computer for inspection.
End date	The date and time when the import of this staged data into the central operations databases completed (or timed out).
Server name	The name of the remote server that was the target for the collection of business data.
Start date	The date and time when the import of this staged data into the central operations databases commenced.
Status	The result for the individual row in the list (either the overall import, at the task level, or for the individual steps when these are exposed). For example, if an overall task of importing purchases has a Status of Timed out, you can expand the task and track results for the individual steps. For example, you may see that Gathering business data was successfully completed (with the saved file details displayed), that the upload succeeded, and that it was the import that timed out. This helps you focus your debugging efforts.
Summary	Either a supplementary comment to explain the status, or additional details (such as file size and location).