Adjusting Global Settings for Updates of Inventory Beacons

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

Set the global settings for updates of inventory beacons to establish baseline behavior for all the inventory beacons in your computing estate. Your inventory beacons can self-update automatically, or you can control releases manually. You make these settings in the compliance browser, using the web interface to IT Asset Management (and not on the individual inventory beacon servers).

To set global limits for updates to inventory beacons:

1. Go to the Inventory Settings page.
   The Inventory Settings page appears.

   Tip: Check the release details using the View Change History for FlexNet Beacon link in the Beacon settings section.
2. In the Beacon settings section, make a selection from the Beacon version approved for use control.
   • For fully automated updates of your inventory beacons, choose Always use the latest version (currently release-number). With this setting operational for all your inventory beacons, updates are silent and self-managing.
   • To manually limit the updates to a specific release of the inventory beacon software, select a recent release from the drop-down list of supported versions. With this setting, notifications are displayed to let you know when a new version of the inventory beacon software is available for testing and approval.
     Note: If you select a release number earlier than the version currently deployed to your inventory beacon, you will trigger a downgrade. Since this is not recommended (especially in a production environment), you see a confirmation alert:

        This setting forces inventory beacons to downgrade to an earlier 
     version of the beacon software. Best practice is to keep inventory beacons 
     up to date. Are you sure you want to roll back to this superseded version?

     Either Cancel the alert, and choose a later release of the FlexNet Beacon software; or, if you really intend to force a downgrade, click OK.

Remember: Flexera strongly recommends that you keep your inventory beacons as up-to-date as is possible within your corporate policies, in order to keep them functionally synchronized with the central application server.

Once your global baseline for inventory beacon updates is set, you should check on the configuration of your inventory beacons, and manage any required exceptions (see Configuring Update Settings for Individual Inventory Beacons).