Moving Maintenance Between Licenses

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

The Move maintenance wizard is available in two locations:

• The License and Maintenance Expiry page
• The All Licenses page.

To open the blue wizard area of either page, select one license from the list, and click Move maintenance. (All other action buttons for the list are disabled until you complete or Cancel the wizard.) The selected license is the source license, from which maintenance will be removed, and most likely license entitlements as well. Because each license requires either that there is no maintenance, or that the maintenance coverage is equal to the number of entitlements recorded on the license, moving maintenance purchases may also require moving license entitlement purchases.

The wizard has three panels:

• Choosing the quantities to move
• Choosing the destination license that received the quantity moved
• Deciding whether the source license or the destination license (or both) should allow the maintenance to expire.

On all three panels, the source license (the one you selected in the underlying page) displays as the From license. You may Ctrl-click on the license name to open its properties in a new tab. (Opening in a separate tab means you don't lose the current state of your wizard settings.)

If you opened the wizard from the License and Maintenance Expiry page, the affected maintenance count is also displays (on the first two wizard panels) as Expiring or expired maintenance:

• If your underlying License and Maintenance Expiry page is filtered for a future time window (visible just below the wizard as Expiring within the next), this shows the count of current maintenance coverage expiring within the chosen time window.
• If your underlying page is showing Overdue items, this maintenance coverage has already expired; but you may still move it to another license if required (so that you can, for example, correct you audit trail).

Since licenses derive their counts of entitlements and maintenance coverage from the records of purchases that are linked to them, moving maintenance requires that some purchases (or parts of individual purchases) are relocated from the source license to a destination license.

• If you selected a row in the License and Maintenance Expiry page, you have also identified the purchase that is the starting point for calculations.
• If you started from the All Licenses page, the calculations start with the purchase for which the Expiry date is closest to today.

The chosen purchase sets the recommended number to move to a new license, shown in Transfer quantity.

The system then infers, for this license, a 'chain' of purchases that appear to renew the same maintenance over time, based on related quantities and dates. The chain goes no further back than a matching purchase for software with maintenance, or a software-only purchase within a day of a relevant maintenance purchase. If neither of these is found, the maintenance chain ends at the first related purchase of maintenance, and the system then finds the purchase of linked software (only) that is nearest to the start of the inferred chain of maintenance purchases. The resulting chain displays as the list of purchases initially shown in the wizard with a non-zero Transfer quantity.

To move maintenance (and possibly entitlements) from one license to another:

1. In the first panel of the wizard, control the appearance of the list of available purchases that can be moved from the source license.
   By default, all purchases for the selected license are listed in the wizard. This allows you to change the proposals in any way necessary. However, it may also overwhelm you with a long list of purchases. If so, you can control the list with the two check boxes immediately above it in the wizard:
   1. Set or clear Show only quantities that will be moved.
      • When this check box is clear, linked purchases display regardless of the Transfer quantity selected so far.
      • When this check box is set, any purchases for which the Transfer quantity is zero are hidden from the list of linked purchases.

      This control is handy for reviewing your progress so far if you are dealing with a large list of purchases, as it allows you to focus on only the purchases being actively considered for moving. When you need to add another purchase for consideration, clear the check box so that purchases with no recommended Transfer quantity are visible; change the quantity for the purchase you want to add; and then you can set the check box again.
   2. Set or clear Show only maintenance purchases without renewals.
      • When this check box is clear, purchases linked to the license display regardless of the relationships between purchases.
      • When this check box is selected, only the last of any date-related series or 'chain' of purchases displays (that is, the purchases which have not yet been fully renewed by later purchases). A maintenance purchase that has only been partially renewed is included in this display, as the non-renewed coverage amount may need moving to another license.
2. From the visible purchases, update the figures in the Transfer quantity column.
   You may type a value into the column, or use the numeric spinners. Notice that you cannot enter a number greater than the Maintenance quantity of the purchase.

   Tip: For a consistent record of entitlements and related maintenance, you should move the entire chain of related purchases, back to the earliest possible purchase that relates to your planned move. A helpful way to achieve this is:

   1. Select Show only maintenance purchases without renewals to display only the most recent purchases in any date-related series of purchases.
   2. Adjust the Transfer quantity for the most recent purchase.
   3. Clear the Show only maintenance purchases without renewals so that all purchases are visible.
   4. Click Recalculate. This works the change back through all purchases that IT Asset Management has identified as a related chain of purchases.
3. When satisfied, click Choose a license.
   The second panel of the wizard displays.
4. In the Move maintenance and software entitlements to drop-down list, choose one of:
   • a recommended license — Displays by default when IT Asset Management has identified one or more candidates for your destination license. (If you select it at any other time, it shows an empty list, and you need to choose a different option.) Recommendations may be based on either of:
     • Applications linked in common to both the source and recommended destination license
     • The name of the recommended license matching the license name property of the SKU quoted in the purchase record linked to the source license.
     If recommendations are available, select your chosen destination license in the list.
   • an existing license (search) — When you choose this option, the wizard displays a search field where you can enter part of the license name, and click Search. From the resulting list of licenses, select the appropriate destination license, and click Add license.
   • a new license (create) — This option displays a New license name field, with a default name proposed, based on the source license name and a numeric differentiator (for example, a source license called My License produces a proposed destination license name of My License (2)). It is good practice to edit this name for greater meaning, such as My License (Non-Renewed Maint). You can further edit the properties of this new license later.
5. Click Review.
   The third panel of the wizard displays.
6. As appropriate for your plans, set or clear each of the Planned non-renewal: When the current maintenance on this license expires it will not be renewed check boxes associated with the source and destination licenses.
   Setting either of these check boxes authorizes appropriate automation within IT Asset Management. Once the last maintenance expiry date on linked purchases passes:

   • If the license was created from a template in the downloaded libraries, and the product use rights on the license still match the template, the product use rights for the applicable product are automatically updated to suit the new 'no maintenance' case, as specified by the software publisher. You need take no further action in this case, since the plan was made clear with the check box setting. (On the other hand, if someone has manually changed the standard product use rights settings on the license, no automated changes are made, and instead in the Recommended License Changes page, a new recommendation appears that you should update the license use rights to suit the loss of maintenance coverage.)
   • If the license was created locally without reference to the standard templates and with upgrade rights, the upgrade right on the relevant product is changed, allowing upgrades only until the expiry date of the relevant maintenance purchase.
7. When satisfied with your settings, click Move maintenance and entitlements.
   After a moment, the wizard displays a confirmation page that shows the number of entitlements with maintenance coverage that have been transferred, and includes links to the property sheets of both the source and destination license. If you chose to create a new license as your destination, now is a good time to Ctrl+click on its name (hyperlink), and update the necessary details in the property sheet. Checking the Purchases tab in the license properties shows the linked purchases and the quantities transferred to the destination license. If, for this destination license, you had selected Planned non-renewal: When the current maintenance on this license expires it will not be renewed in the wizard, you can see that Planned non-renewal is set on the Compliance tab. Other properties for the destination license have been copied from the source license. It is good practice to add an explanatory comment as an audit trail in the Notes field on the Identification tab.
8. When satisfied, click OK to close the wizard panel.
   Tip: You may need to restore your setting on the Expiring within the next filter.