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June 2022

Flexera One introduced the following new features and enhancements this month.

Cloud Cost Optimization​

Cloud Cost Optimization added the following new feature and enhancement in June 2022.

Cost Anomaly Detection identifies significant changes in your Cloud spend​

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This feature is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Cost Anomaly Detection is new feature to identify significant changes in cloud spend. Use the Cost Anomaly Detection feature to track down the anomalous spend and take the necessary action to keep your costs in control.

Cost Anomaly Detection:

  • Provides multi-cloud detection by supporting all cloud data ingested by Flexera
  • Identifies spikes in the upper and lower bounds of spend
  • Uses machine learning to understand your cloud spend patterns

Finding anomalies in your cloud spend can be achieved by going to the Billing Centers page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers) and clicking Tabular View to select a dataset to analyze. You can then click the View Anomalies button.

For complete details, see Cost Anomaly Detection in the Flexera One Help.

View Total Potential Savings now includes Google Cloud Platform (GCP)​

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This enhancement is available with Cloud Cost Optimization.

Following our addition of T otal Potential Savings in March 2022, we are excited to include Google Cloud Platform recommendations. The Total Potential Savings now includes AWS, Azure and Google clouds.

Included are five new recommendations that calculated the total potential savings for Rate and Usage Recommendations and are allocated to your Flexera One Billing Centers.

The new recommendations are published in the Flexera One Automation Catalog and are ready for use now.

Rate Reduction Recommendation​

Usage Reduction Recommendations​

For complete information, refer to the Viewing Potential Savings section of the Flexera One Help.

Flexera One Platform​

Flexera One Platform added the following new feature in June 2022.

Flexera One now supports French translation​

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This feature is available throughout Flexera One.

Flexera One now supports French translations.

French translation is enabled through Flexera One-supported browsers. Refer to the following Help topics for instructions about how to change the browser language:

For complete information, refer to Flexera One Support for Additional Languages.

IT Asset Management​

IT Asset Management added the following new features and enhancements in June 2022.

User data imported from Active Directory now returns email address key for Saas user normalization​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

User data is received from a variety of different sources, such as Active Directory and SaaS products like O365 and Salesforce. When data is received from multiple sources concerning the same user, said data needs to be merged in order to prevent the duplication of user records.

The merging process works by checking imported user records, against all of the user records that currently exist in the system. User records that have a matching email address (email addresses are used as a unique identifier per user) are merged as one user.

SaaS products like O365 and Salesforce do include email addresses when importing user data into IT Asset Management. However, before this enhancement, user data imported by Active Directory did not include email addresses. This meant that it was not possible to check if users brought into the system via Active Directory already existed, therefore resulting in the duplication of user records.

With this enhancement, users brought into IT Asset Management from multiple sources are now merged correctly without the risk of creating duplicates. In addition, extra steps have been added to the current merge logic to detect and delete duplicates that already exist and have for some time in the system.

Lists of supported operating systems and compatibility with other products have been updated​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The following operating system version has been added to the list of supported operating systems on FlexNet inventory agent:

  • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
  • BMC Discovery (previously ADDM) 22.1.00
  • HPE Universal Discovery (HP-UD) 2021.11
  • IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on IBM DB2 9.2.27
  • IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT) or HCL BigFix Inventory on Microsoft SQL Server 9.2.27
  • Microsoft SCCM (previously SMS) 2203

New Import Detailed Evidence button added to applications grids​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The Import detailed evidence button has been added to the applications grid, and is accessible in the following pages:

  • All Applications
  • Installed Applications
  • Unmanaged Applications
  • Managed Applications
  • Deferred Applications
  • Ignored Applications

On navigating to any of the aforementioned pages within Applications & Evidence > Applications (such as Applications & Evidence > Applications > All Applications), the Import detailed evidence button is disabled by default. To enable the button, select the corresponding application check box for any of the applications listed in the grid.

When selected, the button opens a drop down list with two options— Enabled and Disabled —that sets the status of the Import detailed evidence flag for selected applications.

To view the status of the Import detailed evidence flag for an application, open the corresponding Application Properties page.

The Import detailed evidence control is an existing control accessible via the General tab in Application Properties. For more details on the Import Detailed evidence control, see Application Properties / General Tab.

Option to temporarily exclude evidence of Oracle database instances from the audit report​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Management.

The Inventory tab on the IT Asset Management Settings General page now has a new check box Include Oracle database instances. This check box is selected by default. However, when you need to temporarily exclude evidence of Oracle database instances from your GLAS audit report, for example, when relocating database instances to different servers, you can choose to deselect this check box.

For more details, see IT Asset Management Settings: Inventory Tab.

New “Product” filter for generating Application Transparency reports​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

When you need to generate an Application Transparency report, now you have the option to pre-filter the records by a selected product name and only the records associated with that product will be displayed. This feature can reduce the time spent on the report generation. You can do this by using the new Product search field on the top left corner of the Application Transparency report page.

For more details, see Application Transparency Report.

New Microsoft Windows Server Optimization Flat View report​

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This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

Licensing Windows Server on virtual machines (VMs) can be very complex. There is no clear direction on how VMs deployed with a Windows Server Datacenter edition operating system must be licensed. Furthermore, VMs with no host (mainly due to vCenter import issues) show no consumption in IT Asset Management.

Using the exact same logic and inputs as the Microsoft Windows Server Optimization report, this report addresses these complexities and challenges and provides a flat list of VM Hosts, hosted virtual machines and computers accompanied by the Optimal license and supplementary criteria information used to calculate it.

The aim of this report is to assist SAM Managers using Business Adapter Studio to perform a batch allocation of computers to their respective Optimal licenses.

For more details, see Microsoft Windows Server Optimization Flat View Report.

IT Asset Requests​

IT Asset Requests added the following enhancement in June 2022.

Ability to create Software Catalog item “Uninstall” deployment option only without also requiring an “Install” deployment​

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This enhancement is available with IT Asset Requests.

This enhancement is the improvement for license reclamation capability by providing the option for an administrator to create a software catalog item with the option to only Uninstall the program without also requiring an Install deployment option with it.

The three options for an Application deployment type are now: Install and Uninstall, Install, or Uninstall.

The instructions in the Flexera One Help for Creating a Catalog Item are now updated to reflect this change.

IT Visibility​

IT Visibility added the following new features and enhancements in June 2022.

Differential inventory export API​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

This release introduces an API that supports differential (delta) export of normalized inventory data from IT Visibility. You can now export delta CSV files of inventory in addition to full exports.

IT Visibility provides information on what is deployed in the your complete IT estate—building and linking multiple normalized datasets across Flexera One to provide a unified view. The new API includes a standard export data model to support downloads to third-party and custom solutions and Flexera-supported integrations. For more information about using this API to export IT Visibility data, see IT Visibility API in the Flexera One API Reference.

Improved ServiceNow data ingestion using new data model​

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This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.

A new data model is in place that delivers performance improvement gains during ServiceNow data ingestion.

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To take advantage of these performance improvement gains, you must use version 5.0.8 of the Flexera Integration app for ServiceNow. However, IT Visibility does support previous versions of the scoped app.

Improve readability of stacked charts using sortable insights​

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This enhancement is available with IT Visibility.

To improve the readability of stacked charts (such as bar charts, column charts, or stacked area charts), you can now sort the insight within the chart in Data Explorer. The order of the insight always corresponds with the order in the legend.

You can sort the insights in the following ways:

  • Alphabetically—You can sort the insight alphabetically from A to Z, or vice versa.
  • Numerically—You can sort the insight numerically from the smallest number to the largest, or vice versa.
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To sort the insight, you must add at least one attribute.

Turn insights into actions​

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This feature is available with IT Visibility.

New dashboard capabilities bring powerful features to link viewing IT Visibility insights to taking meaningful actions in IT Visibility. For example, in the Software Lifecycle dashboard, you can click a software asset and choose Insight to Action. On the Insight to Action page, the AdminStudio report appears in IT Visibility. In the AdminStudio report, you can quickly identify installed software titles that are past their end-of-life (EOL) date. You can then click the Request Package button for those EOL software installations to automatically send a request to AdminStudio to update those packages on your organization’s client devices.

SaaS Management​

SaaS Management added the following new feature and enhancements in June 2022.

Analyzing Salesforce user and license activity data​

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This feature is available with SaaS Management.

SaaS Management has expanded Salesforce user and license activity data capabilities by providing new metrics. You can analyze your Salesforce user activity for all your Salesforce instances (orgs) or drill down to a specific Salesforce org. User activity can also be analyzed per user and per Salesforce license. Salesforce license activity can also be analyzed at the rolled-up view for all Salesforce orgs or drilled down to a specific Salesforce org. Refer to the following sections for further details.

Salesforce All Orgs view​

In the Salesforce All Orgs (previously known as the Salesforce Overview) view, you can view entitled, consumed, available, and active/inactive/never active user counts for each aggregated license type for all Salesforce orgs within one location in SaaS Management. You can further analyze all your Salesforce orgs’ user and license activity data in the:

Salesforce All Orgs Overview tab​

Flexera now offers a high-level view of your Salesforce orgs that are integrated with SaaS Management by displaying:

  • Total number of Connected Orgs
  • Successfully Updated Orgs, based on all integration tasks running successfully
  • Total Accounts from all connected Salesforce orgs

User activity data has been enhanced in this view by providing:

  • Total percentage of active, inactive, and never active users for all Salesforce orgs in the Activity status graph
  • Data drill throughs to the Salesforce All Orgs Users tab via user activity data links in the Activity status and Days since last activity and Activities over time graphs.
Salesforce All Orgs Orgs tab​

The Orgs tab provides a high-level overview of your organization’s total Salesforce managed licenses, assigned users and user activity status by org name and org ID. You can drill down to a particular Salesforce org’s Overview tab via the Org Name or the Org ID column links.

Salesforce All Orgs Licenses tab​

The Licenses tab provides a high-level overview of your organization’s total Salesforce licenses by name, category, number remaining, and number assigned by org name and org ID. You can analyze license activity for a specific Salesforce License Name across Salesforce orgs by checking the Group By License Name box. An aggregated row of the Salesforce license name is displayed, together with aggregated numbers of Remaining and Assigned licenses from multiple Salesforce orgs.

License name data drill through

  • If the Group By License Name box is checked, clicking the arrow before the aggregated License Name displays a list of License Details pages for each Salesforce org.
  • Clicking the Application link opens the License Details page for the Salesforce org.

For details, refer to the Salesforce License drill-through view.

Salesforce All Orgs Users tab​

Building on the earlier release of the Salesforce Users Tab, SaaS Management now offers:

  • A user slideout to manage and optimize licenses at the user level without having to filter or search. Clicking a Username link opens this slideout and displays a user’s assigned licenses, last activity based on the last login date, and activity counts by date range.
  • Filtering user activity by Salesforce Org ID or Org Name.
  • Data drill through to a selected Salesforce org’s Overview tab by clicking the Org ID or the Org Name link.

Individual Salesforce Org view​

From the Salesforce All Orgs view, you can drill down to an Individual Salesforce Org Overview tab and analyze user and license activity for a specific Salesforce org. You can navigate back to the Salesforce All Orgs view by clicking the View All Salesforce Orgs link at the top. Data drill throughs from the Individual Salesforce Org Overview tab to a Salesforce org’s Users tab provide opportunities to reclaim underutilized Salesforce licenses by clicking the Reclamation Opportunities tile. For details, refer to Reclaiming SaaS Licenses.

Individual Salesforce Org Overview tab​

User activity data has been enhanced in this view by providing:

  • Total percentage of active, inactive, and never active users for the selected Salesforce org in the Activity status graph
  • Data drill throughs to a Salesforce org’s Users tab via user activity data links in the Activity status and Days since last activity graphs.

License activity at the Salesforce org level now displays in the Licenses table. You can view a Salesforce org’s license position by license name, category, number remaining, and number assigned. Clicking the License Name link opens a License Details page for the selected Salesforce org. For details, refer to the Salesforce License drill-through view.

Salesforce License drill-through view​

In this view, user and license activity is focused on the users assigned to a specific Salesforce license either at the All Orgs level or for a selected Salesforce org. You can access this view through the Salesforce All Orgs Licenses tab or by clicking the Licenses Name in the Licenses table of the selected Salesforce org Overview tab. At the top of the license drill through is the Salesforce license name with the relevant org links underneath. Clicking a Salesforce org link opens the Overview tab for the selected Salesforce org. If several Salesforce org links are listed under the Salesforce license name, the license usage data is rolled up from the users who are included in those orgs. For Salesforce user licenses, the Activity Status and Days Since Last Activity graphs drill down to the Users table at the bottom of the Salesforce license drill through view.

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In the Salesforce license drill through view, the Activity Status, Days Since Last Activity, and Activities Over Time graphs are only available for Salesforce user licenses.

For more information, see Analyzing Salesforce User and License Activity Data in the Flexera One Help.

Expense (Coupa) integration update to OAuth2 With Client Credentials​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera’s SaaS Management integration with Coupa has been enhanced with the more secure authentication method OAuth2 with Client Credentials. Beginning with the Coupa January 2023 Release (R35), Coupa will no longer support API keys and instead require the use of the more secure authentication method OAuth2 with Client Credentials. The following details will help you prepare for the Expense (Coupa) integration enhancement.

Action required for new SaaS Management integrations with Expense (Coupa)​

You must grant permissions using the Coupa Integration Admin role with the generated Client ID and Client Secret values as described in Actions required for existing SaaS Management integrations with Expense (Coupa).

Actions required for existing SaaS Management integrations with Expense (Coupa)​

Due to SaaS Management's migration from the token-based authentication method to OAuth2, existing Expense (Coupa) integrations will fail due to a 401 Unauthorized Error. Once the Expense (Coupa) integration tasks start failing, you must reauthorize the Expense (Coupa) integration using the Coupa Integration Admin role with the generated Client ID and Client Secret values as described below.

Minimum permissions required​

Minimum API required permissions are based on the Application Permission and User Role.

Application Permission​

PermissionDescriptionIntegration Task Name
core.user.readTo read the list of users in your Coupa accountApplication Roster
core.expense.readTo read the Expense data in your Coupa accountExpense Discovery

User Role​

RoleDescription
Integration AdminTo grant the application permissions, the user must have Integration Admin access. For details, refer to Coupa’s documentation section OAuth 2.0 Getting Started with Coupa API.

Obtaining Client Credentials​

Log in to Coupa as an Integration Admin to create an OAuth2/OIDC client with the client credentials grant type. Once configured, the Client ID and Client Secret values are used to gain access to the Coupa API.

  1. To set up your Coupa instance with a new connection, go to Setup > Oauth2/OpenID Connect Clients. To navigate quickly to this page, type “oauth” in the Search box.
  2. Complete the following on Coupa’s Oauth2/OpenID Connect Clients page:
    1. Click Create.
    2. For Grant Type, select: Client credentials.
    3. Specify a name for the Client, Login, Contact info, and Contact Email fields.
    4. Select the Scopes as mentioned in the Application Permission section. Scopes are available for review at https://{your_instance_address}/oauth2/scopes.
    5. Click Save. Saving the client gives you values for the Client Identifier and Client Secret, which are needed to gain access to the API Scopes you have defined for it.
    6. Copy the Client Identifier, which is the Client ID and click Show/Hide to display and copy the Client Secret.
  3. Paste the Coupa Client ID and Client Secret values in SaaS Management as mentioned in the Expense (Coupa) integration instructions section Integrating Coupa with SaaS Management.

Data anonymization has been disabled in Microsoft 365 integration​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

In August 2021, Microsoft introduced a new capability to allow the ability to globally configure how Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is shared within Microsoft 365 reports. Enabling Data Anonymization encrypted the unique ID of a user. When Data Anonymization is enabled, Flexera's SaaS Management is unable to match the data retrieved from the Microsoft 365 portal to a user, which results in users being shown in the SaaS Management Suspicious Activities report. Disabling Data Anonymization presented a challenge for customers as it breached their internal policies.

This release means that Flexera no longer requires Data Anonymization to be disabled, opening up the power of our SaaS Management Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Client Credentials integrations to all customers.

User Event activity tracking and improved license reclamation workflow for Smartsheet​

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera’s SaaS Management has enhanced its Smartsheet integration by now offering user event activity tracking and improving the Smartsheet license reclamation workflow.

User Event activity tracking​

For organizations with Smartsheet Enterprise plans and the add-on feature Event Reporting, SaaS Management’s integration with Smartsheet can now track user event activity data. The Smartsheet Event Reporting Reference lists all currently supported user event activity. For Smartsheet Pro and Business plans, SaaS Management’s integration with Smartsheet only tracks last login activity. For further details, refer to the API endpoints and the Smartsheet integration instruction section Integrating Smartsheet with SaaS Management.

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The SaaS Management License Information integration task is not yet supported for Smartsheet. Currently, there is no Smartsheet API endpoint that fetches license type information and the total number of available licenses.

Reclaiming Smartsheet User licenses​

Smartsheet user licenses can now be reclaimed using a similar SaaS Management license reclamation workflow as used for reclaiming Microsoft 365 and Salesforce user licenses. Once Smartsheet user licenses are reclaimed in SaaS Management, the users become Free Collaborators in your organization’s Smartsheet account. Free Collaborators are not tracked in the Smartsheet Activity tab within SaaS Management. For further details, refer to the Smartsheet integration instruction section Reclaiming Smartsheet User Licenses.

API endpoints​

Application Roster

https://api.smartsheet.com/2.0/users

Application Access

  • If Enable Event Activity is set as “Yes”: https://api.smartsheet.com/2.0/events
  • If Enable Event Activity is set as “No” or left blank: https://api.smartsheet.com/2.0/users

Reclamation

https://api.smartsheet.com/2.0/users/<<UserID>>

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This enhancement is available with SaaS Management.

Flexera’s SaaS Management has added the capability to view more granular user activity and license details from within the user activity slideout. This improved slideout is available within the Users tab for all Managed SaaS Applications. Within the Users tab, click a user’s email link to open the user’s activity slideout. The view more user details link takes you to the Administration > SaaS Settings > Organization > All SaaS Users screen and displays the user’s All SaaS Users Screen Usage Statistics.

Technopedia​

Flexera One added the following new Automation feature in May 2022.

Open Source Enrichment Pack in Flexera One Technopedia API​

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This feature is available with Technopedia using the Technopedia API.

Work continues to bring various enrichment packs (content packs) associated with products and releases that are captured in Technopedia. Two of these packs were already part of the general availability of the Technopedia API: Lifecycle and Support and Hardware Specifications. Now, the Open Source Enrichment Pack is also available in the Technopedia API.

The Open Source Enrichment Pack is included as part of Technopedia Enrichment Pack subscription (available to all Flexera One IT Visibility customers as well as customers with Technopedia-only subscription). It is currently only accessible through the Flexera One Technopedia Public API (GraphQL). Flexera is actively working to make it an integral part of IT Visibility's inventory data using IT Visibility inventory dashboards as well as export capabilities.

This new Open Source Enrichment Pack enables Technopedia to drive various open source use cases by providing attributes to accurately identify whether a particular software application or component is open source and identify the type of restrictions associated with it. This enrichment pack will be further enhanced to facilitate an organizations’ capability to better manage composition of their software assets depending on their appetite or aversion towards incorporating open source into their portfolio.

This enrichment is fully powered by the open source catalog coming from Flexera’s very own subsidiary, Revenera, using Revenera’s Software Composition Analysis (SCA) solution. Revenera's Code Insight is an industry-leading SCA solution that helps organizations manage their open source compliance and security needs, bringing in one of the largest open source knowledge bases in the industry, with more than 18 million components.

Details on attributes that are available as part of this pack can be found in our Technopedia API datasets documentation.

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The Open Source Enrichment attributes are captured in the following datasets: ScaOpenSource, componentLicenseData, versionLicenseData,and keywordsData.