Originally posted as a blog post here .

For Snow License Manager (SLM) to show information about subscription assignments, what plan users are on, and how much they have used their Office-365 applications, a connection needs to be made between a user’s identity in Office-365 and in SLM. This connection cannot always be made automatically by SLM because of the way the different systems involved identify users.

When the connection cannot be made automatically, the user shows up in SLM in the Not linked users list. In this post, I will explain the circumstances leading to users not being linked automatically, and the manual steps you can take to link them.
 

The list of not linked users is available by selecting Cloud => Microsoft Office 365 => and then the subscription plan:

Problem

In SLM, the information available about a user mirrors the data extracted from the user’s computer by Snow’s Inventory agent. This data varies depending on the platform (Windows/Unix/Linux) and whether the function AD discovery of users has been enabled in the Inventory Admin Console – a feature that is available in Inventory 5.

The Inventory agent identifies users in the form of Domain/login-ID such as: EUSE/JENANI. When AD discovery of users is enabled, the agent extracts additional information from the AD, including the AD ObjectID, the primary e-mail address of the user, and the User Principal Name (UPN).

From the Microsoft Office-365 portal, Snow’s Office-365 connector extracts UPN, ObjectID, and other e-mail addresses.

The information extracted by the connector is updated either on a scheduled basis, depending on how the connector is configured, or can be run manually.

The matching required to create the connection between users in Office-365 and SLM occurs when the connector information is imported to SLM.

Users will be marked as not linked if:

• User e-mail addresses have not been imported manually into SLM, which applies to most customers, or
• You are running Inventory 3, or Inventory 5 with AD discovery of users disabled, or
• The Office-365 portal is not synchronized with the organization’s AD,
• The user doesn’t exist in SLM, if for example, the user’s computer is not being inventoried because they are for example a consultant or using a BYOD.

Solution

For customers using Inventory 5 :

Activate AD user discovery from the Snow Inventory admin console, and matching will occur irrespective of whether the Office-365 portal is synchronized with the AD.

For customers not using Inventory 5:

Use the Update existing users import function in SLM.

1. Export the users in SLM that you want to match with Office-365. The simplest way to do this is to select Cloud => Microsoft Office 365 => and then the subscription plan you are working on. Right click in the content pane, and select Export (.xls/.xlsx). An excel file containing all SLM users will be downloaded to your device.
2. Edit the Excel file and remove all columns except User name and Office 365 user name. Save the file.
3. Go to the import data page and select Update existing users.

Step 1: Upload a data source.

Use the Excel file you have just created as the file to import.

Step 2: Import settings

Select whether you want to do nothing or create a new organization for companies in the file that do not exist in the SLM database.

Step 3: Field mappings

Ensure that User name is mapped to User name and Office 365 user name is mapped to the E-mail destination.

To see the effect in SLM, you need to either wait for the next scheduled import from the Office-365 connector, or trigger an import in the Snow Integration Manager Interface.

In the product team we are always thinking about how we can build on new functionality to make more valuable and easier to use. Make sure to share your feedback about linking users once you have tried it out and stay tuned for future enhancements to our Office 365 functionality.