• Owner: Nicolas Rousseau
• Owner Email Address: nrousseau@flexera.com
• Solution Type: Custom Inventory Import & Custom SQL Reports
• Flexera Product & Version: FNMS 2016+
• Environment: On Prem Only
• Development Effort (Days): 3
• Implementation Effort (Days): 0.1
• Disclaimer:

SOLUTIONS ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS. NEITHER FLEXERA NOR ITS SUPPLIERS MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NONINFRINGEMENT. LICENSEE MAY HAVE OTHER STATUTORY RIGHTS. HOWEVER, TO THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE DURATION OF STATUTORILY REQUIRED WARRANTIES, IF ANY, WILL BE LIMITED TO THE SHORTER OF (I) THE STATUTORILY REQUIRED PERIOD OR (II) THIRTY (30) DAYS FROM LICENSEE’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE AGREEMENT.

The report described below (code embedded in the Word document below) analyzes, user per user, the subscribed plans, the installed applications, the used applications, the costs of current license and gives the recommendations and calculates the possible financial optimization.

Business need and approach

There are two challenges with Adobe:

• This is a subscription-based licensing.
  • So, you need to integrate data from the Adobe Portal (directly from the portal through WebService integration or through an excel export or finally through Active Directory groups imports)
• There is a bundle and standalone applications. With 3 or more standalone applications, the bundle is cheaper. There could be case where both bundle and standalone licenses have been subscribed.
• FlexNet Manager can Manage the Creative Cloud Suite as a “Suite” application:
  • The standalone applications are deleted and replaced by the “Suite” application. This is not the case in the latest versions. The goal is to avoid double license consumptions. This has the downside of “hiding” the real components.
  • A side effect of the Suite recognition is that standalone is that the last used date is the latest use date of one of the components. If Illustrator, Acrobat and InDesign are installed, InDesign and Illustrator have never been used but Acrobat has been used yesterday, the Creative Cloud Suite installation will show a last used date of yesterday.
  • FNMS supports now bundled licenses and having individual standalone products recognized is no longer an issue.
  • You can deactivate the Suite recognition (recommended) with forcing the number of needed standalone components to be the max (20 for instance) to recognize the Suite in the evidence/Suite and member section of the application (see screenshot below).

The report below answers the simple but hard to answer question: “Is it worth licensing the Suite on this computer?”

The report assumes the usage information (coming from SCCM of FlexNet Manager) is reliable. The quality of usage must be carefully assessed, and best practice is to check with the application user if he confirmed he does not use it before uninstalling it.

Adobe Subscriptions importer

The first attached document gives an example of PowerShell that collects the Adobe Portal Information.

To implement this reader, you need PowerShell skill and admin role on the portal (to generate the certificate).

The document describes then a classical Business Adapter (On the beacon UI for instance) that can allocate users from the CSV file, using the "data transformation" feature of the Business Adapter.

Note that if you have an integration between your Azure Active Directory and the Adobe Portal, you will just need to manage AD groups that will map with the Adobe CC subscriptions.

You need in the filter to restrict on a group using "MemberOf", one example below. The grammar is cryptic but your AD admins should be able to help you. You filter on 1 group and multiple domains for instance. I was not able to filter on multiple groups using wildcards (Acrobat%)... so, you need as many Business Adapters as groups.
(&(objectCategory=user)(!cn=CHILD$)(memberof=CN=DG_Adobe_AcrobatPro-Users,OU=GRP,OU=Global,OU=PRD,DC=net,DC=fr,DC=ch))

The logs will appear in the FNMS UI

Don't forget, like when using the PowerShell import approach, to use the "detach unfound computers from considered software allocations to make sure that if a subscription is no longer in the Portal, le allocation will be deleted in FNMS. 

Don't forget to 

Preview

Report details

Please notice that it is recommended to “de-activate” the Suite recognition for better transparency of the data usage. If suites are recognized, the report will provide the needed transparency, but performance of the report will be impacted (re-constructing usage for each standalone component requires queries in very large evidence and usage tables).

The report focuses on Adobe products but could easily be adapted to other vendors / applications (Example on Microsoft below)

• It lists all adobe applications installed on computers…
  • When the standalone product was installed, it shows it
  • When the suite has been recognized, it will show the initial components, as well as the recognized suite (that deleted it)
• It also catches usage information that turned into Named User license consumption.
• It “constructs” installations and last used date for applications managed as a suite. Note that this step impacts performance quite massively. If you de-activate the Adobe Suites, the report will no longer need to compute last used dates.
  • It catches from installer and file evidence usage the usage reported with the following details:
    • The last used date
    • The number of evidence reporting usage for the devices (two different files could for instance report usage and be linked to an application)
    • The number of sessions. Here, we need to be careful, the number may depend on the length of the measurement period. Usage records have a start date, the number of sessions may vary withing these periods. The report sums all sessions (eventually from multiple files and installer evidences) that have happened in the last three month (Start date is less than 90 days in the past).
  • It builds usage for the component (mast recent las used date from file and installer usage)
• Once installations and consuming usage have been identified, it groups the information by user & consumed license.
  • If a user for instance consumes a Creative Cloud license because of 4 installed applications on 2 computers, the report will show 1 row for the user, but will provide on the consuming applications.
  • If installations are not consuming licenses, the report will show one row per installed unlicensed application and user
• It analysis for the users / installed applications the following data items
  • List and number of installed applications consuming the license
  • Number of used applications consuming the license
  • Number of Product covered by the license
  • Number of installed Products consuming the license
  • Number of used products consuming the license
• With all this information the reports will compute recommendations that can be tuned in the section after“--Add the recommendations now” (Line 945)
  • Priority 1: This user has an active Adobe CC subscription, at least one active computer no related installed application. Please stop subscription.
    • An active subscription will create a line in the report… if a computer at least is inventoried for the user and no installation
  • Priority 1: Downgrade user plan to standalone products (based on installed products)
    • There are less than 3 stand alone products installed. You can safely downgrade the subscription
  • Priority 1: This user has Adobe CC for Complete AND at least one other standalone product subscription (can be added to another recommendation).
    • This is an easy double subscription case.
  • Priority 2: Downgrade user plan to standalone products (based on used products)
    • Here, less than 3 products are really used. Check usage quality before doing any change.
  • Priority 2: Uninstall the product and stop the Standalone subscription (Based on usage)
    • This was a standalone subscription, product is installed, but the product is not used.
  • Priority 2: Uninstall the product and stop the CC Complete subscription (Based on usage)
  • Priority 2: This user has commercial applications not covered by a license
    • This comment is added when an unlicensed Abobe commercial installation is on a computer. Note that with the new Adobe Portal functionality, an installed application cannot be used if the subscription is not active. It may not be a problem.
    • This was the Suite subscription, products are installed, but not used.
  • Priority 3: This user has an active Adobe CC subscription, no known computer (and no related installed application). Please stop subscription or check if inventory is exhaustive
• The reports analysis the installed and used applications for users with active subscriptions and makes a financial analysis of the potential saving. Note that the subscription cost is either inherited from the latest software or subscription purchase linked to the consumed license or from the “Overridden” price that you can set on a license (Purchase tab).

List of columns

• ComputerUserName
• Email,
• InstalledComputer(s),
• Last Inventory Date for Computer(s),
• LicenseName
• LicenseCost
• OptimalLicenseCost
• OptimizationForUser
• TotalOptimization
• LicenseType
• Recommendation
• ListOfActiveCCSubscriptions
• Location,
• Coporate Unit,
• Cost Center,
• Installed Applications For User Consuming The License,
• Used Applications For User Consuming The License,
• NumberOfProductsCoveredByTheLicense,
• NumberOfProductsInstalledForTheUserConsumingLicense,
• NumberOfProductsUsedForTheUserConsumingLicense