1. Software Metering Widget
Contents
1.1. Purpose
The purpose of this widget is to give a precise insight of the license compliance of selected programs. It allows to know if one has enough licenses according to the number of desktops having the said program installed; it assesses also if some of the licenses could be spared because the program is actually rarely used (or even not at all).
1.2. Creating widget
1.2.1. Step 1
- choose the engines to use
1.2.2. Step 2
- enter the time period (in days)
- define the programs to measure
- optionally enter email addresses as recipients of alerts
- optionally select a criterion for grouping results ("group by"); it can be any category on any object type.
1.2.2.1. Add program 1
- choose a program in the list. Only programs used at least one time by a source are in the list
- optionally enter the number of licenses for this program. If the field is left blank, it would be no alerts and no statistics concerning license usage
- optionally enter the threshold (in percent) which trigger an alert. If the field is left blank, it would be no alerts concerning license usage
- optionally define a threshold of program's usage which trigger an alert. If both field are left blank, it would be no alerts concerning underusage but set both to 0 will trigger alerts when the program is never used
Note that the usage time of a program is the sum of its binaries.
1.2.2.2. Add program 2
- select which binaries defines the program (e.g. winword.exe is significant of the usage of Microsoft Office while setup.exe isn't) There are three options:
- no significant binaries: the program could not be defined using binaries (e.g. Microsoft Windows). With this option there would be no statistics about usage
- based on list: enter each binary using its name (e.g. nxfinder.exe) and its version (specify only the fixed part e.g. 3.2 will match 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 and so on)
- based on investigation: enter a valid investigation which return binaries. This investigation will be performed at each compute, the resulting set of binaries could vary from one day to the next
1.3. Using Widget
The main view display, for each program, information which could trigger alerts. The bullet shows the status of license usage:
- green: under the threshold
- yellow: between threshold and 100%
- red: higher than 100%
1.3.1. Navigation
If more than one program has been configured and/or results are grouped by a category, then it is possible to navigate through the result to obtain statistics for a particular program or a keyword. If both program an keyword are selected then details are displayed.
To navigate there are the list in the footer but one can click on the icon which appears next to the program or the keyword to drill down.
The selected options appears below the date and could be used to drill up
1.3.2. Details
Details can also be displayed directly by clicking on the "info" button that appears next to the number when the mouse cursor is hovering over the "Installed" value or the "Nb sources in underusage" value. Both display the same information but for respecting list.
There are two mode in details dialog. First the list of sources corresponding to the clicked column with their usage statistics
The second mode displays the binary usage. It shows which of the significant binaries have been used.
