Importing Software Licenses from Asset Management Solution 7.6 to 8.0

Products

• Asset Management Solution

Issue/Introduction

Due to updated model of Asset management solution Software licensing in 8.0, following behavior was noticed when trying to export/import software product licenses from 7.6 to 8.0.

1. When we do export and import using the ImportExportUtil the License type field is not populated. As a result the License fails to re-associate to the newly imported Software Product it is covering.

Wornaround is to open each imported License and change  the type manually. However, when hundreds of Licenses are being imported, this is not really a good solution.

 

2. When Data Connector import/export rule is used for importing the Licenses from 7.6 to 8.0, it’s not working as required as well. The new data class "License Rule" requires a “not nullable, uniqueidentifier” GUID when you import the Software License Details into the system. That GUId is unique to each license presented in the system and cannot be created bu auto-generation.  If you don’t provide this then respective is not populated, and the license  is not associated to the Product causing same as above.

Meantime, licenses are being automatically upgraded from 7.6 to 8.0 during regular upgrade on the same server as the upgrade process design automatically identifies and does all necessary modifications.

Environment

ITMS 8.0

Resolution

Symantec development has reviewed this issue and prepared a fix for the scenarios that require import/export from one server into another.

PREREQUISITES FOR INSTALL:

Asset Management Solution version 8.0 HF5 (latest hotfix for Asset in 8.0 platform)
“Altiris.Asset.Web.dll” version - 8.0.2228.0
“Altiris.Asset.Licensing.dll” version - 8.0.3512.0
“Altiris.AssetContractCommon.dll” version – 8.0.3512.0
“Altiris.ContractManagement.dll” version – 8.0.2228.0

CHANGES MADE 
•    Update import mechanism to handle licenses without “License Rules”

HOW TO INSTALL THIS POINTFIX

1.    Extract files from the archive to the NS hard drive.
2.    Make sure PointFix is extracted not to Altiris install directory (or any subfolder to it)!!!
3.    Execute PFInstaller.exe under user with administrative privileges.
4.    Accept UAC (User Account Control) prompt, select "Install Files". Old files will be replaced with the new ones. Log.txt will be created at the same location where PFinstaller is.

Additional information:

After point fix applied user should be able to import Software licenses resources exported from 7.6 to 8.0 NS:
For correct import of “Software License” resources user should previously import “Software Products” resources and tentatively import “Company” resources.
After “Software License” imported user should import “Software purchase” resources that referenced by the license items.

Default folders GUIDS for corresponding resources:
Company:         - fa43c745-8221-4744-b7b5-f84c58347dc6
Software Product:     - 30c52a22-aadc-4345-9bdc-f2f7035ec1ab
Software licenses     - ad0d6a7f-175b-4ef2-94fd-e1ade3c88afa
Software purchases    - ad0d6a7f-175b-4ef2-94fd-e1ade3c88afa

 

This is fix has following known issue that is currently being investigated by the engineering:

During QA testing it was found that after Export\Import actions customer may receive same Software Products as available in 8.0 system, but with association to diffferent software vendor and as a result, in such cases, user can see duplicate “Software Resources” in Enhanced Console View for Software. Example is shown in below screen shot where Software product was merged, but two associations with vendor defined differently in 7.6 and 8.0 is causing two records in UI.