Manage Software Licenses

One peripheral subset in managing software is the governance of software license. Software license management is one area where IT admins can directly influence the IT budget for their enterprise. With number of software inside the managed network, it is really difficult to keep track on the license status for every software and how many license are being used/unused. Endpoint Central's software license management capability allows to track the software license status and also the numbers of the same to stay compliant in this field. IT admins can configure a rule to track the status and the number of license in use. With this capability, IT admins can:

• Stay compliant with software licenses
• Perceive insights on software purchases
• Re-assign a license, if it is not used/required, to a different resource that require them
• Help IT budget team decide on software renewals and purchases.
• Group different versions of the same software and manage their licenses as a single entity.

Check this procedure on how to personalize the software license management for your network:

Add Software License Details

Software Licenses can be added either manually or in bulk through the following options:

To Add Software License details manually for commercial software:

1. Navigate to Inventory tab > Manage Licenses, where you can find the software license details, if added.
2. Click the Add License button.
3. Select the software from the list. The initial inventory scan will fetch all the software in your managed network. You can also add software which isn't listed in the available entries.
4. The manufacturer and the software version details are pre-filled and cannot be modified.
5. Fill in the license details.
6. Add the License file and the invoice related to the license purchase, if required
7. Add comments, if required.
8. The next step is to associate these licenses to the computers.
   1. Select the Installed Computers option to view only the computers that have this software installed or Managed Computers to list all the computers that you are managing using Endpoint Central
   2. Select the computer to which you wish to associate the license and move them to the associated computers list.
9. Click Save to update the license details.
   

To add software licenses in bulk by importing csv file:

1. Navigate to Inventory tab > Manage licenses under Actions/Settings
2. Under License choose Import from CSV
3. Create a .csv file as mentioned in the Sample CSV Format in console
4. Browse the created file and Save

Once configured, all the details are added to the server, which is displayed in Manage License tab under the Inventory view. You can filter the view based on the compliant status of the software like Under License, Over license, in compliance and expired software.

Click here to watch the video:

Adding Additional Licenses

License renewals and purchases are inevitable. Whenever additional licenses are purchased for an existing software, you can add them to the existing rule. To add license details:

1. Navigate to Manage Licenses under the Inventory view where you can find the details of all the licenses that have been added.
2. Click the Add More link from the Actions column of the software for which you want to add additional licenses.
3. Specify the Number of licenses you have purchased along with the other details and click Save.

Software Compliance Report

Software Compliance Report conveys the status of the software licenses. This report helps you identify licenses approaching renewal and those exceeding your needs which is based on network installations.

Under Inventory tab > Manage Licenses > Licenses, the number of installations of the licensed software can be viewed.

1. Network Installations: The total number of software detected across all managed devices on your network.
2. Managed Installations: The number of software installed on devices that are managed by currently logged on user in Endpoint Central. When setting up a user in Endpoint Central, you can limit their access to specific computers by assigning them to a Custom Group or Remote Office. 

Depending on network installations, you can find the list of software marked against the colour blue, green or red denoting Over Licensed, In compliance or Under Licensed respectively.

• Over Licensed: When the number of purchased licenses is more than network installations.
• In-compliance: When the number of purchased licenses is equal to network installations.
• Under Licensed: When the number of purchased licenses is less than network installations.

To know more about software license management offered by Endpoint Central, check this page.