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Software Metering

Table of contents

  1. Understanding Software Metering
  2. Software metering rules
  3. Software metering reports

Understanding Software Metering

Software metering allows you to track the usage of any software in your enterprise. With Software Metering, IT admins can:

  • Derive the usage statistics of software used in computers in your network

  • List prohibited software applications in your network

  • Detail the usage of software that help you plan your software license renewals and purchases

  • Arrive at the license compliance status for effectively used software

IT Asset Management

Software metering rules

Software Metering rules are conditions that can applied before publishing a rule.

Check the below mentioned parameters which needs to considered before defining a software metering rule:

  1. File name : Name of the software which is going to be metered. Check the properties of the targeted software to find the file name.

  2. Original file name : In most cases, the original file name is the same as the name of the software. If a user has renamed the executable file of a software, you can track the usage of that software based on its original file name.

  3. File version : The version of the targeted software.

Adding Rules

To add rules, follow the steps given below:

  1. Under Inventory view, click on Software metering from the left tree. 
  2. After clicking on Add Rules, provide mandatory details such as Software name, Rule name and File name.

The name you enter for the rule should be unique and descriptive. For example, if you have selected Adobe Flash Player, you can enter Monitoring Adobe Flash Player Usage as the name of the rule. Once you have used this name, you cannot use it as a name for any other rule. You cannot add software metering rules for groups of software.

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Software metering

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Software metering reports

IT admins can generate reports on the metered software to audit the usage statistics. There are three types of software metering reports that help you make an informed decision about buying software applications and renewing licenses for existing software applications.

  1. Software metering rules summary
  2. Computers with metered software
  3. Users with metered software

Software metering rules summary

Based on the rules added for metering a particular software, this report provides the following details :

  1. Discovered count : Number of computers in the network which have the software application installed.
  2. Usage count : Number of times a software application is used in all the computers in the network.
  3. Usage duration : Information about how long a software application has been used.

Computers with metered software

  1. It provides the list of computers which is running the metered software.
  2. In addition to this, the admin can view the reports for each computer during a stipulated time period.
  3. With the help of such usage details, the admin can choose to either retain or revoke the license for the software application used on each computer.

Users with metered software

  1. The usage details for every user specific software is provided in this report.
  2. This is helpful when the users logs into several computer but still the software usage details for that user-specific software needs to be metered.

The last 90 days data from the current date is stored in the Endpoint Central report.