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ESI News & Release Notes

ESI Webinars
(In co-operation with IAITAM)

Check out our Resources page to access recordings of our webinars presented inconjunction with IAITAM and watch out for more in 2012

ESI System Updates for Customers
See ESI Release Notices for full details

10th April 2012
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Viewing/Removing Stuck APS Packages

When using ESI’s Application Push Scheduler (APS) module to stage software that has been ordered and approved through ESI’s Software Request Portal, ready to be pushed for installation to the target machine via your SCCM or Altiris system, there are times when packages get stuck for one reason or another. You may now view individual packages waiting to be pushed and, if required, remove packages that appear to be stuck.

8th April 2012
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Automatic License Migration

The MIE now offers the ability to automatically migrate your owned licenses to the most current version to which you are eligible (and continue to migrate licenses as new versions are released).

29th January 2012
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Associate a picture with a hardware asset.

You may now associate a picture with a hardware asset. The picture may be uploaded and associated using the Assets Screen (when editing an asset).

24th January 2012
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Automated Actions based on low Software Utilization.

The MIE can now be set to take action when software utilization falls below a set threshold, based on either a user or a workstation.
Low utilization triggering can also be based on active use.

23rd November 2011
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Match ASN Entitlement Records and Forward to MIE (ASN Processor v 1.7.0).

Recently the MIE’s Generation 2 Software Request Portal was released with the ability to offer optional entitlements, such as Microsoft’s Software Assurance, at the same time as when the title is being requested.
The ASN Processor and MIE have now been updated to allow ASN records to be matched up to optional entitlements and forwarded to the MIE to allow the MIE to maintain the “owned” position of optional entitlements.

23rd November 2011
Customers Affected: All
New Graphical Workflow Designer.
ESI is pleased to announce that building and managing workflows has just gotten easier. ...read more

You now have the option of designing and maintaining workflows using the new Graphical Workflow Designer (GW). The GW interface is very similar to Visio, and allows you to drag and drop process points, connect process points using visual links, and arrange the layout visually. The GW offers the following features:

1. Graphical design and layout.
2. Work on multiple workflows simultaneously.
3. Cut and paste within a workflow or between workflows.
4. Automatically locks workflow and process points on the MIE with your user ID when open in the GW, unlocks when done.
5. Authenticates and interfaces directly with the MIE via secure https connection.
6. Authenticates and interfaces directly with the MIE via secure https connection.
7. Built-in integrity testing to ensure a valid workflow.
8. Access and modify process point properties using the right-click menu.

10th November 2011
Customers Affected: All
MIE and ASN Processor Features Released.
New License Allocation Constraints and Working with lease information in ASNs. ...read more

1. New License Allocation Constraints.
   - In addition to previous constraints honored by the license allocation engine, you now have two more ways to constrain license allocation: by environment and/or by device role.
   
2. Handle Leased Assets Directly from Advance Shipping Notices (ASNs).
   - You may now manage leasing information received via ASNs.

6th October 2011
Customers Affected: All
MIE Feature Release
Managing Local Backups, Performing Import directly from SFT Jobs, and Turning on/off SFT notifications. ...read more

You may now:

1. Use the Secure File Transfer (SFT) client to create a replica of your data to a local Access database that you can maintain on your local machine or on a network share.
2. Specify an import job to be fired every time the SFT client successfully transfers a file to the MIE.
3. Change how, or if, you get notified when your SFT job completes. If you prefer not to get notifications of each job, you can now turn notification off.

22nd August 2011
Customers Affected: All
Generation 2 Software Request Portal.
A significantly enhanced Software Request Portal has been released. The GEN2 Portal includes all the features of the existing Gen1, in addition it has the following features: ...read more

1. Request Entitlements - Ability to request additional entitlements, such as Microsoft Software Assurance or software maintenance, when requesting software.
2. GEN2 Portal manages publisher rules regarding the maximum time that can pass between ordering the software and ordering the entitlement.
3. Exercise Entitlements - GEN2 Portal “knows” what versions a user is entitled to based on current entitlements in force, and will allow the user to upgrade without charge via self service, thereby exercising existing entitlements.
4. Faster than the GEN1 Portal.
5. Server and Workstation Software - Support for server software requests as well as workstation software, with separate workflows to handle server/workstation requests.
6. Improved support for re-requesting software (usually done via self service to force a new push to re-install or remediate software issues).
7. Server software quantities can be adjusted up/down via the GEN2 Portal. If down, results in an automatic harvest of the excess authorizations.

Please note the new portal is partially backwards compatible with the old, and requires some ESI configuration to make it fit your needs.

16th April 2011
Customers Affected: All
Ability to Trigger Workflow on Detected Changes.
Two new settings have been added to Catch Point Screen controls. ...read more

The new settings allow any catch point to establish “watch” fields and then fire a workflow if any of the “watch” fields are changed by the catch point.
All changes detected are forwarded to the workflow thread as an attached .CSV file.
The new feature allows notification (as well as other actions) when one or more data elements of interest change. For example, if processor count or processor core count changes. Such change may have license implications.

2nd March 2011
Customers Affected: All
New Setting to Allow Harvesting of Down-bound Equivalents.
A new setting has been added to the Managed Software List screen that, ...read more

when checked, will cause the MIE to automatically harvest any down-bound equivalents that may be authorized on the same asset.
The result is fewer licenses required to cover the current deployed position.

2nd March 2011
Customers Affected: All
Better Feedback for Exception Handling.
When handling staging exceptions you can now see the exact reason the exception was thrown by hovering over the reason column. ...read more

Previously you had to read the associated job log to find out why the record was thrown as an exception.

9th January 2011
Customers Affected: All
Automatically calculate license deployed position using Counters.
The MIE now supports automating the calculating of license deployed positions for non-auto-discoverable titles. ...read more

This is done using the recently released Counters feature.
Managed Software List (MSL) authorizations may now be linked to a counter for their current deployed counts. As the counter is evaluated and its value changes, the authorization(s) linked to the counter will have their deployed counts automatically updated.

5th January 2011
Customers Affected: All
Counters and Gauges.
The MIE now supports defining Counters, which can be used for many purposes, such as measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). ...read more

Counters maintain 4 values:

1. Minimum value possible
2. Maximum value possible
3. Current value
4. Target value

Counters can be placed on the dashboard as gauges. Four types of gauges are available:

• Radial Dial
• Vertical Gauge
• Horizontal Gauge
• Digital Panel

20th December 2010
Customers Affected: All
Secure File Transfer.
The MIE now supports native secure file transfer. ...read more

Transfers can be managed directly from the MIE and will run unattended.
Files are transmitted to the MIE via the client using 3-DES encryption with a 128 bit cipher key. In addition, file data are scrambled and compressed via an ESI-developed algorithm for additional security.
Secure file transfer is used primarily to transfer large import jobs to the MIE, such as auto-discovery data and/or department/location information. Such imports tend to be recurring and are set up on a schedule.

30th October 2010
Customers Affected: All
Automated Management of Geographically Constrained Licenses.
Datacenter licenses can be contractutally constrained to a given geography. In many cases, the publisher requires ...read more

notification and/or approval when the license is to be moved to a geography other than the one to which it is currently constrained.

The MIE now automates the handling of these types of licenses.

In addition, the MIE’s license optimizer has been updated to handle geographically constrained licenses. It will continuously optimize the license position of geographically constrained licenses (how licenses are being used to cover installs/authorizations).

18th October 2010
Customers Affected: All
Geo Location identifcation.
The MIE now supports identifying the city, state, country, and Internet Service Provider based on a user’s and/or an asset’s public IP address.

25th August 2010
Customers Affected: All
License Key Management.
The MIE now supports automatically notifying end users of their license keys (and how to install them) as well as ...read more

tracking which license keys have been assigned (and to whom) and which keys are still available. It also manages re-assigning keys as licenses are harvested and re-used.

Also maintained is a new License Key log, which chronicles all activities taken with license keys.

This new feature can significantly reduce the time and effort required for managing those titles that require keys.

7th August 2010
Customers Affected: All
Assets on Legal Hold.
The MIE now supports tracking assets that are on legal hold.

3rd August 2010
Customers Affected: All
The following changes have been made to the Managed Software List form: ... read more

1. The Upgrade price has been removed. Upgrade pricing is now handled under Managed Software -> Manage Upgrades.
2. A new field to track the audit clause language from the governing license contract has been added.
3. A new field to track the currently governing software maintenance contract has been added.

1st August 2010
Customers Affected: All
IE now support tracking software audits.
A new menu item called Software Audits has been added to the Asset Management module.

31st July 2010
Customers Affected: All
Software Request Portal now supports upgrade license types.
Upgrade licenses may now be requested through the Software Request Portal.

25th July 2010
Customers Affected: All
Bulk Authorize now supports upgrade license types.
When using Bulk Authorize, you may now opt to satisfy the authorization with an upgrade, if one is available.

11th July 2010
Customers Affected: All
ASN Processor version 1.5.7 released.
The ASN processor now supports Upgrade License types.
ASN Processor users will be upgraded on the next use of ASN Processor.

8th July 2010
Customers Affected: All
First release of new upgrade capability.
Now define upgrades that you may manage under Managed Software -> Manage Upgrades.

17th May 2010
Customers Affected: All
Ability to automatically adjust authorizations. The MIE now supports the ability to establish rules that can be used to adjust authorizations.

8th May 2010
Customers Affected: All
Entitlements may now be assigned to MSL titles. ... read more

The MIE allows tracking contracts, and for each contract you may define one or more entitlements extended by that contract. Historically the MIE allowed extending these entitlements to various hardware assets, in order to allow you to track which assets were eligible for which contract entitlements.

This change extends entitlement assignment to include Managed Software List (MSL) titles. You may now assign contract entitlements to either hardware assets or software titles.

4th May 2010
Customers Affected: All
Bulk harvest functionality released. Honors all three ways authorizations can be established (by asset, by named user, by contact list).

28th March 2010
Customers Affected: All
Changes to MIE’s Software License Management (SLM) capability. SLM has been substantially enhanced to allow three methods of authorizing software titles. ... read more

Previously, a software title authorization could only be extended to a workstation or device. Now an authorization may be extended to one of three entities: 1. A workstation or device (this remains the default). 2. A person. 3. A group of people.

21st March 2010
Customers Affected: All
Asset Management Menu Changes. Several menu options have been changed.

8th March 2010
Customers Affected: WDA users
New WDA Usage Monitor Functionality – Version 2.9. ... read more

The Usage Monitor is a snap-in to the eTelligent Workstation Data Assistant (WDA) agent. It monitors usage of individual Managed Software List (MSL) applications.

28th February 2010
Customers Affected: WDA users
New WDA Tray Application Functionality – Version 3.1. ... read more

Version 3.1 of the Tray Application that accompanies the ESI Workstation Data Assistant (WDA) agent has been made available.

17th February 2010
Customers Affected: All
New MIE User Interface Functionality – Dynamic Suggest Controls Benefit – faster load times for pages that contain drop-down lists that previously had a significant number of entries.

13th January 2010
Customers Affected: WDA users
New WDA Scanner Functionality – VMWare virtual machines (ESIScan.exe version 5.4). The Workstation Data Assistant (ESI’s agent) scanner has been updated to find VMware installations.

3rd January 2010
Customers Affected: ALL
Updated Functionality – Mass Updates via the User Interface Mass updates may now be made via the user interface, providing the certain conditions have been met.

1st February 2010
Customers Affected: ALL
Updated Functionality – Filter Builder The Filter section of the various data screens on the MIE has been modified to allow the successive building of the filter. ... read more

Previously, a single filter could be set at any given time. Now, each new filter choice will add to what has already been set (the filter will be set against the currently filtered records). This allows building a filter.

21st December 2009
Customers Affected: ALL
Change to Asset Integrity Testing Asset Integrity Testing has been moved under the new left menu option called Inventory Sites.

28th November 2009
Customers Affected: ALL
Compliance Reporting / License Allocation is now oriented around license “families” Reporting is now sub-totaled at the family level, allowing compliance management to be performed at that level.

28th November 2009
Customers Affected: ALL
Automated Accuracy Calculation (to support accuracy SLA calculations) The MIE now supports automated accuracy calculation – primarily to support SLA reporting.