Asset Management Suite

I am wondering if anyone else run into this and what they think if so.

I have the activity center and asset managment installed. We use asset management to track licenses primarily. In AMP 7.0 you could connect the license information in asset management to a software resource through the software product drop down on the properties tab of the software resource. The process went something like this: enter software purchase, enter software license and associate software purchase, create software product and associate software license, create software resource and associate with software product. You can find the instruction on page 88 of DOC3563. It took me some time to understand the process but after I did I also realized I could associate multiple software resources with a software product which was great because more than one software resource can count against a license total.

Enter SMP 7.1 and the Activity Center (cue scary music). When you have the Activity Center installed you lose the software product drop down on the properties tab of a software resource. This means there is no way to associate the licenses in asset management to a software resource. I called support about this (case 415-136-245) and they gave me the following directions:

[In 7.1 SP1 with the Activity Center installed you will need to follow these steps to associate a software package with a software resource:

1.  Open Manage > Software
2.  If the software resource is in the "Newly Discovered Software" list click on it once.
3.  Then click on the "Manage this software" link in the "New Software" window to the right.
4.  When the "Add Software Product" window select the "Meter / track usage" tab.
5.  In the window at the bottom choose the software package you want to associate with this software resource and click the "Add Program" link to the right.
6.  Click "OK" on the bottom right of the window.

If the software resource is in the "Managed Software" list then you can open the "Add Software Product" page by double clicking on the software resource.
Then follow steps 4 to 6 above.]

Following those directions sets up application metering but it does nothing to link the software licenses to the managed software resource nor is there a way to accomplish this. What is the point of entering software purchase and license data if you cannot use it? I can uninstall the Activity Center and get the drop down back but why is this the case? The support engineer told me that this was a design decision. Why was this decision made? It doesn't make sense to me. Has anyone else run into this and/or does anyone else have any thoughts about it? In my opinion this is broken.

If I haven't explained something well please let me know and I will try to elaborate.

The idea is that if you have Activity Center installed, you should manage your software license compliance through Activity Center. That is why the Software Product option is not available on the software resource page (asset management), if you have Activity Center installed.

To manage your software licenses through Activity Center, do the following:

1. In the Add Software Product dialog box, on the Licenses tab, click Add License Purchase.
   

2. In the Add License Purchase dialog box, enter software purchase and software license information, and then click Add.
   

   Note that if you have added the license purchase information and go back to edit it, you can open full software license contract and full software license purchase pages (similar to what you have in asset management) and edit all their details.
   

OK, now suppose you have two different products which can use the licenses you just added. Is the license you just created available to be added to the other software product?

Asset Management Suite does not allow you to add a software license to multiple products - there is a 1 to 1 relationship between a software product and a software license.  Now, you can setup license sharing, which would allow you to create an additional software license, and associate to a different software product and then you can decide how the total count is split between the two licenses.  So, this is a constraint of the Asset product and not of the Silverlight UI.

What you can do with Asset which you cannot do with the UI is associate multiple software resources with the same software product and software licenses to that same software product. This gives me the license outcome I want and lets me run reports. This functionality was purposefully removed if you have activity center installed, i.e. you can no longer associate software resources with software products. Removing activity center restores the functionality which means that this is a constraint of the UI.