Web Help Desk Software Asset Management

I will concede that WHD is not intended to be a License Management solution that will automatically identify all software licenses that exist in your environment.

However, in terms of what is actually possible regarding tracking software I can point you to two things in WHD that can address some aspects of that:

1.
The very basic way:
If you set up a WMI Discovery task (in Setup -> Assets -> Discovery Connections -> "New"), you can specify an IP range and have the system try to find any Windows machines and create (or update) WHD Asset records for them. One of the bits of data that it tries to pick up from them is a Software Inventory.  In my test environment here, I have a Windows Server 2012 node that was discovered that way, and when I view the Asset record I can scroll to the bottom of the Asset Details tab and see this:

Now, of course it must be said that this is just essentially pulling the Programs and Features list from the machine via WMI and throwing the text into that field - it is not tracking assigned licenses or anything like that. 
But, what IS possible now, is that I can go up to Assets -> Search Assets and do a search on that field to find out which machines match text within that Software Inventory field:

This method does not require me to create any Asset Types or define any other specific fields - it just lets me (essentially) search Programs & Features for my Windows machines.

2.
The other thing - and this is more than likely what the Marketing folks were referring to in terms of license management - is that, like any other kind of asset I'd like to track, I can create an Asset Type (for example: Software) and then define some records in WHD for the software that I care about.  In addition to defining an Asset Type, I can also define a Manufacturer record for the software company and a Model record for the software title.

Once I've done that I can make Asset entries for the software that I want to track. Here is a search in my environment which shows some different software that we are tracking licensing for:
 


When I go to create an asset record for some software where I own 10 licenses - for example, Adobe Photoshop - I could make a single Asset record for that and associate all 10 people to that one record.  Over time, as I associate or disassociate people with that record, those changes would be captured in the Asset History tab of the asset record.

Or, if I prefer, I could create 10 individual asset records for Adobe Photoshop and then assign one person to each of those records. This may be the preferred method if you want more granularity later when you run queries.

Whenever I'd like to, I can run a Query to show who is assigned licenses for any specific software I've made entries for.  The screenshot below shows all the people to whom I have assigned Photoshop licenses.  

That data is easily exportable on demand by clicking the PDF, TSV or Excel buttons on the left.

kellytice this information is SOOO clutch - THANK YOU!  It's like you should be writing help articles for Solar Winds which would serve to backup claims by the marketing department as to what Web Help Desk WILL and WON'T really do.  For example, that little but OH SO VALUABLE nugget you dropped stating "Up to 10 clients can be added to an asset" being the limit for that feature.

We don't find that limited listed in this help article where it should be, do we:  SolarWinds Web Help Desk Help - Assign an existing asset to a client

So although I'm truly disappointed in the available methods to track software licensing (some software allows 100's of licenses not just 10) hearing how others have "faked it till they made it" in terms of tracking software licenses helps a lot, in the light that:

1. Documentation for this in the help files is non-existent
2. Marketing is effectively marketing vaporware

I appreciate folks taking time to comment.  Alternatively, I'd absolutely LOVE if we worked together as a community to push SolarWinds to actually develop the product in a way that matches the marketing.  It shouldn't just be a set of 'best practices" that exist for Software Licensing - there should be features.

Don't forget to vote for or add your ideas today - this product needs improvement to live another day.  Customers vote with their feet!
thwack.solarwinds.com/.../feature-requests

I think this part "some software allows 100's of licenses not just 10" is telling, are those 100's via a chargeable Assets solution?

I seem to remember in the past SW asked if the community would like added more Assets functionality but pay for it per Assets - I think the idea was very negative from the community so it was never actioned.

You're quite welcome on the response; I like to dig in sometimes on the replies to give as much info as I can!

For the comment about 10 licenses - i didn't mean that as an "up to 10" comment, but rather a scenario where i was talking about a case where i happened to have 10 licenses for a specific software.  
I'm actually not sure if there is a limit to how many Client users can be added to a given asset record.  I'm quite sure it is way more than 10 however :)

Good question!  So for example, we have 3000 licenses for my organization to use Adobe Cloud software.  The number of users whom might be using that license can vary from month to month as people come and go.  The "control panel" that Adobe provides...where one can look up who is consuming a license and who is not, is considered "secret" meaning my Help Desk team can't log into it to see if a user is licensed or not.

So instead, we have to go through a process to submit a ticket to an admin who checks to see if the user has an account and then sometimes they add the user and give them an account and sometimes they simply add a note stating "User has account".  In situations where a user has an account, the Help Desk simply needs to give the user aid to login.

Certainly our first step could be "Can you please try to login?" and if they can't...we escalate the ticket...but wouldn't it be working smarter...if we just had that information appearing on the "Asset Info" tab for the user like any other asset?  So if there's no real limit as to how many users can be "checked out" to an asset...maybe then that would work good enough in the way...which I'd love to have that.

But then we run into other functionality that's missing:

1. There's no "Mass Checkout" feature where I can pick an asset and then check it out to multiple people - at least not one that's readily accessible to the general Web Help Desk user.
2. There's no built-in feature to show you how many people (a total column) the asset it checked out to making it difficult to see how many licenses you have compared to how many users have it and when you'll run out

Another thing I'd like to note is that I feel like there WAS functionality at one point for #2 above.  I feel like a couple years ago there WAS a feature in the system to track "Install Counts" and "Available" licenses...but that just seems to have evaporated somewhere along the line.  Why do I suspect this?  Because when you edit the "Column Set" in the Assets screen, you can choose "Install count" and "Installs Available".

I also propose that there WAS a feature to track software licenses because in the dbo.Asset table in SQL...still exists a true/false column that is called [IS_MULTI_INSTALL].  There was a checkbox on the asset you could check, that enabled this feature...but I last saw it a year or so ago.

Forgetting about "deleted features" - what I feel the need to explore next is using the "Import Assets" feature to see if I can put multiple records into a sheet...for the SAME asset...and see if that actually works to check out an asset to more than one user.

Again...all of this is not something documented...and it's left up to me to do trial and error...all the time being that I'm really just jerry-rigging Web Help Desk to do something that the developers should be on top of...by making it do it elegantly...like the marketing folks are selling!

Hmm, OK, here's one bit that may be of interest:
If you have a single Asset Record for Software Asset Type record you can add the various users to it, and then when you open up that record to look within it, there is a count at the bottom (in this screenshot it says  Total: 24)


Another thing I'm not sure of:  If it DID let you add 3000 users to one Asset record like that ... how long would you have to scroll to get to the bottom?  I'd imagine it might paginate it at 100 records, but I'm not 100% on that.   :)


If you have a Software Asset Type record for each individual license you have (and associate a person with each of those records), you can also set the Status of an asset record to from a list of Status types you define (for example,  Available, In Use, Decommissioned, OutofMaintenance, DoNotUse, etc...).
In that case you could run a query to show you what's out there for that given software.

In this case, I have 3 licenses for Photoshop SE, each assigned to a different user.
My query is just to show me all the PhotoShop SE licenses that currently have a status of "In Use" ... but I could just as easily change that last search term to say to show me only ones that have a Status of "Available"  ... or I could leave that line off entirely to see all of the Photoshop SE licenses regardless of Status.
Although I only have a small number of those records in this environment, you can also see that my query did return a count for the returned records (there on the bottom right of the screenshot).

 

Great detail - the count of users is a cool detail.  I still wonder about the [IS_MULTI_INSTALL] field in assets and where that checkbox went on the screen and why that feature is not called out/available in the help files.  It WAS there at some point and might do all of what we're talking about...better. 

OK, regarding that feature / concepts  -  multi-install and install count: 


Looks like they are briefly described in this Thwack post:
RE: Managing Software Licences In Helpdesk


Basically, it appears that if you create an asset record and edit it to change it to be a "Child" asset instead of a "Parent" then it exposes a couple of extra fields:  "Multi-Install" and "Install Count"   which you can then define.  Those fields are hidden if the asset is a Parent.

The idea being that then you could associate this asset record for the software to be a Child to each of the computers on which it is installed.
Then when you make those relationships like I have below, it will decrement the count for each computer for which the software record is a Child.
I set the Install Count to 10, then i made the Bitdefender Antivirus Plus software asset record I have in the system the child of a couple of computers, so it shows 2 Parents and 8 installs available.




Thanks for this thread, by the way; i've worked (off and on) with WHD for years and I didn't realize it could do this in this specific way, so you made me learn som'n  

kellytice you are AMAZING!   I knew I'd seen something like that somewhere along the line, but the concept of needing to first make the software a "child" escaped me.  Now if you can find the "multi-install feature" documented in the Help Files somewhere...you'd be a GOD!!!

This is all I can find that gets close to the topic:
https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en_vers/success_center/whd/12-8-4/default.htm#helpdeskeditassetproperties.htm?Highlight=child%20asset

Doesn't include any notes about what the "Muti-Install" checkbox does or how to use it though.  That's fun!

Poor Web Help Desk...almost always has a feature you'd like...but does it work and do they document it anywhere?  Nope   A report would be nice too...oppos doesn't have those either!

Actually, that was it  

It's possible to define that child relationship and NOT define an Install Count.
So, if that's all you want to do (just define that relationship) then you would just make it a child of computer asset records and leave "multi-install" unchecked. 

However, if you DO want to use that Install Count field, you have to make it a child AND click the Multi-Install box.  The Install Count field won't even show up if that Multi-Install is unchecked.

I hope the documentation team is reading these blogs cause we are writing their Help Documentation for them as you and I interact. 

I presume that in the scenario where you are tracking licenses by the number of devices it gets installed on, you'd set the "Install Count" field on the child asset (the software title) to the total number of licenses that you actually have, and then as it gets associated to a device as a CHILD, it takes away from the count.

In that way you could keep track of at least how many licenses you have left.  So I like that this feature exists...and wish it was just documented.  That being said, the model we initially talked about where you "check out" a software title to individuals is more the direction I need to go in.

Adobe Creative Cloud is tracked by USER - so it doesn't matter how many computers it gets installed on.  So my only option given this is checkouts.  There's no reports for that either that will show me the number of users a software title is checked out to (a count).

Although, as you've pointed out...I can always of course get a list of who those users by running a query...or I can just go check the "Clients" area on the asset for the count periodically...which is fun and totally a sufficient design for an organization of 2000+ users

But alas...nothing is pre-done in an elegant format though. 
It's like the developers motto is "So many half made features...so little time!"

I hope the documentation team is reading these blogs cause we are writing their Help Documentation for them as you and I interact. 

I presume that in the scenario where you are tracking licenses by the number of devices it gets installed on, you'd set the "Install Count" field on the child asset (the software title) to the total number of licenses that you actually have, and then as it gets associated to a device as a CHILD, it takes away from the count.

In that way you could keep track of at least how many licenses you have left.  So I like that this feature exists...and wish it was just documented.  That being said, the model we initially talked about where you "check out" a software title to individuals is more the direction I need to go in.

Adobe Creative Cloud is tracked by USER - so it doesn't matter how many computers it gets installed on.  So my only option given this is checkouts.  There's no reports for that either that will show me the number of users a software title is checked out to (a count).

Although, as you've pointed out...I can always of course get a list of who those users by running a query...or I can just go check the "Clients" area on the asset for the count periodically...which is fun and totally a sufficient design for an organization of 2000+ users

But alas...nothing is pre-done in an elegant format though. 
It's like the developers motto is "So many half made features...so little time!"

this happens just like https://newrelics.com smh looking for some relieve!