10.6 Allocating Licenses

ZENworks Asset Management lets you allocate licenses within your organization to track ownership and distribution of the licenses. You can allocate licenses to devices or demographics (sites, departments, and cost centers).

A device allocation is the assignment of a license to a specific device. The device can have the product installed or not installed. For example, you purchase 10 licenses of ProductA. You can allocate the licenses to the target devices before ProductA is even installed on the devices.

A demographic allocation is the assignment of one or more licenses to a site, department, or cost center. Any device that is assigned the demographic and has the product installed shows up as an installation associated with the allocation. For example, you purchase 15 licenses of ProductA and allocate them to DepartmentQ. There are 20 devices assigned to DepartmentQ. Of those 20 devices, 12 have ProductA installed. The result is that the DepartmentQ allocation shows 15 allocated licenses with 12 installations.

The following steps explain how to allocate licenses to devices. For information about allocating licenses to demographics, see License Allocation in the ZENworks 11 Asset Management Reference.

  1. In ZENworks Control Center, click the Asset Management tab.

  2. On the License Management page, click Licensed Products.

    Licensed Products page

  3. In the Licensed Products list, click the licensed product for which you want to allocate licenses.

  4. By default, only device allocation is enabled to track ownership for product licenses. To allocate licenses to demographics, a user has to perform the following steps to enable demographic allocation for the product:

    1. Click the General tab.

    2. In the License Allocation Settings panel, fill in the following fields:

      Enable demographic allocations: Select this option.

      Demographic allocation type: All demographic allocations for a single licensed product must be of the same type. Select the type (Site, Department, Cost Center) you want to use for this product.

      Update license allocations with demographic data from future purchase record imports: Select this option if, when importing future purchase records for the product, you want to automatically update the allocated license quantity based on the purchase record’s demographic data.

      For example, assume that the product is using Department allocations. You import a purchase record that includes licenses assigned to DepartmentQ. The licenses are added as a DepartmentQ demographic allocation.

      Also creates new allocations if necessary. For example, if a purchase record includes ProductA licenses that are assigned to a DepartmentZ (a new department not listed in ProductA’s allocations), a new allocation for DepartmentZ is created.

      Allocated Quantity: Displays the total number of allocated licenses, either to devices or to demographics.

    3. Click Apply to save any changes.

  5. Click the License Allocations tab.

    Licese Allocations page

  6. (Optional) To see which devices have the product installed but do not have an allocated license, click the Installations with no allocations number in the Device Allocations panel.

  7. Click Add > Devices with Product Installed if the device you want to allocate a license to has the product installed.

    or

    Click Add > Any Devices if the device you want to allocate a license to does not have the product installed.

    The Search for Device dialog box is displayed.

  8. In the Device Type field, select whether you want to search Managed Devices, Inventoried Devices, Managed or Inventoried Devices, ZAM Migrated Devices, or All.

    If you are not sure of the device type, select All.

  9. To limit the search, use the filters to create the search criteria.

    If you don’t create filters, all devices (or all devices with the product installed) are displayed, up to the maximum display number.

  10. Specify the maximum number of devices you want the search to display.

  11. Select the columns you want displayed in the resulting search dialog box. Control-click to select multiple fields.

  12. Click Search to display a Select Device dialog box that lists the search results.

  13. Select the devices you want to allocate licenses to, then click OK.

    The following information is provided for the allocation:

    • Machine Name, Login Name, and IP Address: Standard information about the device, including the login name of the user who was logged in at the time the device was inventoried.

    • Site, Department, Cost Center: Demographic data about the device. If one or more of the fields is empty, the device’s inventory data does not contain that information.

    • Installed Quantity: The number of installations of the licensed product on the device. This should typically be 1.

    • Duplicate Allocation: Includes a check mark if the device’s installation is also included in a demographic allocation.

    • Installations with No Allocations: Displays the number of installations that are not allocated a license either through a demographic allocation or a device allocation. Click the number to display the list of installations.