How to import data from License Statistics into Excel using Power Query

How to import data from License Statistics to Excel using Power Query

Many of our License Statistics customers are using Excel’s Power Query tool to transform and prepare data. Power Query not only lets you import data from a variety of sources, but gives you the ability to transform and use the data to suit your needs. Using Power Query, you can set up a query once, and then reuse the query by “refreshing” the data as often as needed.

This article gives you step-by-step instructions specifically for importing License Statistics data directly into Excel using Power Query.

  1. In Excel, click From Web under the Data ribbon to open the Power Query editor.
    Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 1
  2. In the From Web pane, toggle on Advanced
    Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query
  3. Under the URL parts area, add lines for the parts as shown in the following table and illustration:
    Part typeSetting

    Host

    http://ls-lin-stage.int.x-formation.com

    API path

    /api/v3/license-server/15/usage-per-user/json

    Query parameters
    • lsid=15
    • sd=2023-01-01
    • ed=2023-01-31
    • grat=DAY
    • agrt=USER_HOST
    • offset=0
    • limit=100

    Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 2

  4. Under “HTTP request header parameters,” add an X-Auth-token header using a token generated from License Statistics, and click Add header.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 3
  5. Click OK to continue.
  6. Choose Anonymous as the web content access type, and click Connect.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 4
  7. Click Info Table under the Content ribbon.
  8. Optionally, you can name the query using the Properties area under Query Settings. In our example, we named the query “Usage Per User” to indicate the type of data being retrieved.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 5
  9. Select data list from the table.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 6
  10. Click To Table under the Transform tab to convert the data list to a table.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 7
  11. In the resulting “To Table” pane, choose None as the delimiter, and choose Show as errors to handle extra columns.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 8
  12. Click OK.
  13. Click the expand icon in the upper right of the Queries table to expand the table columns.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 9
  14. Click Load more at the bottom of the list to load all the columns.
    Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 10
  15. Select the columns to include in the query; for example:
    • un
    • hn
    • lsn
    • fns
    • fv
    • massage
    • hu
    • mu
    • ldtc
    • ft
      Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 11
  1. Optionally, you can rename columns by right-clicking on the column header and choosing Rename from the right-click menu.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 12
    For example you might rename columns to their corresponding label found in License Statistics:
    • us = Username
    • hn = Host
    • lsn = License Server
    • fns = Feature Name
    • fv = Feature Version
    • musage = Max Usage
    • hu = Hours Used
    • mu = Max Used
    • ldtc = Denials
    • ft = Total
  1. Click Close & Load.Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 14
  2. If you want to refresh data automatically, perform the following additional steps:
    • Go to Queries & Connections under Excel’s Data tab, and select Properties.
      Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 15
    • In the External Data Properties dialog, click Query Properties.
      Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 16
    • Under the Usage tab, set the refresh options as desired.
      Import License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query 17

We hope this article has been helpful for understanding all you need to know to import your License Statistics data into Excel using Power Query. If you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Get to know License Statistics

License Statistics - Siemens NX license server monitoring

How to set up Siemens NX license server monitoring

Based in Munich, Germany, and with offices abroad, Siemens Digital Industries Software (previously Siemens PLM) is Europe’s largest industrial manufacturing company. One of their most popular products is NX, a CAD/CAM/CAE commercial software suite that provides leading-edge design, simulation, and manufacturing solutions.

This article gives you all the details you need to quickly and easily set up a Siemens NX license server for monitoring with License Statistics, including enabling remote monitoring, which lets you see usage information from the time you add the license server to License Statistics. (Note that although NX has multiple licensing models, License Statistics supports only the floating license model.)

How to add a new Siemens NX license server

Adding your Siemens NX license server is quick and easy using the license server setup wizard in the License Statistics UI. (If you aren’t familiar with adding and editing license servers, see License Statistics help for complete information.)

You’ll need to have License Statistics administrator privileges to add a new license server. Setup will take just a few simple steps, including:

  1. Defining general information for the license server
  2. Enabling remote monitoring
  3. Setting up remote license server management (optional)
  4. Enabling log file importing (optional)

Read on to learn how to get your NX license server up and running in no time!

Enter the General license server information

  1. Open License Statistics, and go to Administration > License Servers. (You must have License Statistics administrator privileges to access this page.)
  2. Click Add to open the Add License Server wizard.

License Statistics - Add new license

  1. The General tab of the Add License Server wizard lets you define the license server.
    1. At a minimum, enter the license server name, and select FLEXlm/FlexNet as the license server type.
    2. Optionally, you can enter a description for the license manager, and under the Vendor section, add a name to display for the vendor in reports. (The Vendor Name entry will be automatically detected and visible after the first successful query or import.)

Add Siemens NX License Server

Enable remote monitoring

After you have completed entering the information in the General tab of the Add License Server wizard, you can move on to enabling remote monitoring, which lets you see usage information from the time the license server is added to License Statistics to be monitored.

To enable remote monitoring:

  1. From the General tab, click Next to go to the Remote Monitoring tab. (The Next button won’t be available until you’ve entered the required information in the General tab.)

Siemens NX license server monitoring - Enable remote monitoring

  1. In the Remote Monitoring tab, make sure that Enable Remote Monitoring is toggled on (this is the default).

Siemens NX license server monitoring - Enable remote monitoring

  1. Under the General section of the Remote Monitoring tab:
    1. If needed, edit the path for the query tool needed to monitor the server. This query tool is delivered by the application vendor.
    2. If multiple daemons are run on the same license server, enter the Vendor Daemon Name, which defaults to “ugslmd.”
    3. Select your desired query interval, which is the time in minutes between each license server query. You can choose between 1, 2, 5, and 10 minutes.
    4. Toggle on the data types you want to gather (FLEXlm/FlexNet license managers allow only for Usage data gathering).
      Siemens NX license server monitoring - 7
  1. Under the Connection section of the Remote Monitoring tab:
    1. Toggle on Redundant to enable redundant servers if desired. (If you toggle on redundant servers, you must enter the hostname and port information for three servers.)
    2. Enter the hostname for the Siemens NX server. (This is required, so you won’t be able to verify or save the server until you enter the hostname.)
    3. Change the port if needed. The default port is 28000. (Note that this differs from the default FlexNet port, 27000.)
      Siemens NX license server monitoring - 7
  2. If you want to check that your connection to the Siemens NX server is working, click Verify at the bottom of the Remote Monitoring tab. (Although recommended, this step isn’t required, because verification happens automatically when you save the license server.) The verification results appear in a popup window.

Siemens NX license server monitoring - configuration

  1. Click Save to File at the bottom of the verification results window to save the verification results to a file if needed (for example, if there are issues with verification, you may be requested to send this file to X-Formation Support to assist with troubleshooting).
  2. Click Close at the bottom of the verification results window to return to the Remote Monitoring tab.

After setting up remote monitoring, you’re ready to move on to the Server Agent tab, where you can enable remote license server management.

Set up remote license server management (optional)

Optionally, you can manage license servers remotely (currently limited to Start, Stop, and Restart operations for LM-X and FlexNet license managers only) by using a Server Agent.

You must first have an Agent installed, as described in Installing and configuring License Statistics Agent. (You may enable remote license server management either when initially creating the license server or by editing the license server later.)

To enable remote license server management:

  1. From the bottom of the Remote Monitoring tab, click Next to go to the Server Agent tab.

Remote license server management

  1. Select a Server Agent to use for the license server.

Finally, you will move on to the Importing tab, where you can enable log file importing for the license server.

Enable importing for the license server

Finally, you can enable importing the log file using the License Statistics UI or API.

To enable importing:

  1. Click Next from the bottom of the Server Agent tab to go to the Importing tab.

Add Siemens NX License Server - enable importing for the license server

  1. Toggle on Enable Importing to enable log file importing (the default).

Save the license server

From the Importing tab, click Save and Close to save the license server and close the Add License Server wizard.

Siemens NX license server monitoring - save settings

Your Siemens NX license server monitoring setup is complete, and after a minute or so, will start automatically. License Statistics will display the data for your Siemens NX license usage in its usual easy-to-read grids and reports.

Get to know License Statistics

Let us know what you think!

We hope this article was helpful in walking you through configuring License Statistics to track your Siemens NX license server usage. You can learn more by visiting the License Statistics documentation, and as always, feel free to contact us at support@x-formation.com with your questions or comments.

LM-X License Manager Case Study - EDALab

LM-X License Manager – Customer Case Study: EDALab

Client: EDALab s.r.l.
Problem: Different licenses types for one product
Solution: LM-X License Manager

Problem

EDALab s.r.l., located in Verona, Italy, originated in 2007 as a spin-off of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Verona. EDALab addresses issues of technological innovation in the field of networked embedded systems, with activities ranging from analysis and feasibility studies to full project management. They provide services such as Embedded Software Development, modeling and conversion of hardware description languages, OS customization, and more.

EDALab built the HIFSuite tool (http://hifsuite.edalab.it/index.php) over several years. Without other comparable tools on the market, HIFSuite was used for many projects, mainly for research purposes. When the product matured and was ready for release on the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) market, EDALab was faced with the need to distribute the software under a variety of licensing policies to suit their customers (time-limited, functionality limited, and other policies).

How EDALab Approached the Problem

EDALab evaluated LM-X License Manager along with other top license managers, including FlexNet, Easy Licenser and Reprise License Manager.

The combination of LM-X License Manager’s competitive pricing and excellent customer support put LM-X ahead of the competition. EDALab’s Cofounder, Senior System Administrator/Architect and Purchase Manager, Stefano Cailotto, praised, “During the evaluation phase, the support team was very kind and responsive, which helped us to decide on using X-Formation to provide our license management solution.”

What It’s Like Now

LM-X satisfied EDALab’s requirements for both ease of use and customized licensing configurations. LM-X proved easy to integrate with the HIFSuite tool, with no need to issue new requests as other licensing products required. Thanks to its extensive customizability, LM-X gave EDALab the power to improve their licensing by letting them write their own custom hostid check function, which they based on both the host uuid and the Mac address.

EDALab is one of the many success stories that highlights LM-X’s flexibility and X-Formation’s dedicated partnership with our customers that helps them succeed with implementing the license management solutions they need.

License Statistics v6.17

License Statistics v6.17 saves you time with new license server management capabilities

With License Statistics version 6.17, we’re excited to announce new License Server Management capabilities (currently for LM-X and FlexNet license servers only).

In prior versions of License Statistics, in order to restart a license server (e.g., to force unused licenses to be released, restart a server that became unstable, etc.), the License Statistics administrator had to go outside of the License Statistics UI, connect to the proper license server host using SSH or a remote desktop, find the service/administration tool, and restart the server.

Now, starting, stopping and restarting a license server can be done directly from the License Statistics UI. This new feature adds convenience and can save considerable time, especially when managing many servers on different hosts and/or there are numerous requests from users to free up licenses that have become unavailable, for example, due to an application closing ungracefully and taking a long time to release licenses back to the pool.

In addition, v6.17 has added Server mode for License Statistics Agent. Initially, Server Agents will facilitate license server management, with additional features planned for future releases.

This release also introduces new Linux installers:

  • RPM (RedHat Enterprise Linux distributions)
  • DEB (Ubuntu and Debian distributions)
  • Generic, which allows for customization and/or installation on distributions other than RPM or DEB

The RPM and DEB installations will provide for automatic upgrades from v6.17 on. Upgrading older License Statistics versions to v6.17 and newer still requires a one-time manual upgrade, as done for all previous releases. However, after upgrading to v6.17, you’ll be able to upgrade License Statistics on Linux to v6.17 and newer without uninstalling.

Along with these new features, we’ve made several enhancements and fixes to existing functionality; most notably:

  • Added information about unlimited hosts on the Licensing page for HPC
  • Added support for RedHat Enterprise Linux 9.

We’re working hard to bring features to License Statistics that make your job easier, and we always appreciate your feedback. Let us know what you think of the new features and enhancements we’ve delivered with License Statistics v6.17, and don’t hesitate to contact support@x-formation.com with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

X-Formation - Year in Review - 2022

X-Formation – Year in Review – 2022

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” — Henry Ford

At this time of year, our thoughts often turn to what we’ve accomplished, and what is to come.

As we look at our past year here at X-Formation, we’re proud of all we’ve achieved together, within our hard-working team and along with you, our customers. We are grateful for all of the suggestions and feedback that you’ve given over the past year to help us make our products the best they can be.

As the new year approaches, we look forward to continuing this collaboration and being part of what helps your business to succeed in 2023 and beyond.

Here, we recount some of the highlights from our accomplishments in 2022.

License Statistics Achievements

Our License Statistics team has been digging in during the past year, improving overall user experience and implementing new features based on customer feedback, to ensure you’re able to effectively and efficiently track your organization’s license usage.

Improved UX

Sometimes, it’s the little things that count the most. We strive to make License Statistics easy for anyone to use, and we’re constantly looking for ways to make our user interface more intuitive and ensure that gathered statistics data is readily accessible and understandable. For example, redesigned chart tooltips now include more information, such as duration of license usage, and are formatted using a labeled list that’s easier to read.

Turning attention to detail, we’ve made layout improvements that make it easier to see information about features, users and hosts, and ensured consistency of labels and content in report grids, information panels, and LDAP Schema Settings to help make License Statistics even simpler to use and understand.

More details in reports

Our comprehensive license usage tracking reports now deliver even more data about current and historical usage, helping you uncover details about available licenses, how many licenses are in use or have been borrowed, utilization percentages, total licenses used, denials, and more. In addition to expanding on reported usage data, we’ve added more information to User properties, such as complete LDAP data, that can easily be shown or hidden in report details.

Improvements for License Statistics Administration

For License Statistics administrators, we’ve added more information to license server usage and license detail grids, and added the ability to invalidate (clear) report cache, customize the LDAP Users Import interval, and receive warnings when host resources are below minimum requirements. New connection settings for Remote Monitoring let you restrict the Hostname field entry to hostname or domain, and allow you to force an HTTPS connection.

We’ve also enhanced error reporting, with improved import validation that accounts for errors that occur when importing usage and denials. The level of events tracked in the log is now customizable, so you can track all events, just warnings and errors, or limit the log to error reporting. Furthermore, we’ve made the report easier to use by improving sorting and filtering, and adding the ability to delete all grid contents at once.

In addition, to make your life a little easier, you can now reset the administrator password to the default password with the click of a button using License Statistics Manager.

License Statistics Agent enhancements

Those who use License Statistics Agents will be happy to know that we now support backward compatibility for License Statistics Agent, up to five minor versions older than the License Statistics version. The Agents grid has been improved with additions to data and the ability to disconnect all agents at one time. We also expanded email notifications by adding a new alert for outdated License Statistics Agents, so you can stay on top of your licensing needs.

Expanded support for license managers and the latest platforms

Always broadening our ability to serve our user community’s diverse needs, we’ve added support for Altium Infrastructure Server (AIS/PLS) and GHS license managers (both support remote monitoring and imports), and expanded support for Dassault license manager to allow for monitoring authorization items.

Keeping up with the latest platforms, we now include support for:

  • Windows 11
  • Windows Server 2022
  • Debian 11
  • Ubuntu 22.04

In addition to these more notable new features and enhancements, we’ve made loads of smaller enhancements and fixes that ensure the stability and quality you’ve come to expect from License Statistics.

LM-X Achievements

With all of the strides made with License Statistics over the past year taking the spotlight, let’s not forget about LM-X License Manager! Our developers have also been striving to make sure that LM-X delivers unbeatable security for your applications while ensuring ease of use for your end-users.

Take a look at just a few of the highlights from the past year’s development work on LM-X.

Expanded support

LM-X now supports:

  • Visual Studio 2022
  • UTF-8 on Windows
  • Raspberry Pi

Miscellaneous enhancements

Over the past year, we’ve made enhancements to LM-X that include:

  • Adding a warning to the license server log when an unlimited license will be reserved
  • Making improvements to license server networking
  • Reducing SDK compilation time
  • Resolving an issue with using secure store between different LM-X versions
  • Fixing an issue with the license server allocating too much memory for network buffers
  • Improving stability for systems that are not POSIX-compliant

We celebrate you!

Without you, our customers, we would not be where we are today. Despite challenging economic times, we have been blessed to celebrate a long working relationship with many of you for 5, 10, or even more years. On behalf of our entire team—many of whom have also been with us for over a decade—I wholeheartedly wish you and your families the best, as we look forward to shared successes in the coming year.

Happy holidays to all, and a prosperous New Year!

Henrik Goldman
X-Formation Founder and CEO

License Statistics with Microsoft Power BI

Benefits of using Power BI with usage data gathered from License Statistics

Microsoft Power BI, a cloud-based business intelligence platform, is growing in popularity with many of today’s businesses. Power BI’s interactive dashboards provide advanced data visualization, transforming unrelated data sources into accessible, cohesive insights into key metrics throughout your organization.

As explained in our related blog article, Generating Custom Reports from License Statistics with Microsoft Power BI, the License Statistics API gives you complete access to all the software license usage data that License Statistics tracks, which you can use as input for Power BI.

Power BI gives you the ability to aggregate data from multiple sources, so you can combine License Statistics’ detailed license usage data with virtually any other data sources  — such as your organization’s CRM, CMS, databases, and cloud services — to create correlated reports, dashboards, and charts.

For example, you could create reports that take data from License Statistics along with data from your security system, user directory (AD, LDAP), and company calendar to correlate license usage with hours reported for a particular project or to analyze when users have active licenses but are spending time doing other activities (such as meetings or scheduled breaks).

License Statistics - Power Bi reports

It’s easy to see how using License Statistics usage data with Power BI can bring you new insights into your license usage that help you optimize license management across your entire organization.

For complete information about using License Statistics with Power BI, see Using the API with Power BI in License Statistics Online Help.

License Statistics v6.16

License Statistics v6.16 adds new features and improves user experience

With License Statistics version 6.16, we are excited to announce the addition of support for another new license manager, Altium Infrastructure Server (AIS/PLS) license manager (remote monitoring and import), as well as adding remote support for Green Hills Software (GHS) license manager (which we added in License Statistics 6.15 with import support only).

We also expanded our email notifications by adding a new alert for outdated License Statistics Agents. By enabling this alert, when an unsupported Agent version attempts a connection to License Statistics, you’ll receive email notifications for the first occurrence per user, daily if there are outdated agents, after a License Statistics update if there are outdated agents.

We take pride in truly listening to our customers, and we’ve made several enhancements in response to your feedback and requests, improving overall user experience. Some highlights of this release’s enhancements include:

  • The User column in reports now includes additional columns for all User properties (including LDAP data) that can be toggled to be shown or hidden in the report details
  • Improvements to Connection settings on the Remote Monitoring tab restrict the Hostname field entry to only the hostname or domain. In addition, a new “Secured” checkbox can be used to force an HTTPS connection.
  • It’s now quick and easy to reset your administrator password to the default password with the click of a button using License Statistics Manager
  • You can control the detail level of License Statistics events included in the log file, with options to include all events, just warnings and errors, or limit the log to include only error reporting
  • Improved import validation accounts for errors that occur when
    • importing denials, and real-time denials are supported and enabled
    • importing usage, and real-time usage monitoring is enabled
  • Improved consistency of labels and content in report grids, report exports to external formats, General Information panels, and LDAP Schema Settings help make the UI more intuitive
  • The ability to resize the SQL Query field in the SQL Console makes it easier to enter, edit and view your queries

Please also note that we’ve updated system requirements for this release, with dropped support for Debian 9.

We’re always striving to improve License Statistics to be easy to use and incorporate the feedback you give us. Let us know what you think of the new features and enhancements we’ve delivered with License Statistics v6.16, and please don’t hesitate to contact support@x-formation.com with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!

License Statistics helps businesses contend with recession by reducing software license costs

License Statistics helps businesses contend with recession by reducing software license costs

Let’s face it. Times are hard, with a myriad of factors causing stress on the global economy. If you’re an owner or manager of just about any business, you’ve likely been keeping a wary eye on the looming recession, already affecting both the US and Europe, and predicted to worsen over the coming year. Recessions wreak havoc on businesses, with decreased sales and profits spurring businesses to take whatever measures are necessary to cut costs. Some businesses even face bankruptcy and closure.

Often, businesses react to a recession by turning to “solutions” that include layoffs, reduced investments, and slashed research, development and marketing budgets. While cutting costs may be necessary to stay afloat, these tactics may have negative impacts on the health of your business. You end up with a reduced, overloaded workforce that’s more likely to experience burnout, low productivity, and less satisfaction in their jobs, and risk harming your competitive edge by losing traction in innovations and your ability to reach your consumers.

It’s all in the numbers

For businesses that rely on software to get their jobs done—and these days, what business doesn’t?— there may be a better way to reduce costs: effective software license management.

Don’t underestimate the impact of your software license costs. As stated in a 4-year, global software waste study conducted by 1E, The Real Cost of Unused Software, which concluded that a staggering one third or more of all software spend is wasted, “Cutting the waste out of software spend by reclaiming what goes unused would give organizations back almost 35% of their budget to spend on the kind of innovation that will give them competitive edge.”

Recent statistics show that small businesses spend nearly 7% and mid-sized companies spend over 4% of their revenue on IT, while larger companies are closer to spending around 3% of their revenue on software costs. And these costs are only rising as companies rely more and more on sophisticated IT to do everything from customer relations to product development.

Do you know the true cost of your wasted software licenses?

Regardless of the size of your business, no one has the money to waste on inefficient software license management; yet many companies today lack understanding of the true cost of business software, and whether their licenses are under-serving or over-serving their employees. Neither case helps your bottom line.

Some licenses may be entirely unused, while other licenses are in high demand and insufficient to reliably keep your workforce productive. Network licenses shared among your workforce may be inadvertently taken up during non-working hours or by someone out of the office on leave, wasting expensive licenses and leaving too few for others who need them to do their work.

If you haven’t been managing your licenses using a tool that’s made for the job, you’re likely overspending on your licenses. The only question is, how much? Users of License Statistics, a leading license management solution, have reported slashing as much as 30% or even more in license software costs, in-line with the results of the study performed by 1E.

Get the help you need to cut software license costs and improve productivity

Clearly, with many software licenses costing multiple hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year, not to mention related costs for support and hardware, your savings realized by cutting down on software license waste could be considerable. On top of these savings, consider the intrinsic value of increased productivity and efficiency associated with having licenses available when they’re needed.

License Statistics not only gives you clear, concise information about your license usage to help you make smart decisions about your IT spend; it actually helps you to regain idle licenses–say, from the person who’s gone on vacation or left for the day and accidentally left a license checked out–by detecting and taking back idle licenses so they’re available for other users. Surpassing the capabilities of most other license management software tools, License Statistics is a complete solution, with support for over 30 different license managers and usable even for desktop applications and custom software.

Unlike reductions to staffing, R&D, and marketing, there is no down-side to reducing spending on wasted software licenses. If you’re looking for a tool to help you get the most out of your software licensing budget in these belt-tightening times—and statistics show you should be—look no further than License Statistics.

Get to know License Statistics

LM-X License Manager Case Study - SimVis GmbH

LM-X License Manager – Customer Case Study: SimVis

Client: SimVis GmbH
Problem: Limited licensing solutions
Solution: LM-X License Manager

Problem

SimVis GmbH, founded in 2008 and located in Vienna, Austria, is one of the first spin-offs of VRVis. A stand-alone desktop application, SimVis has been used extensively to facilitate the analysis of automotive flow simulation data, and is also used to evaluate medical, meteorological, climatic, and oil industry data.

SimVis started out licensing their stand-alone desktop application, using their own in-house solution. As their customer base grew, they quickly found that their in-house solution was not going to be adequate for many of its customers.

Mr. Wolfgang Freiler of SimVis explained, “At SimVis, we were facing the limits of our existing in-house licensing solution, since customers were increasingly asking for more flexible licensing models, such as floating licenses.”

How SimVis Approached the Problem

SimVis set out on a quest to find a solution that would work for their team and their customers’ growing needs. After comparing various solutions, LM-X License Manager came out on top.

“We conducted an evaluation of the existing license management solutions on the market and finally decided to switch to X-Formation’s LM-X License Manager,” described Freiler.

One of their highest points of praise for LM-X was its straightforward implementation. “During the evaluation period, we were surprised at how easy it was to integrate LM-X License Manager into our software,” Mr. Freiler said.

Not only was LM-X easy to work with, but they were impressed with the helpfulness, expertise, and response time of X-Formation’s support team. “When we were stuck, the helpful support team provided us with a solution very quickly,” praised Freiler.

What It’s Like Now

SimVis was able to get up and running quickly with new licensing options that not only better met their existing customers’ needs, but opened up new opportunities for sales to customers who demand more flexible license models. With LM-X, SimVis got a license management solution with extensive features, flexibility, and ease of use that they had been searching for.

For SimVis and so many other successful customers, LM-X has proven to be an optimal licensing solution for cross-platform software products. The positive feedback we get from both new and long-time users consistently reinforces that even the most demanding of our customers are happy with the solution LM-X provides.

License Statistics: How to set up CATIA license server monitoring

How to set up CATIA license server monitoring

CATIA, produced by Dassault Systèmes and licensed using DSLS (Dassault Systèmes License Server), is a leading provider of solutions for design, engineering, systems engineering and construction.

This article helps you set up your CATIA (Dassault) license server for monitoring with License Statistics and enable remote monitoring, which lets you see usage information from the time you add the license server to License Statistics.

How to add a new CATIA (Dassault) license server

Adding your CATIA license server is quick and easy using the license server setup wizard in the License Statistics UI. (If you aren’t familiar with adding and editing license servers, see License Statistics help for complete information.)

You’ll need to have License Statistics administrator privileges to add a new license server. Setup will take just a few simple steps, including:

  1. Defining general information for the license server
  2. Enabling data gathering options for anonymization and Collections (authorization items)
  3. Enabling remote monitoring

Let’s get started!

Enter the General license server information

  1. Open License Statistics, and go to Administration > License Servers. (You must have License Statistics administrator privileges to access this page.)
  2. Click Add to add a new license server.
    License Statistics - Add new license
  3. The General tab of the License Server setup dialog lets you define the license server. At a minimum, enter the license server name, and select Dassault as the license server type.
    License Statistics: CATIA license server monitoring
  4. Optionally, you can enter a description for the license manager, and under the Vendor section, add a name to display for the vendor in reports. (The Vendor Name entry will be automatically detected and visible after the first successful query or import.)

Enable anonymization and Collections (authorization items)

Under the Gathering section of the General tab, choose whether to enable anonymization of usernames and/or hostnames, and Collections.

License Statistics: CATIA license server monitoring

Anonymization

Enabling Anonymization will make users and/or hosts anonymous in the database and reports (normally used to protect users for legal reasons, as is required in some countries).
You can set this option only when adding the license server; you cannot edit this option after adding the server. However, if you don’t enable anonymization during the server setup, you can perform “on-demand” data anonymization of historical data as needed.

For complete information about data anonymization, see License Statistics help.

Collections

Enabling Collections lets you track usage by “authorization items.” Dassault license server output can be configured by an administrator to define authorization items that control feature usage. Authorization items can be set to any value by which an administrator wishes to specify “groups” that can access the feature (for example, user groups, departments, countries, etc.) and how many of the feature’s total licenses each of those groups may consume.

When Collections is enabled, License Statistics will monitor and report on the feature as usual, and if authorization item information is available, License Statistics will also report usage for each defined group separately to indicate how many licenses of the total usage each of the groups accounts for.

The Collections will contain information about user licenses, total available licenses, and user-host sessions that are available on all reports, in the same manner as any other feature. However, the statistics will not contain denials, as the information is available only for the entire feature.

You can enable/disable Collections at any time for a Dassault server. However, keep in mind that when Collections is disabled, the data for those Collections will not be collected.

For complete information about Collections, see License Statistics help.

Enable remote monitoring

After you have completed entering the information in the General tab of the Add License Server wizard, you can move on to enabling remote monitoring, which lets you see usage information from the time the license server is added to License Statistics to be monitored.

    1. From the General tab, click Next to go to the Remote Monitoring tab. (The Next button won’t be available until you’ve entered the required information in the General tab.)
      4. License Statistics: CATIA license server monitoring
    2. In the Remote Monitoring tab, toggle on “Enable Remote Monitoring.” It’s toggled on by default.
      5. License Statistics: CATIA license server monitoring
    3. Under the General section of the Remote Monitoring tab:
      1. If needed, edit the path for the query tool needed to monitor the DSLS server. This query tool is delivered by the application vendor.
        (Note: The license server must be configured to use English; other languages are not currently supported. Please see our help article on resolving Dassault license server issues for more information on requirements and limitations.)
      2. Select your desired query interval, which is the time in minutes between each license server query. You can choose between 1, 2, 5 (default) and 10 minutes.
      3. Toggle on the data types you want to gather (Usage and/or Denials).
    4. Under the Connection section:
      1. Toggle on Redundant servers if desired. (If you toggle on redundant servers, you must enter the hostname and port information for three servers.)
      2. Enter the hostname for the CATIA server. (This is required, so you won’t be able to verify or save the server until you enter the hostname.)
      3. Change the port if needed. The default port is 4084.
      4. Optionally, enter a password for access to protected resources.
    5. If you want to check that your connection to the CATIA server is working, click Verify at the bottom of the Remote Monitoring tab. Although it’s recommended, this step isn’t required, because verification happens automatically when you save the license server.
    6. Click Save and Close.

That’s it! Your CATIA license server monitoring setup is complete, and after a minute or so, will start automatically. License Statistics will display the data for your CATIA license usage in its usual easy-to-read grids and reports.

Get to know License Statistics

Let us know what you think!

We hope this article was helpful in walking you through configuring License Statistics to track your CATIA license server usage. You can learn more by visiting the License Statistics documentation, and as always, feel free to contact us at support@x-formation.com with your questions or comments.