Creating snapshots of license metric utilization for auditing purposes

Create the snapshot of the All Metrics report, and store it as a record of license metric utilization in your enterprise over a particular period. You can create the snapshot with any frequency that is suitable for your purposes. However, it is a good practice to create the snapshot every quarter. You can also regenerate the snapshot at any time as the historical data is always editable.

Before you begin

An icon representing a user. You must have the following permissions to perform this task:
  • View License Metric to open the All Metrics report.
  • View Audit Trail if you want the snapshot to contain the audit trail file.

About this task

To ensure completeness and accuracy of data that is contained in the audit snapshot, ensure that:
  • Software scan data is collected from the entire environment. To verify whether there are any problems, check the Scan Health widget on the Overview panel.
  • Capacity data is collected from the entire environment. To verify whether there are any problems, check the IBM Capacity Data Completeness widget on the Overview panel.
  • Imports of data are successful. To check the import history, go to Management > Data Imports.
  • Software is correctly classified. For more information, see: Software classification.

Procedure

  1. Log in to BigFix Inventory, and go to Reports > All Metrics.
  2. Optional: To configure the period for which you want to create the snapshot, hover over the Manage Report View icon Manage Report View icon, and click Configure View. Then, select the time range.
    • If you specify a period from a particular date until the last successful import, the reports contain entries from that date starting at 00:00:00.
    • If you specify a period from a date to a date, the reports contain entries from the first date starting at 00:00:00 to the second date ending at 23:59:59.
  3. Optional: To limit the number of products that are included in the snapshot, specify the name of the product in the Filters section.

    The screen capture shows how to limit audit snapshot to a single product.
  4. To create the snapshot, in the top navigation bar, click Audit Snapshot.
  5. Optional: Provide a comment in the comment text field.
  6. Optional: To add an attachment, click Browse and select the file that you want to attach to the snapshot.

    The screen capture shows the text field in which you can type a comment.
  7. Click Generate.

Results

The audit_snapshot_date_time.zip file is downloaded to your computer. The date that is provided as part of the file name is expressed in the GMT time zone. For information about the content of the file, see: Content of the audit snapshot.