Using Software Reclaim

The Savings Opportunities page provides an overview of what software titles are being used and identifies reclaim opportunities that will reduce your software costs.

Page view options

The default page view is a software-centric view showing you every relevant software (refer to Configuring Relevant Software List for more details on relevant software) title in your estate. whether licensable or non-licensable.

You can configure the Savings Opportunities page using the top toolbar to show either a device- or software-centric view based on either relevant licensable or non-licensable software only by clicking the following icons as indicated:

1. Device Centric View: Updates all fields to display device-centric data.

2. Software Centric View: Updates all fields to display software-centric data.

3. Relevant Non-Licensable Software: Focuses on your software that is not licensable and is identified as relevant.

4. Relevant Licensable Software: Highlights software that is licensable and has not been manually marked as non-relevant.

5. Search by software title: A free text field to refine your view.

6. All Vendors: A dropdown list of all software vendors represented across your estate.

For example, if you filter the page on a device-centric view showing you every software title in your estate, relevant licensable or non-licensable, you might want to find data on a specific title. Choosing Mozilla from the All Vendors dropdown menu and clicking Go shows you data associated with that vendor, which can be narrowed down by using Search by Software title.

Summary tiles

The summary tiles reflect your selected page view options.

• No License Required Software Titles or Licensable Software Titles: The total number of variations across all software titles in your environment.

• Potential Savings (USD $): The total potential savings if you remove all software that does not have the status Used.

• Achieved Savings (USD $): The value of software automatically removed due to Software Reclaim policies since the start of the year. Clicking this panel takes you to Savings Achieved.

Device Centric View

When you select Device Centric View, the following tiles are displayed:

Used and unreported

This tile shows the distribution of installations in the three usage categories: Used, Rarely Used and Unused. Clicking on a category updates your page view to match your selection.

• Used (blue): Software that has been actively utilized withing 30 days.
• Unused (red): Software that has not been accessed in last 90 days.
• Rarely Used (orange): Software last accessed between 30 and 90 days ago.
• Unreported (gray): Software for which usage data is not available. The information icon provides the possible reasons for why the software is unreported:

  • No Device Usage: Device not reporting software usage.

  • No Product Usage: Catalog mapping for .exe and normalized inventory missing or incorrect.

  • No Usage Reported: No product activity detected on the device since reclaim has been enabled.

Administrators who want to reclaim unused software to recycle licenses can use this information to set their reclaim policies.

Location

The bar chart shows software installations by location. You can filter this view by clicking the location bar or by using the dropdown menu.

Management Groups

This chart displays Management Groups configured in the DEX Platform in descending order according to their device membership. You can focus on a specific Management Group by either choosing it from the dropdown menu or by clicking it in the bar chart.

The bar at the bottom shows the total number of devices in each Management Group. For details about Management Groups and how to use them in the DEX Platform, refer to Management Groups.

Department

This tile allows you to filter your view according to the Persona Types and/or Work Style you have created by using the dropdown menu or clicking a column in the bar chart.

To add and configure Personas and Work Style, navigate to Solution Settings > Configuration > Persona Management. Refer to Solutions Core configuration for more information.

Software Centric View

When you select Software Centric View, the following tiles are displayed:

Used and unreported

For further details, refer to Used and unreported.

Licensable Software: Top 10 titles by install count

This chart displays licensable software in descending order according to install count. You can filter the page on a specific title by clicking it in the bar chart. By hovering your mouse over each colored section of the bar chart, you can see the reclaim value for each category of software, from Used, Rarely Used, and Unused.

Top 5 savings opportunities

This chart displays the top five savings opportunities in descending order according to dollar saving. You can filter the page on a specific title by clicking it in the bar chart.

Summary table

It displays a summary of devices or titles based on the how you have filtered the Savings Opportunities page. Clicking on elements on each page tile allows you to focus on areas of interest.

Items highlighted in blue allow you to filter and explore the results further. For example, viewing the Savings Opportunities page using the Software Centric view with Relevant Non-Licensable Software shows there are six results of unreported installations of .NET Core Host from Microsoft Corporation. Clicking the total displays a drawer showing you six installations of three different version/architecture combinations across six devices.

The software title view includes a checkbox that allows users to mark any software title as relevant. (Check is relevant and uncheck is non-relevant.) Once a title is marked as non-relevant, it will be moved to the Configure Relevant Software List page (see Configuring Relevant Software List for more details). The dashboard data will be refreshed within 60 minutes.

The default view in Rule Management is software-centric and shows rules associated with Relevant Non-Licensable Software. You can switch between this view and Relevant Licensable Software using the icons at the top of the page.

1. Relevant Non-Licensable Software: Focuses on your software that is not licensable and is identified as relevant.

2. Relevant Licensible Software: Highlights licensable software that has not been manually marked as non-relevant.

Clicking the following panels changes the focus of the page:

• Enabled Rules: Displays all rules you have created and enabled.
• Drafts/Disabled Rules: Displays rules that are in draft or you have set to disabled.
• Deleted Rules: Displays rules you have deleted.

By default, the Rule Management table view is Enabled Rules and displays a summary of Vendor, Title, Version, Edition (VTVE), highlighting details for Used, Rarely Used, Unused, and Unreported software. This view includes the Management Groups associated with a title and gives you the option to Edit, Disable, or Delete the rule associated with that software title by clicking the Action column's three vertical dots.

To uninstall any application, you can either create a new reclaim rule or modify an existing one by selecting a rule condition and option. After evaluating the reclaim rules, policies will be created based on the selected action, such as Mandatory or Optional.

Evaluating rules

Clicking Evaluate Rules runs all enabled Software Reclaim rules against their targeted software using the rule scope and conditions you have set. Doing this enables Software Reclaim to identify reclaim opportunities across your estate.

Adding new rule

Clicking Add New Rule opens the Create Reclaim Rule page that guides you through the process of creating a new Reclaim rule for Relevant Non-Licensable Software. You can switch between this view and Relevant Licensable Software using the icons at the top of the page.

Example

Software Reclaim uses a wizard to guide you through creating a new rule.

1. Select your Targeted Software:
   1. Select your Targeted Software using the Vendor dropdown menu. In this example, we select Corel Corporation.
      
   2. Select the Title. In this example, we select WinZip PDF Pro.
      
   3. Selecting Version allows you to select either a specific version or All Versions. In this example, we select version 5.0.0.61.
      
      
   4. You can reset the wizard or save your changes.
2. If there are existing rules for the targeted software, you can set rule precedence. When you set precedence, it allows you to overrule any existing rules associated with the same software. Clicking set rule precedence opens the Set precedence for rules drawer. Drag and drop rules to reorder. The rules precedence will follow the order set. This is important when a device is in more than one management group, as it may match several rules. In this case, precedence will decide which rule takes effect. Moving these rules will change the order immediately.
   
3. Create the Scope:
   1. Once you have selected your new rule's targeted software, you are prompted to define which device Management Groups this rule should apply to. In our example, we apply the new rule to every Management Group where this software is unused, and if there are savings to be made, maximize the potential reclaim benefits.
      
   2. After applying the new rule to all Management Groups, Software Reclaim displays a summary of these groups.
      
4. Define your rule's conditions:
   1. Next, we set conditions that define what happens to the software installations based on their usage status.
   2. For each condition, you can choose from the following rule types:
      1.  Mandatory uninstall: The user will not be consulted before the software is removed.
      2.  Optional uninstall: The user can choose any of the options below.
         • Remove Now: The user can choose to uninstall the software immediately.
         • Remove Later: The user can choose to ignore the notification (for example, if they are in a meeting) by selecting the Remove Later option. The system will send a reminder every seven days for up to 28 days. After 28 days, an automated uninstallation will be initiated.
         • I still need this: If the user selects this option, they can keep the software by providing a reason, which will be sent to the administrator. The system will check again in 28 days to prompt for uninstallation.
   3. For this example, we leave these options as the default Mandatory uninstall.

      

   4. You can choose the reclaim Rule option:

      

      1. Use default reclaim function: Reclaim using the default uninstall mechanism of the Client.

      2. Define custom uninstall strings: For custom uninstalls, Software Reclaim allows you to set custom uninstall strings.

      3. Run an instruction: Software Reclaim allows an admin (Solutions admin or Full admin) to uninstall software using a specific instruction. You can select the instruction from a list of available options fetched from the DEX Platform.

         • The DEXPacks related to the Run an instruction option are available in Software Reclaim - DEXPack.

         • You can select from the rule type:

           • Mandatory: The user can choose to uninstall the software immediately. The Mandatory policy is triggered within six hours to execute the instructions specified in the reclaim rule on the designated devices. The responses are collected and set to expire after a default duration of 1440 minutes. However, if there is no content or no response, the policy will be re-enabled.

           • Optional: The Optional policy is triggered within six hours to execute the instructions specified in the reclaim rule on the designated devices. The responses are collected and set to expire after a default duration of 360 minutes. The reclaim popup window provides users with options like Remove software now, Remove later, and I still need this. The admin can also customize the title, description, and reason label directly from the Software Reclaim settings. Refer to Customizing optional Reclaim popup.

             The Reclaim popup is not available for macOS.

             Based on the response received, proceed with the following steps:

             • Dismiss, no response, no content: The policy will be re-enabled.

             • Remove software now: Convert the optional policy to mandatory; it will function as a mandatory uninstall.

             • Remove later: The policy evaluation time will be set to seven days later.

             • I still need this: The policy evaluation time will be set to 28 days later.

5. Click create reclaim rule. The default rule status Enable rule is selected. Deselect this option if needed.
   

Our new rule is now listed on the Rule Management page, which is sorted by Last Updated.

Editing a rule

To edit a rule, click the three dots under the Action column. Once you have made your changes, click Update Reclaim Rule at the bottom of the page.

Disabling a rule

To edit a rule, click the three dots under the Action column. Once you click disable, the entry for this title will be listed on the Draft/Disabled Rules page.

Deleting a rule

To delete a rule, click the three dots under the Action column. Once you click delete, the entry for this title will be listed on the Deleted Rules page.

To recover a deleted rule, click the three dots under the Action column for the software title and select Undelete.

Savings Achieved provides details on savings achieved in the selected time period. For each report, you can choose which status you want to view by clicking the status listed at the bottom of each panel.

Reclaim History

The Reclaim History table can be customized using the filter and by clicking the three lines in the first column and choosing which columns to display.

Once a reclaim rule has been created and sent to the end user, you can asses the reasoning provided by the end user for wanting to keep their software. Additionally, you have the option to reject the reasoning and initiate an uninstall event.

Most settings are common to all Solutions. For these common settings, refer to Solutions getting started.

Only settings specific to this Solution are covered below.

Specific Software Reclaim Core Stats are available to view on this page.

Configuring Relevant Software List

You can switch between the Licensable Software and Non-Licensable Software to configure the Relevant software list using the icons at the top of the page.

The Non-Licensable Software list includes all software considered non-relevant. By default, any software that is not licensable is categorized as non-relevant. It includes a checkbox that allows users to designate any software title as relevant. (Check is relevant and uncheck is non-relevant.) Whereas the Licensable Software list includes all reclaimable software that is considered relevant.

Once a title is marked as relevant, it will be moved to the Reclaim dashboard. The data will be refreshed within 60 minutes.

Customizing optional Reclaim popup

You can configure the optional reclaim policy popup window from this setting.

Here is an example of the popup window that the user receives, prompting them to choose an option for reclaim.