Update of TNI, when and what ?

[ncw]

Hi,

 

I'm using the 1.6.0 build 1434 verion, and it's great but some features could and should be added, such as:

 

- BIOS custom fields (in Dell hardware specifically)

- ability to do LDAP queries to Active Directory

- ability to dump data in MSDE or SQL ?

- use URL's to point to e.g. sharepoint site where licenses are kept.

 

Any idea of new features, bug fixes and release scheule ?

 

Many thanks -

[Support]

- BIOS custom fields (in Dell hardware specifically)

We will add service tag and asset tag, but I can't say anything about customization of what fields are extracted. I don't think WMI is capable of this.

 

- ability to do LDAP queries to Active Directory

AD integration is actually planned for future versions.

 

- ability to dump data in MSDE or SQL

This is also something we are looking at seriously for the next versions.

 

- use URL's to point to e.g. sharepoint site where licenses are kept

Can you please explain this more detailed?

 

As for the new versions, we are going to release an update in about one-two weeks. It will feature an updated reporting engine, new security applications detection system (antiviruses, firewalls, antispyware, Windows updates), multimonitoring support and several other minor improvements and fixes.

[ncw]

Thanks for the quick answer.

 

Any possibility to be more specific on "future versions" and "next versions" ? ;)

 

Regarding the use of URL's:

 

When using TNI in software accounting mode, there is a comment field per instance of software found in the nodes in the inventory.

 

It would be very nice to be able to populate this comment field with an URL , which for instance points to a sharepoint site where I have my sofware license certificates stored.

 

For example, TNI could tell me I am using 10 instances of Office 2003. I would then like to match that usage against a location which shows the licenses to cover this usage. This would be a rudimentary SAM (Software Asset Management) but would be a good start.

 

The TNI product is excellent for the inventory part but falls short a bit on Software Asset Management, which really is "connecting" owned licenses to used licenses. I hope you get my drift........I'm happy to exchange some further ideas on this subject.

[Support]

Any possibility to be more specific on "future versions" and "next versions" ?

Unfortunately no, at this moment I'm not able to specify the period of time which these functions will take us to implement.

 

We understand that currently SAM features in TNI are very simplistic and we are keen to improve them.

However we have no experience with Sharepoint, so I would ask you for more explanation.

Do you mean that the program could open a URL that is provided in comment field, and just get a number without HTML formatting from there, and put this number to the "Licenses" field?

[ncw]

It would be a great help if TNI could open a URL which is entered in the comment field.

 

Such would then start your broswer and show the info in that URL. If the URL points to a SharePoint server, then one could very easily store the licenses , plus metadata, in that Sharepoint server and make it visible.

 

More advanced functions could for example be the following: Assume TNI had previously found 10 instances of Office2007 on the scanned net, but now it shows 11 such licenses are used. It could then start a workflow in SharePoint which alerts the SAM admin to aquire another license to get the license counts matching again. Many options possible.....

 

But as said, for a start it would help to be able to enter a URL in the comment field, and klick on it from within TNI.

[Support]

Ok, I got it. So if the comment field contains URL, it should become clickable. Okay, we'll try to do that soon, that should not be complicated.

[ncw]

Is there any schedule for upcomming new releases or bug fix releases of the TNI product ?

[Support]

The next version is going to be released on the following week.

[tuomol]

- ability to dump data in MSDE or SQL

This is also something we are looking at seriously for the next versions.

 

What's the current status of this development? Looking forward to use SQL as

the database for TNI.

[Support]

What's the current status of this development? Looking forward to use SQL as

the database for TNI.

We are currently optimizing present storage format, so development of SQL storage is delayed. We have not chosen it from the beginning for the sake of deployment simplicity and portability. I think that export to SQL will be implemented earlier, while actual SQL storage - later. Exact period of implementation is currently undetermined.

[Guest Nathan]

Hello,

 

I couldn't add a new topic for some reason, but I guess this fits here.

 

But the company that I work for has been looking for a program like this for a while. Just one thing we need is to be able to get other product keys like Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe products. Is this looking at any future updates?

 

Also I've been playing with the trial version and we tested it on one of our Vista machines which is only 32bit but for the product key all we get is B's for the key. I saw that there was a known problem with the 64bit version but what about the 32bit?

 

We have a 1000+ network, which this would come in handy.

 

Thanks

[Support]

I couldn't add a new topic for some reason, but I guess this fits here.

Temporarily disabled because of spam.

 

But the company that I work for has been looking for a program like this for a while. Just one thing we need is to be able to get other product keys like Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe products. Is this looking at any future updates?

Yes, we are going to implement collection of product keys for various products including Adobe products in the future versions.

 

Also I've been playing with the trial version and we tested it on one of our Vista machines which is only 32bit but for the product key all we get is B's for the key. I saw that there was a known problem with the 64bit version but what about the 32bit?

Obviously this happens sometimes with 32bit systems also. I suggest that try some third-party tool dedicated to extraction of product keys to see if it is also affected by this.