Casper Integration with Flexera FlexNet or AppPortal via API's?

[WLeishman]

We use Flexera FlexNet Manager Suite (FNMP) for our Software Asset Mgmt and License entitlement tracking. We are adding the Flexera AppPortal for the Software Catalog/Distribution point for our Windows devices (which uses SCCM as the delivery mechanism to those Window devices).

I'm curious if anyone has done any research with integration with the Flexera products with JAMF Casper for any automation (API or otherwise) between the license entitlements stored in Flexera and the app delivery functionality with JAMF Casper (which I'm not really familiar with all of the capabilities).

Thanks

[drhoten]

We’ve had one other customer integrate Flexera FlexNet Manager with SCCM.

They used the SCCM 2007 plug-in to send the device data over to SCCM from the JSS and then pulled the data into Flexera from SCCM after we helped identify which tables they would need to pull the information from. For SCCM 2012 we have detailed mapping information that lists out which field in the JSS we bring over to SCCM, along with what table and field it's stored in the SCCM database.

If you are interested in that information, reach out to your technical account manager.

You could also pull information into FNMP using our REST API, or if you were interested in doing that in real-time you could also look at our events API which gives you the ability to create to respond to events in the JSS (such as a devices updating it's inventory). https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/jnucEvent.html?eventId=35&view=resources.

Hope that helps.

Doug

[WLeishman]

We expect the inventory to be "easy", there is already a connector between SCCM and FNMP. If we push Casper data to SCCM, we are confidant that series of connectors should provide the HW/SW inventory data from Casper to FNMP.

We need to be able to trigger software installations (and maybe software removals) based on the license entitlement data that's stored in FNMP. Ideally we'd like to use the Software/App Portal either in FNMP or in Casper, but have it first verify legal software entitlement from the data in FNMP. Flexera has a solution to do exactly this on Windows Devices (via SCCM for the delivery mechanism) via their AppPortal tool.

Without any integration of the entitlement data in FNMP to the delivery mechanism, we have to design an entirely separate (and possibly very manual) way to verify software compliance be we can have users self service their own installations.

[Softserve]

I'm wondering if you found the solution for that issue. I would like to use SCCM plugin but I’m afraid that if we move data from JSS to SCCM, FlexNet won’t recognize applications it correctly?

[guidotti]

@WLeishman did you find an easy fix for this?
My company is looking at integration for Flexera and software entitlements also.

[WLeishman]

Nope, We unfortunately did not move forward with a JAMF purchase (but are still looking at future possibilities). We still do have Flexera FNMS managing our SW Entitlements and moving to using Flexera AppPortal (for our Windows system using SCCM). We would like to use AppPortal/AdminStudio to deploy Mac Software using JAMF (if we ever get to move in that direction).

[rastogisagar123]

we are using Flexera or FNMS agent in our windows environment where we dont have any challenges but in MAC OS X we are not able to get it work and we already contacted to Flexera Vendor and we got below response :-

The ndtrack agent attempts to inventory application bundles under "/Applications", "/Developer/Applications" and "/System" file system paths. Under these paths, the agent is looking for "Contents/Info.plist", "Contents/Info-macos.plist" and "Resources/version.plist" files to extract details of the application bundle. These plist files contain the details of application name and version. The agent makes use of Mac OS X library calls (CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation() and CFBundleCreate()) to parse these files. The console messages are coming from these library calls when the agent finds a plist file which is malformed. The agent safely ignores these failures, which is why an ndi file is still generated and uploaded.

I have searched for this error and found the following external link:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15647987/localizable-strings-causing-plist-parsing-error

The ramification of these failures is that some application bundles will not be successfully inventoried. Unfortunately, based on the information that we have from the console and tracing, we are unable to identify exactly which application bundles are impacted.

I can submit an enhancement to the agent to provide better tracing when we fail to parse a plist file

Ultimately, these corrupt files are out of our control, as is the infrastructure which parses them. These files would need to be fixed by the package author which created them originally.

For importing inventory data from other third party inventory sources and bringing them to FNMS, I guess we can do from SCCM to FNMS and beacon.

My question is can we serial number from SCCM, do we need to install any SCCM agent on MAC.

[drhoten]

Hello @rastogisagar. If you are looking at getting data from Jamf Pro to SCCM and then your other systems then yes, you can get the serial number using the Jamf SCCM Plug-in. Our plug-in would not require any agent on the Mac, as it uses our API to send the data to SCCM.

If that's not what you are looking to do, then could you provide some more details?

[rastogisagar123]

@drhoten thanks a lot for your reply, basically want to use Flexera or FNMS agent in macOS like we are using in Windows workstation.

we want full inventory and asset management but we are having challenges in Flexera/FNMS on macOS device. I heard that Flexera can communicate to SCCM and then beacon , then it will be useful. Could you please suggest.

Workstation name and serial number are the most important we want to get.

Note: We are using JAMF Cloud in our environment.

[rastogisagar123]

@drhoten Currently the following are a list of attributes that we gather from Inventory for windows workstations (in order of importance):
• Serial Number (most important)
• Device Name
• IP Address
• Domain name
• Manufacturer
• Model, Status, Linked Asset, Inventory Device Type, Compliance Status,Device Role, Host ID, Machine ID, Category, Chassis Number, Firware Serial Number
• MAC Address
• Operating System
• Hardware:- Processors,Cores, Threads,Sockets, Processor Type, Clock Speed, RAM, Disk, Display Adapters,Assigned Chasis type, Hard Drives, Network Cards, Inventory chasis type, • List of installed applications (evidence of the applications like files and RPM packages)
• User associated with the device (last logged on or assigned)

Connecting SCCM with JAMF and then allowing the information in SCCM to flow to Flexera is a great idea if it works, but the record MUST contain the serial number or else we can’t associate the record to anything in FNMS.

[KRIECCO]

Actually just had meeting with Flexera yesterday and here is what I got

**
Yes, we support Macintosh OS X and MAC programs.
Meaning, that you can download our agent for MAC OS and run it on a MAC.
This will do an inventory on your mac and send the result to our cloud database.

Now you will see our advisories that your Mac computers are affected by.

The installation and scan is basically done as following:
Download the csia file.
Open a terminal, su –
“Enter password”
Cd /path/where/the/file/resides
Chmod +x ./csia
./csia -i

To scan simply type ./csia -c

Here is the manual…
http://helpnet.flexerasoftware.com/csi/Default.htm#helplibrary/Scanning_Mac_OS_X.htm#svm_cloud_edition_scanning_961964609_1034329%3FTocPath%3DScanning%7CScanning%2520Mac%2520OS%2520X%7C_____0
**

[drhoten]

Yes @rastogisagar, using our SCCM plug-in you would be able to get the workstation name and serial number.

The majority of the other fields can be also be sent to SCCM, but I am not certain if it would cover all the ones you listed. If you need a list of how we map information to SCCM, please reach out to support and ask for the Excel spreadsheet which shows which elements from the XML returned by our API is mapped to which WMI classes and also the SQL Server database tables and fields.

The other reason I mention the WMI classes, is you can modify the XSL files for the Hardware Inventory (HINV) that come with our plug-in to send additional information to SCCM including custom WMI classes. See this post Does the JSS SCCM Plugin Allow for additional WMI Classes? for more details on how to accomplish this.

[rastogisagar123]

@drhoten Thanks a lot!!. Could you please help me with SCCM plug-in link which I can walk through. Do we need to purchase that SSCM plug-in as we do have SCCM in our environment already? One question I do have junos or pulse secure goes to Jamf mdm to confirm mac is compliant . is it feasible?

[rastogisagar123]

@KRIECCO could you please help me from where i can get csia file

[KRIECCO]

I don´t know yet, but guess if you have a license for flexera you can request it from them, so you get an agent to install on Mac´s

[rastogisagar123]

@KRIECCO do you know where is mgspolicy file on macOS, i have already installed Flexera on MAC OS X.