In a dynamic environment with hundreds (or thousands) of engineers at their workstations pulling and releasing software licenses, software monitoring is the key to obtaining a clear picture of what is happening within the organization’s network regarding software assets. OpenLM is already pioneering engineering software license monitoring, taking the burden off the shoulders of system administrators and providing them with the necessary data in an easy-to-use interface, EasyAdmin. Now we are taking software asset transparency to the next level with Personal Dashboard, the graphical user interface of End-User Services.
Raising awareness among engineers of how software is used
We believe that sharing information within an organization network benefits the whole company, especially when it comes to engineering software licenses. Up until now, only system admins could have an overview of the organization’s software assets, but now, with Personal Dashboard, we are providing that information to the end user as well: the engineer.
Built on data collected by the OpenLM Agents deployed on the company’s workstations, the OpenLM Personal Dashboard brings three major benefits to the end user:
- It gives the engineer an overview of the organization’s license repository.
- It provides a better understanding of how engineering software licenses are used.
- It provides detailed information about who is using which license.
Full transparency on license usage
With the OpenLM Agent installed on the end-user workstation, OpenLM basically creates a network of agents that send license consumption data to a central database for license managers to analyze and make optimization decisions. However, this data has previously been visible only to one person responsible for license management. We believe that license usage transparency generates a much better work environment, so we are giving the power of information to engineers by sharing the information with the end user to use this data and take action based on it.
To do that, Personal Dashboard (which basically is the graphical user interface of the End-User Service of OpenLM) shares the information collected by the network of Agents deployed on the company network seen in real-time and shares it with the engineer in a Web-based, easy-to-understand user interface.
Let the engineer take action based on available software licenses and project needs
The engineer can use the data presented in his or her Personal Dashboard in many ways to take action. We will just list three:
1) License repository and actual license usage: Engineers have access to a Web-based interface that shows the license repository of the company and the actual license usage. They can decide which software to pull to start working by checking the available resources.
2) Connecting the people: When an engineer queries a software license from the license manager, the result may sometimes be a denial. In this case, the Personal Dashboard will give the engineer the information he needs – who is using the software license he or she needs – and by clicking on the username, the engineer gets the contact details of the user and decides on the communication channel to reach out to that specific user to release the license.
3) Recently Closed shows which software license was pulled from them automatically because of an idle session. As you may already know, OpenLM automatically harvests idle licenses based on criteria set by the license manager. This automation is absolutely stunning, as OpenLM Agent will automatically close (ArcGIS, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, MATLAB) software and save the document the engineer has been working on. Alternatively, it can suspend the application, depending on the license manager service in use. With the Resume button, we now empower the engineer to continue work where he or she left off.
We are just getting started as more exciting features will be added in time.
The Personal Dashboard (and End-User Services) is available on the Cloud. You can also have it on-premise with OpenLM v21 and Agent v21.
