PC Audit Software - software and hardware inventory

Application Control

Express Software Manager can be configured to prohibit the launch of applications by specifying which users or machines are authorized or not authorized to run them. Control can also be used to specify how a "no licenses available" situation is handled for an application licensed concurrently.

Control is specified via an authorization profile which consists of:

A list of authorized or unauthorized machines or users
Specification of the behavior when the launch is attempted that is not authorized or, for concurrently licensed applications, not licensed

You enable control for a license unit by assigning it an authorization profile.

Authorization-based Control

To control application launches based on an authorization model, do the following:

Select the license unit you want to control, right-click and choose Properties.
Select the Authorization tab, click Use authorization profile and select an Authorization Profile from the list.
Click OK to assign the profile to the license unit.

The specified control will now be enforced. (Note that full enforcement of control on all machines may take some time based on when the Express Clients check in.)

Express Software Manager provides two built-in profiles for authorization-based control:

Prevent Usage - this profile will block any attempts to launch the application
Warn Users - this profile will warn users that the launch is not authorized

These two built-in profiles apply to all machines and users. If you want to restrict the profile to a certain set of machines or users, you will need to create a new profile. To create a new profile at the time you are assigning it to a license unit, do the following:

From the Authorization tab, click Use authorization profile and click New...
Give the new profile a name and, if you want, a description. The name will be what is displayed in the drop-down list.
Select the type of profile: No one is authorized, Everyone is authorized, Selected machines and users are authorized, Selected machines and users are not authorized.
If you selected a profile type that requires a list of machines or users, click Add Users... or Add Machines and add the users or machines you want to the profile.
Click the Control tab and specify what level of control you want enforced.
Click OK to finish creating the new authorization profile, then OK again to assign it to the license unit.

Once a new authorization profile has been created, you can also assign it to other licenses units, if desired.

Control for Concurrent Licensed Applications

You may also want to use control to enforce license compliance for a concurrently licensed application. In this case, the authorization profile is primarily used to determine what happens when a launch is requested when there are no licenses. To set up a concurrently licensed application to be controlled this way:

Select the license unit, right-click and select Properties.
From the General tab, set the license unit's license type to concurrent.
Select the Purchasing History tab, then New... to make at least one license purchase entry; you must specify how many licenses you own to be able to fully enforce compliance.
Select the Authorization tab, select Use authorization profile then select one of the two predefined concurrent license profiles. The Prevent Concurrent Users profile will block any attempts to launch the application if no licenses are available; the Warn Concurrent Users profile will warn the user that no licenses are available but allow them to launch anyway.
Click OK to save the license unit with this configuration.

Note: this scenario will allow anyone to attempt to launch the concurrent application and, if any license is available, allow the launch. You can use license allocation (specified from the License Allocation tab of the License Unit Properties dialog) to allocate pools of licenses to different groups to further refine how licenses are utilized.