License Auditor

Introduction

License Auditor offers users the ability to compare their current purchased IBM Cognos Licenses with those they have in use to gauge their potential need for additional licenses. The utility will traverse the entire directory to determine which users have the “Execute” permission to a number of IBM Cognos Capabilities. Specific combinations of these permissions will determine the IBM Cognos License counts. In addition, owned license counts can be entered to show if new licenses are required in order to ensure every user has a license.

NOTE: When installing this product on a Microsoft Vista or Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System Where User Access Control (UAS) is enabled, you may need to execute the Setup.exe project with escalated privileges for this installation to complete properly. This can be simply performed but right-clicking on the Setup.exe and choosing the option to "Run as Administrator". Note that Administrative Privileges is not the same as User Account Control (UAC) controls under "Run as Administrator" which escalates the install privileges on the file and emulates full rights and control over folders, files, registry, etc.

Determining a User’s License Level

License Auditor calculations are based on the access that users have to license related capabilities. These capabilities include: Administration, Analysis Studio, Workspace, and so on. 

To determine that a user has been granted access to one of these capabilities, MetaManager^TM examines the permissions that a user has to the capability. MetaManager^TM considers a user to have access to the capability if they have “Execute” permissions.

For example, in this Security Editor view (below) of the Analysis Studio capability we can see that Report Administrators, Authors, and Analysis Users all have Execute permissions, and therefore would be considered to have access to Analysis Studio.

The combination of capabilities that a user has determines what license level they will be assigned to. For example, under the Legacy Licensing model (pre July 2014) a user would be considered to be a Business Manager if they have access to the Metric Studio, Workspace, and Mobile capabilities.

In the Legacy Licensing model there are Add-Ons. An Add-On license is access to another capability that would not usually be included in a license. For example, in the Business Manager example above, if that user also had access to Analysis Studio it could be considered an Add-On. License Auditor supports these Add-Ons, but also has an option to “Elevate Licenses to avoid Add-Ons”.

The Elevate License option

If The Elevate License option is selected, License Auditor will try to minimize the use of Add-On Licenses and categorize users into Licenses that they are close to but may not match exactly. In this case License Auditor will "grant" the users certain capabilities to elevate their License Level. The capabilities granted by License Auditor will be indicated by yellow checkmarks in the Capability grid.

Legacy License Algorithm

License Auditor works by examining the capabilities that a user has and comparing them against the capabilities defined for each License Level. It does this by starting with the license with the most capabilities (Administrator) and working its way down to the License Level with the least amount of access (Mobile Consumer).

License Auditor begins by checking for access to the Administration capability. If the user has it, they are automatically categorized as an Administrator.

Next License Auditor checks for Report Studio access. If the user has Report Studio MetaManager^{TM will} check for the following conditions:

1. If they also have all of the following, they are a Business Professional.

• Analysis Studio

• Event Studio

• Metric Studio

• Query Studio

• Workspace Advanced

• Workspace

• Mobile

• Professional UI Profile

1. If they don’t have all the capabilities for a Business Professional but do have the Professional UI Profile they are classified as a Professional Author.

2. If they aren’t a Business Professional or Professional Author, they will be classified as an Advanced Business Author.

Next License Auditor checks to see if there is a match for these Licenses in the following order. A match would mean the user would have access to all of the capabilities listed below for the License.

Advanced Business Author

• Analysis Studio

• Query Studio

• Workspace Advanced

• Workspace

• Mobile

Business Manager

• Metric Studio

• Workspace

• Mobile

Business Analyst

• Analysis Studio

• Workspace

• Mobile

Business Author

• Query Studio

• Workspace

• Mobile

Enhanced Consumer

• Workspace

• Mobile

Mobile Consumer

• Mobile

Consumer

• Run with Options (Secured Feature)

Recipient

• Cognos Viewer

Business Analytics Algorithm

License Auditor first calculates the License based on the Legacy algorithm, and then converts it to the newer Business Analytics License after running a few checks:

• If the user has Administration, they are classified as an Analytics Administrator.

• If they have Metric Studio they are classified as an Analytics Explorer (the lowest level license that has access to Metric Studio).

• If they have access to PowerPlay Studio they are classified as an Advanced User (the lowest level license that has access to PowerPlay Studio.

• If they don’t meet the conditions of the checks above, the user is classified by converting their Legacy license to Business Analytics license. Here is how the conversion is done:

The Analytics Architect License level is defined as the Analytics Administrator license plus access to SPSS Modeler. SPSS Modeler does not have an IBM Cognos capability assigned to it, and therefore License Auditor cannot automatically determine if any users are Analytics Architects. However, on the “Accounts” tab of License there is a checkbox to manually elevate an Analytics Administrator to an Analytics Architect.

Business Analytics License Definitions

License Auditor does its best to adhere to the strict definitions of the License Levels as defined by Cognos and makes its best educated assumptions in scenarios where that is not always possible. Below is a list of the Business Analytics License Levels and their capabilities:

Information Distribution

• Non-prompted static reports via the web or mobile consumption. Including push and pull capability as well as point in time data

• Active Report Consumption

BI Analytics User

• Cognos Workspace Advanced

• Cognos Workspace

• Cognos Insight

• Mobile

• Cognos BI for MS Office

• Legacy Studios

• + Report Studio

• + Event Studio

• + Query Studio

• + Analysis Studio

BI Advanced User

• Fixed Ratio of BI Analytic Admins

• BI Analytic User + PowerPlay Studio

• Excludes: SDK, ICAS Writeback, CAFÉ, SPSS Modeler

BI Analytics Explorer

• BI Analytics User (Plus)

• Framework Manager

• Transformer

• CAFÉ

• ICAS Write-back (TM1)

BI Analytics Administrator

• BI Analytics Explorer (Plus)

• Administration

• Performance Tuning

• SDK

• BI Patterns (incl with 10.2.2)

Forward Looking Analytics Architect

• BI Analytics Administrator (Plus)

• IBM Cognos Analytic Server (ICAS) - 400 PVU TM1

• SPSS Modeler (limited use BI)

Exporting your information

Under the Licenses, there is a link to export all of your license information to a Text file.

When clicked, you will be prompted to select a location to save the specified file.

Accounts Tab

The Accounts tab provides a quick reference to see individual users, their License Level, and the specific capabilities they have.  As with the Summary tab, users are able to toggle between the Legacy Licensing model and the current IBM Business Analytics model using the radio buttons at the top of the module.

Lineage Tab

By clicking on a user, the Lineage Tab will include the full capabilities lineage for that user based on their group and role memberships. 

Right clicking gives additional functionality including:

• Edit

  • Selecting Edit will open up the object within the Security Editor module.

• Hide

  • Selecting Hide temporarily removes this item from the lineage tree.  The item will return after clicking away from the user and returning.

• Focus

  • Selecting Focus will temporarily remove all other items.  The items will return after clicking away from the user and returning.