Adding a license certificate to a software contract

A license certificate indicates the right to deploy software in your environment. Because one contract might have multiple certificates, software compliance is tracked at the software level.

To maintain a history of the purchase, you can link the certificate to a purchase order line item.

When the License Engine runs, it attaches CIs to the certificate, based on the following information about the license certificate:

• Company
• Product manufacturer and name
• Categorization
• Answers to connection questions

To add a license certificate to a software contract

1. On the Contract Management console, select the software license contract, and click View.
2. On the Software License Contract form, click the License Details tab, and click Add.

3. On the License Certificate form, complete all the required fields: 
4. To link the certificate to a purchase, perform the following steps:
   1. In the Purchasing area, click Search Line Item.
   2. In the Search Purchase Line Items dialog box, search for the purchase line item.
   3. Select the appropriate line item, and click Relate.
5. Click Next.

6. Select the software from the product dictionary.
   You must select the manufacturer. Optionally, you can select the product name, the version, or the categorization.

   Note

   Software license management uses the market version of the software product for licensing. This helps in the maintenance of certificates, so that you do not need to relate each of the minor versions to the certificate, instead just relate the market version for the product. For example, Adobe Acrobat Professional gets discovered with various minor versions in BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB) such as 6.1.1, 6.1.2, and 6.1.3 depending on the patch level. The market version attribute allows you to refer to these three versions by a single version in BMC Atrium CMDB. For more information about setting the market version for Product Catalog entries, see Adding product models and versions. To configure rules for normalizing the market version on CIs, see Configuring-Version-Rollup-normalization-rules.

   If the same type of certificate exists, you are asked whether to group the certificates. You are prompted to group only certificates that have the same product categorization.

   Recommendation

   If you do not need to track license certificates separately, group them. If you must track license certificates separately, however, do not group them. For example, if each department pays separately for their own Microsoft Visio licenses, do not group them. For information about certificate groups, see About-certificate-groups.

7. If you are prompted to group the certificate, perform the following steps to add it to a group:
   1. Click Manage Grouping.
   2. Search for and select the master certificate.
       If there is no appropriate master certificate, you can create a master certificate.
   3. Click Add to Group.
   4. After you finish grouping certificates, click Next.

8. Provide connection details and compliance details:

   Detail type	Description
   Connection details	To determine which CIs use the license certificate, the License Engine uses the information that you provide about connection details. These details provide information about how to connect the license certificate to the appropriate CI.
   Compliance details	To determine compliance, the License Engine uses the information that you provide about compliance details. For example, a Per Instance license certificate asks you how many licenses were purchased and displays how many licenses were deployed.

   Note

   For some license types, a dialog box prompts you for connection details and compliance details. Use the Save button to save the details and continue.

9. On the certificate, click Save.