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Overview
Become familiar with key concepts that are necessary to understand how BigFix Inventory works and learn about features and functions that are introduced in every version of the application.
Key concepts
There are several concepts that will help you to understand how BigFix Inventory works and how to use it effectively.
Support for ISO/IEC 19770-2
ISO/IEC 19770-2 is an international standard for creating software identification (SWID) tags. The tags are XML files that are used for discovering and identifying software. They are delivered with software products and contain unique product-related information such as its name, edition, version, whether it is a part of a bundle and more. SWID tags facilitate software discovery and the overall process of software asset management.

Overview
Become familiar with key concepts that are necessary to understand how BigFix Inventory works and learn about features and functions that are introduced in every version of the application.
- What's new in this release
  BigFix Inventory provides new features and enhancements that facilitate your work with the application. Check out what is new.
- Keeping BigFix Inventory up-to-date
  BigFix Inventory updates and content packs are released periodically. Ensure that you upgrade the BigFix Inventory server with each release to take advantage of the new features and apply the application patches.
- Features and functions
  BigFix Inventory provides useful features for managing virtualized environments. It discovers the software that is installed in your infrastructure, helps you to analyze the consumption data, and allows you to generate reports.
- Preview features
  BigFix Inventory provides a set of preview features that give you a chance to take a sneak peek at what we are currently developing and researching. Whether it is a small function or an extended report, you can check how it works and tell us about your ideas. The previews can change with each release, which means that you can still influence their final form.
- Limitations
  Review the list of BigFix Inventory limitations.
- Key concepts
  There are several concepts that will help you to understand how BigFix Inventory works and how to use it effectively.
  - Dashboard
    The dashboard provides you with a quick overview of the most important information about scans, computers, and software assets in your infrastructure.
  - To Do list
    Available from 9.2.13. The To Do list provides you with information about items that might require your action including failed imports of data, availability of a new version of BigFix Inventory or the need to configure a connection to VM managers.
  - Extract, Transform, Load (ETL)
    The Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) is a process in the database usage that combines three database functions that transfer data from one database to another. The first stage, Extract, involves reading and extracting data from various source systems. The second stage, Transform, converts the data from its original format into the format that meets the requirements of the target database. The last stage, Load, saves the new data into the target database, thus finishing the process of transferring the data.
  - Software and hardware discovery
    BigFix Inventory discovers hardware and software in your IT infrastructure.
  - Fixlets, tasks, and analyses
    Fixlets and tasks are central to BigFix platform. BigFix Inventory, as a part of this platform, uses them to perform required actions on selected computers. Fixlets and tasks define these actions and specify the criteria that make them relevant. Usually, an action is deployed with a simple click.
  - High-water mark
    Utilization of license metrics can fluctuate depending on the location and configuration of virtual machines in the physical environment. High-water mark is the peak in the utilization of a license metric by a product during the reporting period. It represents the number of metric units that are needed to license a product during that period.
  - Main background application tasks
    The main goal of BigFix Inventory is to generate PVU, and RVU audit reports based on the collected data. All calculations are done in accordance with PVU, and RVU license pricing rules that are described in the official subcapacity licensing documents.
  - Products, components, and bundles
    BigFix Inventory discovers software components, and bundles them to products basing on the data contained in the software catalog. Get familiar with these notions to understand the capabilities and performance of BigFix Inventory.
  - Support for ISO/IEC 19770-2
    ISO/IEC 19770-2 is an international standard for creating software identification (SWID) tags. The tags are XML files that are used for discovering and identifying software. They are delivered with software products and contain unique product-related information such as its name, edition, version, whether it is a part of a bundle and more. SWID tags facilitate software discovery and the overall process of software asset management.
  - Unicode
    Available from 9.2.3. Starting from V9.5, BigFix Platform has the capability to gather data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages, encode the data into UTF-8 format, and report it back to the BigFix server. As a result, regardless of the system and encoding that your clients use, the data is correctly displayed both in BigFix and in BigFix Inventory. This capability is useful when your environment has clients with different code pages and data that contains non-ASCII characters.
- Scenarios
  To understand the business goals that you can achieve with BigFix Inventory, familiarize yourself with the main user scenarios. Each scenario presents a real-life example of using the application and lists personas who are typically involved in achieving a business goal.
- Notices

Support for ISO/IEC 19770-2

ISO/IEC 19770-2 is an international standard for creating software identification (SWID) tags. The tags are XML files that are used for discovering and identifying software. They are delivered with software products and contain unique product-related information such as its name, edition, version, whether it is a part of a bundle and more. SWID tags facilitate software discovery and the overall process of software asset management.

Supported schemas

BigFix Inventory supports SWID tags in the 19770-2:2014-CD1 and 19770-2:2015 schemas. For more information about each schema, see the following links:

BigFix

When BigFix is discovered with an SWID tag that is not contained in the current catalog, a warning sign is displayed on the Software Catalog widget. If you want to see what components were detected, perform the following steps:

In the top navigation bar, click Reports > Software Installations.
Hover over the Manage Report View icon , and click Configure View. Select the Component Definition Source check box to display the column, and add the following filter: Component Definition Source, equal to, SWID BigFix Tags Without License Info. Then, click Submit.

To be able to bundle such components, upload the latest software catalog.

Tip:

You can create a custom bundling definition on the Software Classification panel.

Limitations

Automated bundling might not be available for BigFix components that are discovered with the SWID tag. To assign such a component to a product, upload the latest software catalog to BigFix Inventory. If the catalog contains the relation, automatic bundling is done. You have to either confirm the suggested relation or, if the relation is not correct, reassign the component to a different product.
When you create a contract for a product that is discovered by the SWID tag and then upload a catalog that contains information about this product, the product is removed from the contract.