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Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
Performing optional configuration
You can perform optional configuration tasks to further customize the application.
Setting up computer properties
You can specify computer properties that are to be gathered from the computers in your infrastructure. You can then use those properties to filter data on the Computers report and to assign computers to computer groups.

Configuring
After you install BigFix Inventory, configure the application. Create accounts for the users who need access to the application and set up scans to collect software and hardware inventory data from your environment.
- Creating users and groups
  Each user who has access to BigFix Inventory must be assigned a role and a computer group. The role defines which reports and panels the user can view. The computer group narrows down the scope of these reports and panels to computers that meet certain criteria.
- Setting up scans to discover software and hardware inventory
  The scanner is an independent, well-defined component that is used by BigFix Inventory. It is installed and managed through the BigFix client, and it enables the software and capacity scans. Software and capacity scans collect data that is later on displayed on the BigFix Inventory reports. For environments with up to a few thousand computers, you can enable the default scan configuration. In this case, the analyses are activated and software and capacity scans as well as uploads of their results are scheduled automatically on the computers that are subscribed to the BigFix Inventory site. For larger environments, it is advisable to divide the computers into groups and manually configure a separate scan schedule for each group to avoid performance issues.
- Performing optional configuration
  You can perform optional configuration tasks to further customize the application.
  - Data retention periods
  - Setting up computer properties
    You can specify computer properties that are to be gathered from the computers in your infrastructure. You can then use those properties to filter data on the Computers report and to assign computers to computer groups.
    - Deprecated: Package and usage properties
      In addition to computer properties, BigFix Inventory also uses package properties, UNIX package properties, and usage properties to retrieve data about your software and its usage. The data is originally gathered by analyses, and the properties are links between these analyses and BigFix Inventory. All properties are configured by default and do not require any action from you.
  - Deprecated: Disabling subcapacity calculations
    Subcapacity licenses are based on the number of processor value units (PVU) or resource value units (RVU) that can be used by the product not the number of all processor cores that are available on the physical server. Such a licensing scheme allows for reducing the cost of licenses for products that are eligible for PVU or RVU subcapacity. If no subcapacity products are installed in your environment, you can disable subcapacity calculations to improve the performance of the import.
  - Setting the home page
    If you use a particular report or panel frequently, you can set it as BigFix Inventory home page.
- Classifying the BigFix client used by multiple BigFix products
  BigFix client is a component that is common for all products from the BigFix family. If you have a number of BigFix products installed, the client must be classified as used by these products. Because the client is usually installed on all computers in the enterprise, its manual classification can be time-consuming. To reduce the amount of time and resources that are needed to perform this task, you can generate license tags. The tags mark the client as used by the BigFix products that are installed in your infrastructure. The information is later on reflected in BigFix Inventory without the need of manual classification.

Setting up computer properties

You can specify computer properties that are to be gathered from the computers in your infrastructure. You can then use those properties to filter data on the Computers report and to assign computers to computer groups.

Before you begin

An icon representing a user.

You must be an Administrator to perform this task.

About this task

9.2.12 IBM i icon You cannot set up additional computer properties for IBM i computers.

Procedure

To view the properties that are specified for the computers in your infrastructure, click Management > Computer Properties.
To add a property, click New.
In the Create Computer Property pane, specify the name of the property to be displayed in BigFix Inventory. Select the property from the Data Source Property list and click Create.
Tip: When you start typing in the property name, a list of possible values is displayed. It contains all properties whose names contain the letters that you entered in the specified order, regardless of whether the letters occur immediately one after another. For example, if you type path, the list might contain properties such as Patches Applied - Solaris, because letters p, a, t, h occur in this order in the property name.

What to do next

To have the computer property displayed, wait for the next scheduled import or run it manually. Each computer property requires that a relevant analysis is activated. After the import finishes, check the import log for warning messages that indicate that an analysis related to a particular property is not activated. For example:

WARN: Analysis 'Software Scan Status', bound to Computer Property 
'Status of catalog-based scan', is not activated and will not be imported.

If you find such a warning, activate the required analysis to have the computer property displayed.

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