Free SCCM Report: Count of Users and Usage Time by Software Title

[GarthMJ]

There is still time to get this month free report giveaway from Enhansoft. 

https://giveaway.enhansoft.com/

Count of Users and Usage Time by Software Title

Problem: There isn’t a built-in SCCM report that can help IT Asset Management (ITAM) Administrators keep track of the number of users that are using specific software titles.

Oftentimes ITAM Admins end up creating their own software metering rules for each software title they need information about. They run their monthly reports (generally on the first of the month) and then merge them into another report (usually in Excel or Word) in order to review the data all in one place.

Besides having to run all of these reports, ITAM Admins also have another concern. Due to the nature of SCCM, software metering details are only returned once a week, generally on Mondays. How can they be certain that they have all of the software inventory results for the previous month? Is that even possible?

This problem was presented to the Enhansoft team. We needed to find a solution not only to help ITAM Administrators, but also to help SCCM Admins guarantee the accuracy of the software inventory results from the previous month.

Solution: Count of Users and Usage Time by Software Title

Our team reviewed what was needed and felt confident about coming up with a solution given that we’d recently completed a similar challenge. A few months back we re-created a software metering report called, Total Usage Trend Analysis for Collections. We decided to use this report as our base and then added extra columns for details such as: the number of users within each collection and the amount of time each user used a specific application.

Next, we answered the question: How can you guarantee the accuracy of the software inventory results from the previous month? The answer turned out to be quite simple. Delay when the report is run.

During our research, we determined that you shouldn’t run this type of report on the first of the month. By waiting an extra eight days, or longer, you can always ensure that the software metering details are the ones from the previous month. Simply waiting means that you don’t need to make any changes to your SCCM environment by having software metering data returned daily. We found that even when this data is returned on a daily basis, the results are often not reliable on the first of the month. Why? A number of computers could be turned off, or the results for some computers may not appear depending on the time of day when the report is run.

We also concluded that you can run our report months after the software metering data is returned to SCCM and still get accurate results. By default, the previous month will always be selected, but you can simply change the month and year in order to review older data. By the way, our team thought this update would be a, “five-minute fix.” This proved not to be the case, but we think you’ll agree it was well worth it!