ITMS Administrator Group

The Symantec Management Agent (SMA) calculates the Primary User based on the length of time a user has been logged onto a machine.

How is the primary user calculated?

• AeXUserMonitorLog.xml stores the history of user sessions
• SMA calculate primary user prior to basic inventory update
  • takes all the old sessions from XML, adjusts them to 28 day limit
  • takes all the current sessions from Windows, adjusts them to 28 day limit
  • sums up durations of all the sessions for each user and selects the user with the longest duration as the primary user

AeXUserMonitorLog.xml

- install directory of the Symantec Management Agent

This is made up of

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<UserLog>
    <Log utc_lastloggedon="2018-09-11 19:18:14 -6:00" utc_year="2018" utc_month="9" utc_day="16" duration="398289" userID="MyDomain\John_Doe"/>
</UserLog>

This fills in the following Table:

Evt_AeX_Client_LogOn

The calculations use a value that can be updated in the Registry:

Default Value 28

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Altiris\Altiris Agent\Inventory\PrimaryUserRecordDays

Another table is then updated via Basic Inventory

Inv_AeX_AC_Primary_User

SQL

You can use this information in your Reports by adding the Data Class 'AeX AC Primary User' or the above 'Inv' table.

SELECT * FROM Inv_AeX_AC_Primary_User

Example Data

You can use the _ResourceGuid to join to the Computer table.

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CMDB Rule

Tasks

Many people use this information to then set the "Asset Owner" to be the "Primary User".

This has been know to have issues:

HOWTO95240
How the Asset Owner association works
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO95240.html

TECH163941
CMDB task "Assign Computer's Ownership to be the Primary User" fails to work
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH163941.html

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Tech

TECH251540
Understanding Primary User Calculation Methods in 8.x
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH251540.html

HOWTO7778
Primary User Calculation Methods NS 6.0
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO7778.html

HOWTO7796
Understanding Primary User in Notification Server 6.0 SP2 and SP3
https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO7796.html

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Forum

Change the primary user
https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/change-primary-user

When is the Primary User calculated?
https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/when-primary-user-calculated