Report inactive machines and automatically change asset status to missing

[Migration User]

Some customers asked for a report to list inactive machines (clients, not sending basic inventory for n days), and to automatically change the asset status from active to 'missing". This was fairly easy in NS6 as there was report for this and using a Notification Policy, changing the status was very simple.

1. Reporting

In NS7 the report is not available anymore and the legacy 6 report does not seem to work. You can find a similar report under
Reports\Discovery and Inventory\Inventory\Windows\Inventory Agent\Inventory Capture called Inactive Machines, for all your Windows machine and you can look at the Inventory Portal Page to get an idea how current your (basic) inventory is.

I created the attached report using information (Client Date) from Inv_Aex_AC_Identification table. 

 

2. Changing Status

I found a pre-defined Automation Policy, which replace Notification Policy in the 6 world,  for Inactive Machines, but it will only send an email or run a defined task, but I couldn't find an easy way to pass the query information to a Change Asset Status Task.

The easiest way I found was to use CMDB Rules and the following query:

SELECT     _ResourceGUID as ‘Resource Guid’, Name, [Last Logon User], [Client Date] as [Last Inventory Received]
FROM         Inv_AeX_AC_Identification
WHERE DATEDIFF(day, [Client Date], GETDATE()) >= '30' (change to whatever number of days you need
ORDER BY
 [Client Date] ASC

To modify the days not reporting change the '30' to whatever number of days you need.

Note: it is important to have the GUID exactly as 'Resource Guid' (case sensitive) in order for the CMDB rule to work!
The CMDB Rule is attached and can be imported under Settings\All Settings\Settings\Notification Server\Connector\CMDB Rules

Warning: Before changing the Asset Status, you should check all the dependencies in regards to data purging, license usage etc. to avoid data loss.

Attachment(s)

DEMO CMDB Rule Change Status For Computers Not Reporting ...xml   7 KB 1 version

DEMO Report Clients Not Reporting Basic Inventory For N D...xml   10 KB 1 version

[Migration User]

We do something similar in our NS7 environment and found that there are multiple places for the date to be stored, the field above is when the Last Basic Inventory was received from the core NS agent.

For example the client config request date will normally be more frequent that the last basic inventory as the default agent settings request the config more frequently than sending basic inventory, also in NS7 the task check dates and software/hardware inventory dates are stored in another location.

We agregate all these dates into a custom data class so we can see which parts of the agent are not communicating before flagging a machine missing, as opposed to a faulty subagent.