Summary
Snow License Manager contains many functions, which operates at full capacity only when configured properly. A good configuration for the organisational structure has impact to
- Role and Rights Management
- Allocation of Licenses (Auto Allocate)
- Allocation of Computers, Mobiles, Users and Terminal Server Devices to organizational Units (Auto Connect)
Beyond that the organisation structure are not only able to assist show the hierarchy of an enterprise, but also helps to keep track of the use rights of the Software vendors. Maybe subsidiaries which are not owned by 100 % or are not allowed to use the same agreement, or there are licenses in use which are subject to regional restrictions.
Design
The organisational structure follows a tree diagram, based on exactly one "root" node. Following points should be considered:
- Use Rights - Which vendors(s) should be examined?
- Use Rights - Are Licenses allowed to move between different organisations, countries or regions?
- Allocation - In which depth the internal organisations should be shown?
- Organization - In which parts of the organisation the tool will be enrolled?
- Organization - Are there users from subsidiaries, which should have access to Snow License Manager?
- Organization - In which regions are the licenses in use?
- Legal Organizations - Which organisational units are allowed to purchase / own licenses and agreements?
- Organization - Are there organizations which underlie special use rights (Training, Test, Development), or a higher risk, because of the general ownership of administrative rights of the users.
Screenshot from the Snow Management and Configuration Center:
Examples
Not connected Enterprises
- Root
- Root,MajorShareholding
- Root,MajorShareholding,DE
- ...
- Root,MinorShareholding
- Root,MinorShareholding,DE
- ...
- Root,MajorShareholding
Regional Binding
- Root
- Root,EU
- Root,EU,DE
- Root,EU,SE
- Root,EU,UK
- ...
- Root,North America
- Root,North America,US
- Root,North America, CA
- ...
- ...
- Root,EU
Department Level
- ...
- Root,at,location
- Root,AT,Location,distribution
- Root,AT,Location,management
- Root,AT,Location,procurement
- ...
- ...
- Root,at,location
Cost Centers
- ...
- Root,DE,Location,047001
- Root,DE,Location,047001,04700183
- Root,DE,Location,047001,04700184
- ...
- Root,DE,Location,047001
Departments with special purposes
- Root,IT,Development
- Root,IT,Deployment
- Root,inactiveLicenses
- Root,UK,Education
- ...
Naming conventions
The names of organisations can be repeated over different Units and will be identified by the field "Organisation ID".
Legal Organisations
If a Organisation is able to purchase and own licenses and agreements is controlled with the option "legal organisation". Organisations with this option activated, can be selected in the "legal organisation" field when adding a license.
Limitations
The Depth of the Structure is only limited by the Field "OrgID", a string, containing comma separated list of all organisation Names to the specific Node. The length of this string is limited to 455 characters, so the usage of abbreviations is recommendable.
Hi Oliver, thanks for this article. I am thinking to set up our organisation based on environment (production, pre-production, UAT, Dev etc), so that the servers are in the right organisational unit. As pricing structure differs for non production licences, purchases are done seperately for production and non production. I am thinking that when it comes to allocation of the licences, it will be easier to allocate to the right organisation (environment), if the structure is set up like this.
Can I have your views if this is best practice or if there is a better way of setting this up
Thanks
Paul