We have used a fair amount of customer properties, but per the BFI documentation the associations are removed so the API becomes useless. What is interesting is that GUI appears to maintain that information even after the computer is deleted (which to me is expected behavior). What report or API would be used to pull the information from BFI that maintains the custom properties?
The custom properties will be available in association with computer_details API.
https://help.hcltechsw.com/bigfix/10.0/inventory/Inventory/integration/r_get_computers_v2.html
Not after the computer is deleted, per the documentation:
Important: All associations provide data about items that currently exist in the infrastructure. For removed computers and uninstalled software, these associations return null.
This makes the API pointless for deleted computers.
I reviewed some of the underlying tables and it doesn’t look like the custom property information is stored for the deleted computers.
Please submit an Idea/RFE for further review from the BFI team
Well, here’s the interesting thing, if I go into the hardware inventory report in the BFI GUI, all of the custom properties are there (even if the computer is deleted). It’s a very odd thing to me, as I don’t know where that info is being retrieved from.
The Reports -> Hardware Inventory shows data for only active computers. There is no filter to show if a computer is active/deleted.
This can be verified by going into Reports -> Software Classification and filtering data for a deleted computer, add custom properties to the display list. The custom property column will show for the deleted computers.
The Custom property will exist in the database but the data for the deleted computers will be removed from the tables.
Hope this is clear.
Quite clear, I had figured that piece out already. A question, if we use the BES Computer Removal Utility and remove the expired computers from the console, but not the database, does it wipe the inventory information out? i.e. does the data import still behave as one would expect?
For deleted computers, the inventory information is not deleted but will be marked with End of Date/Discovery End Date.
One other question, all of the api queries use columns[] with a pair of brackets. Computers are often part of multiple groups, but the api query only returns the first group it finds. Any tips on this one?
Hi,
I checked with the BFI team and this needs further review as it seems the access is tied to the UserID/Role etc. I request to open an RFE for further review