Counting TAM licences

Andrew Carrick · January 14, 2011, 08:06:30 AM

Suppose you were near your limit for licences but wanted to get some stats of number in use over a day/week so you could tell management they need to buy more. You'd have to open UNLOCK32 each time, or count number of lock files in AS_LOCK. There must be a macro type application that would do either of these for you automatically. Any ideas?

GeorgeW · January 14, 2011, 08:43:36 AM

If you find something let us know. Once I start getting reports of all licences in use, I just start monitoring UNLOCK32. We've just acquired another agency so I look for this start happening again very soon!

Mark · January 14, 2011, 08:55:07 AM

How about a small batch script that runs at your preferred interval and just outputs a list of the station lock files to a text file? I'm making this up as I go here, but I'm picturing it to look something like this:

Quote
echo ====BEGIN==== >> \\path\to\text.file
echo %date% %time% >> \\path\to\text.file
dir /b x:\AS_LOCK\STAT* >> \\path\to\text.file
echo ====END==== >> \\path\to\text.file

IF you want to take it a step further, you could probably use the "for" command and make it count the lines for you.

Andrew Carrick · January 14, 2011, 08:56:46 AM

Ooooh dark arts, sounds like a good idea. However I've never done anything like that before. May have a go though. Have also found a freeware macro program which I'm exploring.

Mark · January 14, 2011, 09:06:14 AM

The above would just append the results to a text file every time it runs. I is only goign to list station lock file so that you don't have to filter through all of the other lock files in that directory. I'm sure that there are a number of different ways this could be accomplished, but that should give you an idea of how many lock files are in AS_LOCK at any given time.

All you have to do is paste that text into notepad, save it as a .bat file and change "X:" to your TAM drive and the \\path\to\text.file to wherever you want the text file to land. then schedule this to run in Windows task manager every hour during business hours for a week or whatever makes the most sense to you.

Andrew Carrick · January 14, 2011, 09:07:06 AM

Thanks.

Alice · January 14, 2011, 11:42:23 AM

What I've done in the past was keep Unlock open all day and every hour or so I'd take a screen shot after hitting F5 to refresh and crop just the top which shows how many licenses being used and the date/time. I'd paste to Word and there's my log. Works for me and management can understand what they're looking at (they prefer pictures to lists)

Mark · January 14, 2011, 11:43:42 AM

Quote from: Alice on January 14, 2011, 11:42:23 AM
What I've done in the past was keep Unlock open all day and every hour or so I'd take a screen shot after hitting F5 to refresh and crop just the top which shows how many licenses being used and the date/time. I'd paste to Word and there's my log. Works for me and management can understand what they're looking at (they prefer pictures to lists)

Perfect!

Andrew Carrick · January 14, 2011, 11:57:51 AM

Simple and effective.

GeorgeW · January 14, 2011, 01:49:35 PM

Nice, hadn't even thought of that! LOL