The following provides a brief overview of the features available within Autodesk Inventory Tool.

AIT can discover devices using any of the following methods:

• Active Directory: Devices retrieved from Active Directory or from specified Organizational Units
• IP address range: Devices detected within a specified IP address range or CIDR network address
• List of devices: A named list of devices provided in a simple text file
• Single device: An individual named device

AIT collects the following information from Windows devices:

• Device hardware and configuration information
• Windows Operating System information
• Installed Autodesk software (MSI Installs)
• Software install/uninstall log for Autodesk software
• License data for Autodesk software
• Last used data for Autodesk software
• Digital Certificates

AIT uses WMI to communicate with devices and to collect information.  It supports both Windows Management Instrumentation and the newer Windows Management Infrastructure. By default, AIT uses Windows Management Instrumentation. The use of Windows Management Infrastructure can be forced if desired via a configuration change although it is not recommended.

AIT can use either the logged-on user’s credentials (integrated authentication) for accessing Active Directory and scanning devices, or credentials can be provided for an alternative user account. The credentials can be provided directly when running the application, with full support for the Secure Credentials Utility when scripting its execution, so the username and password are encrypted on the command line or batch script.

AIT can scan multiple devices simultaneously (15 by default), with the number of simultaneous connections being configurable in the AIT.exe. config file. Multiple simultaneous connections decrease the overall time taken to scan multiple devices.

When using an Ad Hoc Agentless Inventory Scan, it is generally necessary to run scans frequently to make sure all devices have been captured.  AIT can be configured to run on a defined schedule using Windows Task Scheduler and a re-inventory of devices will not occur until they are next due to be scanned (7 days by default), reducing the load on the devices and the network.

If using the Active Directory scan method, AIT filters the devices based on the last login date, only including devices that have logged onto the network with a specified number of days (45 by default), ensuring that only active devices are included.  In addition, AIT can include only a subset of the devices by specifying the Organizational Unit (OU) to use as the root search path. This will include only devices within the specified OU and its child OUs.

The AIT Windows Client provides an easy-to-use interface to explore the collected device inventory data. The Windows client displays the list of devices when they were last scanned, along with the complete inventory data. Any devices that were unable to be scanned, such as due to incorrect credentials, will also be listed, along with the error that occurred. Ad hoc agentless inventory scans can be initiated directly from the Windows interface, which executes the AIT console application in the background.

When using AIT as a network scanner via logon script, each device will output a separate inventory file in a central folder location. The files can be imported into a central AIT data store either from the AIT Windows interface or by running the AIT console application.

The data that has been collected by AIT can be exported to XLSX format which can be consumed directly by other third-party solutions.