Direct Assignment Overrides

When you need to force a specific license to cover a specific computer or user — bypassing the engine's affinity scoring — you use direct assignment. This page explains what direct assignments are, when to use them, and how they interact with the rest of the calculation.

What Direct Assignment Does

A direct assignment is an explicit link from a license to an asset (or to a user) recorded as an AssetDependency of type Software. When the engine calculates allocations, it processes direct assignments first, before affinity-based allocation runs.

This means a directly assigned license is granted to its target regardless of what affinity would have chosen. The grant is posted, the license capacity is reduced, and only then does affinity-based allocation begin on the remaining consumptions and remaining capacity.

When To Use Direct Assignment

Direct assignment is the right tool when:

• A specific machine must be covered by a specific license for contractual or audit reasons (e.g., a license restricted to use by a named subsidiary)
• VIP allocations — you want a particular user's machine guaranteed coverage from a particular pool
• Test or development environments with dedicated license pools
• Forcing the engine's hand when affinity is not picking what you want and you do not want to change the affinity rules globally

It is not usually the right tool when:

• You want this preference applied to many machines — change the affinity rules instead (see Customizing the Calculation)
• You want to scope a license to a department or location — set the license's department/location and let affinity handle it
• You want to enforce a hard rule like "Adobe must stay within the department" — use a per-product scoping rule (see Customizing the Calculation)

Direct assignments are pinpoint overrides; affinity rules are policies.

How To Create a Direct Assignment

The standard workflow:

1. Navigate to Licensing → Licenses and open the license record
2. Click the Relationships → Related Assets tab
3. Add the target computer (or user) as a child of the license, with Has priority License allocation for as the dependency type

This creates the AssetDependency record the engine will pick up on the next calculation.

Bulk-assigning works the same way — you can copy a list of computers from a query and paste them as children of the license. The page Allocation: Direct Assignment covers the bulk workflow with screenshots.

Capacity Enforcement

Direct assignments are still subject to capacity. If you assign 10 computers to a 5-seat license, the engine will grant from the directly assigned set first (in AssetID order) up to capacity, and the rest will fall back to affinity-based allocation.

If the license is later reduced in seats, existing direct-assignment grants may be bumped during the next recalculation — the lower-priority direct assignments lose their grants if the new capacity cannot accommodate them.

How To See Existing Direct Assignments

The direct-assignment relationship is visible from both ends:

• From the license record, the Related Assets tab lists each computer the license is directly assigned to (children of the license).
• From the computer asset, the Related Assets tab lists the licenses that have been directly assigned to it (parents of the computer).

The asset's Software tab additionally shows which products are installed and which licenses cover each one — a grant that originated from a direct assignment looks the same on this view as any other grant.

For an audit-trail view across all licenses, build an xAssets query that lists Software License records together with their related-asset dependencies. Save under the License menu as "All Direct Assignments" so it can be re-opened during audit response without rebuilding.

Removing a Direct Assignment

Removing a direct assignment is symmetrical with creating one:

1. Open the license record
2. Go to Relationships → Related Assets
3. Remove the asset from the list

On the next recalculation, the explicit grant disappears and the consumption is opened up to affinity-based allocation again.

Common Pitfalls

Related Reading

• Affinity vs Requirements — what direct assignment overrides
• Allocation: Direct Assignment — the workflow with screenshots
• Customizing the Calculation — when policies should be in rules instead