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License Pools

Software Asset Management Guide
Software Licenses

License Pools

A license pool is a logical grouping of licenses that should be allocated together. Pools are useful when you have specific business rules — VIP allocations, dedicated environments, departmental ownership — that you want to enforce by license group rather than by individual record.

What a Pool Does

A pool is a tag on each license record indicating it belongs to the pool. Pools can be used for:

  • Reporting — group licenses for per-pool seat counts and utilization
  • Allocation grouping — combined with custom affinity or scoping rules, restrict pool licenses to pool-eligible consumptions
  • Cost attribution — roll up license expenditure by pool

The pool itself is a lookup value (Software License Group); each license points at one pool via its Software License Group field.

Creating Pools

The standard workflow uses the Create License Group for Selected menu actions:

  1. Filter the Licenses query to the licenses you want to group.
  2. Select them.
  3. Use Create License Group for Selected from the menu.
  4. Provide a pool name.

The action sets the Software License Group field on each selected license. You can also set the field directly on individual license records via the editor.

Pool-Aware Allocation

By default, the engine does not enforce pool boundaries — pool is just a tag. Pool A's licenses will allocate to any consumption that matches by affinity, regardless of pool membership.

To make pools allocation-significant:

Option 1: Affinity rule. Add an affinity rule that scores higher when the pool matches:

Affinity Consumption.PreferredPool = License.SoftwareLicenseGroup, 2000

This requires a PreferredPool field on consumptions (typically derived from the asset's department, location, or a custom attribute). The rule prefers pool-matching but does not exclude.

Option 2: Scoping pattern. Use the per-product scoping pattern from Customizing the Calculation: Per-Product Scoping generalized to pools:

Set Consumption.PoolGate = IIF(Consumption.RestrictByPool = 1, Consumption.PreferredPool, -1)
Set License.PoolGate     = IIF(License.RestrictByPool     = 1, License.SoftwareLicenseGroup, -1)
Requirement Consumption.PoolGate = License.PoolGate

This restricts pool licenses to pool-matching consumptions when the flag is set, and behaves normally otherwise.

Both options are advanced — only adopt them if you have a clear business rule that needs enforcement and the simpler approaches (department/location scoping, direct assignment) cannot express it.

When Direct Assignment Is Better Than Pools

For small VIP allocations (5-10 specific users get pool-A licenses), direct assignment is simpler than pool-based scoping:

  1. Create the licenses normally.
  2. Direct-assign each pool license to its target user/computer.
  3. Done — no rule changes needed.

See Allocation: Direct Assignment. For larger pools or policies that scale across many licenses, the scoping pattern is cleaner.

Pool Reporting

Once pool tags are set, you can:

  • Filter the Licenses query by Software License Group
  • Group the Licensing Position by pool (via custom report configuration)
  • Export per-pool seat counts for departmental chargeback