Creating the user

These steps create the Tachyon user required by the Tachyon Connector and assigns it to the Management Group Sync Initiators system role.

You need a domain user account in Active Directory, in our example this is ACME\SLATACHYON.

1. Logon to the Tachyon Portal using a Tachyon user account with a Permissions Administrators role.
2. Open the Settings application.
3. Navigate to the Settings→Permissions→Users page.
   
   1. Click on the Add button, doing this displays the Add user popup.
   2. In the Select user field type the name, or part of the name, for the Active Directory user or security group that you want to add. A list of matching names will be retrieved from Active Directory and displayed as you type, these are filtered so that users or groups that have already been added do not appear.
   3. Select the Active Directory user or security group from the list of matching names displayed in the drop-down list. In our example this is ACME\SLATACHYON.
   4. Click Add.
4. On the Settings→Permissions→Users page, click on the user's name link for ACME\SLATACHYON.
   1. On the User: SLATACHYON page click the Edit button to display the Edit roles assigned to user popup.
   2. Select Management Group Sync Initiators.
   3. Select Global Questioners.
   4. Click the Save button.

Creating the 1E Inventory instruction set

These steps are only required if:

• you have not already loaded the 1E Inventory Product Pack using the Product Pack Deployment tool as part of the Tachyon Setup process
• you will be using Tachyon Powered Inventory

The steps show how to create an instruction set called 1E Inventory.

The 1E Inventory instruction set will contain the 5 instructions listed in the following table: 

 Device.GetProcessors();

 Software.GetInstallations();

Software.GetInstallations( Publisher : "Microsoft", Product : "Microsoft Calculator Plus");
evaluate;
Agent.Echo( Message: "Is installed");
Software.Uninstall( Publisher : "Microsoft", Product : "Microsoft Calculator Plus");

@installs = Software.GetInstallations( Publisher : "Microsoft", Product : "Office Professional");
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM @installs WHERE Version LIKE "16.0%";

 Software.GetUserInstallations();

Upload the instructions

First upload the instructions:

1. Download the TachyonPlatform.v5.x.x.x.zip file from the 1E Support Portal .
2. Extract the 1E-Inventory.zip from the Classic folder
3. Logon to the Tachyon Portal using a Tachyon user account with the Permissions Administrators and Instructions Administrators roles.
4. Open the Settings application.
5. Navigate to the Settings→Instructions→Instruction sets page.
6. Click on the Upload button.
7. In the Open dialog navigate to the location of the 1E-Inventory.zip file.
8. Select 1E-Inventory.zip and click Open.

Create the instruction set

All the instructions contained in the zip file will initially be added to the default Unassigned instruction set. Instructions in the Unassigned instruction set cannot be used, so first you will need to create a new instruction set with the verification instructions.

1. Select the 5 instructions you want to add to the new set, by clicking the checkbox at the start of each instruction row in the list.
2. Click the Add new set button in the button panel to the right of the page.
3. In the Add new instruction set popup subsequently displayed, and type:
   1. 1E Inventory as the name.
   2. Tachyon Powered Inventory as the description.
4. Ensure that the Include 5 selected instructions checkbox is checked.
5. Click the Add button to add the new instruction set, with the selected instructions.

Configure the Tachyon Connector

Follow the steps in Configuring the Tachyon connector and then return to Executing the Tachyon Connector Sync Data action.

Executing the Tachyon Connector Sync Data action

These steps are only required if you will be using Tachyon Powered Inventory. When you've finished setting up the Tachyon connector you will then need to synchronize it to populate an inventory repository with the data from Tachyon.

You can execute the Tachyon Connector Sync Data action in the same way as other connectors, manually or using a schedule, however the Tachyon connector manages its actions differently to other connectors.

If you want to review in detail the data that was imported into the inventory repository, navigate to the Tachyon→Inventory Application pages:

1. The Inventory→Hardware→Hardware Inventory page shows software details retrieved from the devices that have Tachyon clients.
2. The Inventory→Hardware→Device page shows hardware and OS details for devices that have Tachyon clients. 
3. The Inventory→Software Inventory→Product Usage page shows the software product usage that has been retrieved from devices that have Tachyon clients.

The above data from Tachyon clients may be consolidated with data from other inventory sources using their inventory connectors.

How Management Group Synchronization works

The SLA components are responsible for storing information about management groups, including group definitions and membership in the SLA databases. Tachyon maintains a synchronized copy in the Tachyon Master databases. Whenever SLA Engine evaluates group membership and it detects changes it notifies Tachyon by initiating a sync. Tachyon Coordinator service receives the sync, fetches the changes, and updates the Tachyon Master database. To contact Tachyon, the SLA Engine uses the URL of the Consumer defined in the Tachyon Connector and the Network Service account is a member of the Tachyon system role Management Group Sync Initiators role.

Membership evaluations occur whenever an inventory repository is updated by a manual or scheduled Connector Sync Data action, or the Evaluate button is pressed, as described in the Management groups page.

How Tachyon Powered Inventory works

1E Inventory instructions

The Tachyon connector works differently compared with other connectors. Other connectors import data in a single operation, whereas a Tachyon connector sync issues a set of instructions, and then runs a two-phase process to gather the data. The default gather period behavior is controlled using settings for the inventory repository in the SLA-Data database. These must not be changed unless otherwise instructed by 1E.

When a Tachyon connector sync is actioned, either manually using Create a new action, or as a scheduled sync, the following happens.

1. The SLA Engine polls Tachyon to retrieve the information that is routinely sent back by the connected devices
2. The SLA Engine asks Tachyon to run each instruction
   • Each instruction runs for 15 minutes, known as a  gather period
   • Tachyon sends each instruction to all devices at the same time
   • Devices respond immediately if they are online, or catch-up shortly after coming online
   • Each device will respond only once to each instruction during the gather period
   • Each instruction has a short random delay before the device sends its response back to the Tachyon server
   • Responses are stored in the Tachyon database and only deleted at the end of the gather period plus a 60-minute keep period
3. The SLA Engine polls Tachyon 
   • The poll is 15 minutes after starting the instruction run, and fetches all the responses gathered so far
   • Data is stored in the inventory repository, and kept after the Tachyon deletes its copy of the data.

Devices only appear in the inventory repository if they respond, or if they have previously responded to a previous sync.

Tachyon has minimal impact on the network and client devices when the instructions are run and responses are sent back to the Tachyon server. The low impact is further reduced by the random delay used by each instruction.

During each poll there is a small performance impact on the Tachyon server (master stack) and SLA components, when the initial responses are processed, and when the deltas are processed for subsequent polls, for other machines coming online.

How to schedule your Tachyon connector syncs

This is not a precise science, but here are some points you might want to consider when deciding what schedule you want to set for your Tachyon connector syncs:

• As we've described under 1E Inventory instructions, the Tachyon instructions run for 15 minutes and poll all the devices that are connected to Tachyon during that time.
• You must avoid creating overlapping schedules, but that's not difficult when there is only a 15 minute window where that can occur.
• You should aim to run the Tachyon connector sync when most of your devices are online and connected.
• If you have a global organization you need to consider the best time to synchronize in all the time zones covered by the devices in your network. 

For example, you might consider that 2PM in the afternoon is a good time when most of the devices in each timezone are connected to Tachyon. If you had an organization with offices in Noida India, London UK and New York USA you could set a daily schedule for each that ran the Tachyon connector sync at 2PM local time. As the schedules run on UTC time that would lead to the following:

• Noida (IST) = UTC + 5, so 2PM IST is 9AM UTC 
• London (GMT) = UTC + 0, so 2PM GMT is 2PM UTC 
• New York (EST) = UTC - 5, so 2PM EST is 7PM UTC

So three daily schedules would be needed at 9AM, 2PM and 7PM respectively.  You should also set the schedules to  not perform a Clean Sync  so that the data from the 3 sites accumulates. You may have your own estimations for the times when the most devices are connected to your network but you can see how the example is a reasonable place to start planning your schedules to maximize the amount of coverage for the devices in your network. For more information on configuring schedules please refer to the Schedules page.

Tachyon client configuration

Process and User usage capture is available only on Windows devices.

Tachyon Agent for Windows version 3.2 or later, or 1E Client 4.1 or later is required, with the following Tachyon client features enabled:

• Module.Inventory.Enabled=true (default, and this setting is visible in the 1E Client configuration file)
• Module.Inventory.ProcessUsage.Enabled=true (default - in 3.3 this was also true by default, but in 4.0 it was false by default)
• Module.Inventory.UserUsage.Enabled=true (default)

For more detail about configuring these and other settings in 1E Client, please refer to Tachyon client settings: Inventory module settings.