SapphireIMS doesn’t have capability to automatically identify downgrade or upgrade rights. However, SapphireIMS system provides option to the user to configure downgrade and upgrade rights entitled as part of license records, provides way to tag to base license and calculate the compliance position based on that.
Downgrade rights (right to use prior version of a software product) works with different versions and not with different editions and generally supports N-2 versions. For example: If customer has office professional 2013, they can downgrade to office professional 2007/2010 and cannot upgrade to office 2007/2010 enterprise editions. Please note that 1 base license is needed for 1 downgrade license for compliance.
Upgrade rights (right to use latest version released during software assurance period) works with different versions and not with different editions and are eligible to use latest releases within software assurance (SA) period of the same software edition. If SA is expiring on 2020, the products which are entitled to upgrade within SA period needs not be upgraded by 2020. Customer can choose to upgrade after 2020 as well however only products released within SA period. For example: If customer has office professional 2013, he will be eligible to upgrade to office professional 2016 provided SA was active when this product released. Please note that 1 base license is needed for 1 upgrade license for compliance.
Different reconciliation rules can be defined when we reconcile the licenses such as to consider latest, exact or lower versions first during reconciliations.
Please refer Software Licenses for configuration and refer Compliance Management - Introduction for compliance positions.