General Tab for Installer Evidence

FlexNet Manager Suite 2019 R2 (On-Premises Edition)

For automatic recognition of applications from the Application Recognition Library, the following properties of installer evidence are used. Keep in mind that the first three of these properties may use wild-cards to generalize the recognition:

• Name
• Version
• Publisher
• Type.

The General tab displays the properties of the selected piece of installer evidence. For manually-created evidence records, you can use this tab to specify or change these details.

Tip: Before creating the new evidence, you might need to check if this evidence already exists. See All Installer Evidence.

Name

The name of the installer evidence. To allow for matching installed evidence on devices, make sure that this name matches the MSI evidence, or the name in Add/Remove Programs.

Tip: If a name you typed in is not unique within FlexNet Manager Suite, the Installer evidence already exists message displays.

The installer evidence name is derived from native packaging tools on each device. For example, on Windows® devices, the sources include MSI information and Add/Remove Programs data.

Version

Enter a version for the installed application (with which this installer evidence is linked).

For the manually-created records, this field is editable in the General tab of the evidence properties. An evidence version retrieved from Application Recognition Library is not editable.

Note: Incorrectly editing a version may stop the inventory agent from recognizing the applications linked to the evidence. If you edit the version number, be sure to check the association with the application and ensure that the rule (or wildcards) still applies to the modified evidence.

Tip: While each piece of evidence should have a distinct version, you can link them to an application using the percent wildcard character (%). This represents zero or more characters. For example, the evidence versions reported for a single application on 3 different computers might be 10.1.123.0045, 10.1.126.0000, and 10.1.123.0048 (they might represent different service packs and hot-fixes). On the linked application, you can merge this evidence to a single rule for version 10.1.%. Then license calculations will link all three pieces of evidence to the same application.

Note: The period and a comma characters are counted as matching each other. There is no single wildcard character.

Publisher

Enter a publishing organization's name. To allow your rule to match installer evidence returned in inventory, be sure to match the publisher listed in the installer evidence. In your rule you can also generalize the publisher name. For example, Microso% matches both Microsoft and Microsoft Corp.

Type

The kind of software installer that generated this evidence, or where the installer evidence is found. Examples include MSI, Add/Remove Programs, and so on.

When creating your own installer evidence record, you can select any of the following:

• Add/Remove Programs — the information collected from this Windows® feature.
• ADDM — application details imported from BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping.
• Any — widely used by Application Recognition Library, allowing the recognition process to match the evidence from any installer.
• App-V — evidence collected from the Management Server database for the Microsoft Application Virtualization platform (see the App-V Server Adapter section in the FlexNet Manager Suite Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference PDF, available through the title page of online help).
• BEA — the custom installer developed by BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle in early 2008).
• Data Platform — the evidence was imported from Data Platform v5 (previously from BDNA, now from Flexera). Typically this represents an application that Data Platform (which includes BDNA Normalize) has identified as installed on inventory device(s) within your enterprise; but since the application is not [yet] recognized by the Application Recognition Library (ARL), it cannot be recognized as an application by FlexNet Manager Suite. Except for local application records that you created within Normalize v5, these unrecognized evidence records may be automatically converted to recognized applications after the appropriate future updates to the ARL.
• DPKG — the package management program on Debian-based systems.
• DSPMQ — evidence related to IBM WebSphere MQ, for checking whether an installation is of the server product, or the (free) client product.
• FlexeraID — a unique ID generated for any application, and used consistently across multiple Flexera products for application packaging, software license optimization, and so on. This value is automatically applied to unrecognized installed evidence that:
  • Is imported from the Data Platform v5 product
  • Represents items that Data Platform v5 recognizes as applications installed within your enterprise
  • Is an item that Data Platform v5 records as present in the downloadable Application Recognition Library (ARL), such that it has a known Flexera ID
  • Is not currently an application record known within your local downloaded copy of the ARL (this means that your ARL is out of date, so that you can either await the next automatic update (typically this happens weekly), or manually trigger an ARL update).
• HPUD — evidence retrieved from HP Universal Discovery (see the section on the HPE Universal Discovery Adapter in the FlexNet Manager Suite Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference PDF, available through the title page of online help).
• IA — evidence from InstallAnywhere (from Flexera).
• IIM — evidence from IBM Installation Manager.
• ILMT — evidence imported from the database in IBM License Metric Tool.
• IPS — evidence from Oracle Solaris 11 Image Packaging System.
• ISMP — evidence from InstallShield MultiPlatform (from Flexera).
• LPP — evidence from the installer for 'licensed program products' on AIX (from IBM).
• MSI — evidence left in the registry by Microsoft Installer on Windows.
• Oracle EBS Module – evidence for Oracle E-Business Suite discovered through Oracle introspection with FlexNet Manager Suite.
• OS X App — an application group (hierarchy of folders and files) for Macintosh OS X.
• OUI — evidence from Oracle Universal Installer.
• RPM — package evidence from this widely-used installation technology available on many GNU/Linux distributions, AIX, and Novell Netware.
• SDUX — evidence from the Software Distributor for HP-UX (from Hewlett-Packard).
• Software ID Tag — evidence read from an ISO 19770-2 software identification tag file (also known as SWID tags).
• SUNPKG — evidence from an installer on Solaris (for the SVR4 package format). Legacy SVR4 packages installed by the Solaris 11 IPS tool are also recognized and identified with this source type.
• Universal Application — evidence of an application built on the Microsoft universal app platform, which allows applications to run on multiple Windows 10 devices, such as mobile, desktop, console, holographic, and IoT devices (in contrast with legacy Windows applications installed from MSIs, which can run only on devices built using the Wintel architecture).
• Unknown — used for evidence that does not match any recognized installer type.
  Tip: To help improve the accuracy of Application Recognition Library data, consider sharing the Unknown evidence. For further information and guidelines, contact your Flexera Support person.
• VMware — application information imported from VMware VCenter.

Source

Identifies the origin of an evidence record:

• Flexera — The evidence is identified in the Application Recognition Library, and is linked only to the identified application.
• Flexera (Extended) — The evidence is identified in the Application Recognition Library, and an operator also linked this evidence to another application record.
• Local — The imported evidence was unmatched in the Application Recognition Library; or the evidence record was created manually (or imported from a spreadsheet), in which case you can safely edit or delete this record.

The evidence retrieved from Application Recognition Library is not editable.

Note: User roles (Administrator, View-Only, Operator) defined at the application level determine the level of editing.

Active

Displays Yes if this evidence exists in the gathered inventory of your enterprise, and No if the evidence exists in the Application Recognition Library, but not reported by the gathered inventory.

Assigned

Displays Yes when the evidence is matched to at least one application, and otherwise displays No. This assignment may have been done automatically through the Application Recognition Library rules, or manually by the operator.

Ignored

You can set this flag so that the evidence is ignored for application recognition. It remains attached to the application, so that it does not clutter up the list of Unrecognized Evidence.

From the Ignored drop-down list, select either Yes or No.

Attention: If you select Yes, this installer evidence cannot be used for application recognition and license calculation.

Matches

The number of times the evidence was identified in the inventory data.

This data is read-only.