Identifying Applications Using Evidence

IT Asset Management uses evidence information to identify applications installed or accessed within your enterprise. The evidence information is collected as a part of the inventory collection process. The Application Recognition Library (ARL) is then used to recognize applications from the collected evidence. An application installation is determined from installer, file or WMI evidence; whereas an application access event is determined from an access evidence.

For applications defined in the Application Recognition Library (source: Flexera), a set of evidence is (normally) already linked to the application. However, you may add additional evidence (of any type) found in your environment as necessary. If you add more evidence to one of these records, the source is shown as Flexera (Extended). You may also create your own evidence records for applications you are creating locally.

Tip:Some applications are deliberately included in the Application Recognition Library without evidence. These few 'empty' applications may exist because:

The application does not return evidence of local installation on inventory devices (such as web-based applications), and usage evidence or evidence from a business adapter may be used to record consumption against the application.
The application may complete the list of applications included in a suite, where the suite is recognized in other ways.
Apart from the absence of evidence, the application represents a ‘best practice’ record (including things like classification and categorization) that can save you time.
When automated purchase processing creates a license, it can also link the application record to the license (saving you work when the application evidence is later discovered).
The application may have been prepared early, and is now awaiting relevant evidence records from an enterprise. If you have such evidence, it is best practice to link it to the 'empty' application in the Application Recognition Library.

For more information, see evidence. The following evidence views are available:

Evidence Views

View

Description

Unrecognized Evidence

Displays evidence records that are not linked to applications. These evidence records are not used in license compliance calculations.

Discovered Evidence

Displays evidence records discovered through the inventory process. This page displays both recognized and unrecognized evidence records discovered within your organization.

Inactive Evidence

Displays evidence records existing in the Application Recognition Library that have not matched the collected evidence records.

Ignored Evidence

Displays evidence records that have been ignored. An ignored evidence record is not used for application recognition.

All Evidence

Displays all evidence records.

Each of these views groups the evidence records into the following tabs:

Installer Evidence 
File Evidence 
Access Evidence