Client Management Suite

The overrides tab can be the do-all for tailoring your Inventory Reporting. Specifically you can change how a file or set of files are represented in the database, thus providing you with exactly the kind of information you want to see in your reports. The following questions can be answered within this article:

1. Inventory Solution isn't capturing a file I want to capture. How can I configure Inventory Solution to capture this file?
2. How can I view and manipulate how the Inventory Solution for Windows audit scan sees and uses File Header information?
3. How can I use the Overrides tab to view and manipulate File Header Information with AeXAPEdit.exe?

Using AeXAPEdit.exe

The following steps and items show how to use the audit editor for the auditpls.ini file. This includes all the items that should be known when using the editor so that any changes are saved to the right location and in the correct manner.

1. On the Notification Server system, browse to install path\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86.
2. Locate and Execute AeXAPEdit.exe. This will launch a Win32 console that will programmatically edit the audit configuration file.
3. Click 'File' and choose 'Open'.
4. Browse to the auditpls.ini file located at \Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server\NSCap\Bin\Win32\X86\Inventory Solution\ and open this file.
   Note: There is also an auditpls.ini in the X86 folder. This one is utilized by Stand-alone Inventory and is NOT used by the Altiris Agent. Use the one in the Inventory Solution folder to affect how the Altiris Agent runs Inventory.
5. Click the Overrides tab as the focal point of this article.

Creating or Editing Overrides

1. In AeXAPEdit.exe, click on the 'Overrides' tab.
2. Click on 'Add' at the bottom or choose an existing and click 'Properties'.
3. Click the Get Resource Information from File and browse to the file in question.
4. On the left you'll see what is read from the file.

Using the above process you'll see what is captured from the file. This information can be used to see if exclusions are causing files to be removed from the results of the Audit scan. The location in the auditpls.ini file where these exclusions might exist is the Exclusion Filters tab. The columns displayed here are the same items shown in the Overrides tab.

You can also use this information in comparing files from a product suite, to see what may be filtering the file, or on an existing entry see what is being overridden. It is important to understand the relationship of the right field entries and the left. See the following screenshot for an example:

Click to view.

File Property Criteria

The Left side is the matching criteria. Any file that contains ALL the listed criteria will use the override rule. This means the more data or fields filled out, the narrower the scope of the rule. The following examples illustrate this point.

EXAMPLE #1

The above screenshot shows criteria for Notepad. If this were the desired application to override, having virtually all the fields filled out with the particulars means that only the Notepad.exe files matching all the criteria, including the version, will use the rule. This limits the scope to only that one version of the file, and only if it matches the rest of the criteria. If the Product Name was different for a detected instance of this file, it would not user the override rule.

EXAMPLE #2

Using the same Notepad example, if I only put 'Notepad.exe' in the filename, 'Microsoft Corporation' in the Manufacturer file, and leave all other fields blank, all files that have those two matching criteria will use the rule, even if the versions differ.

Override Property

The right-side of the sceenshot shows what the values will become. This means anything that qualifies for the override rule will change the existing value into what is specified. This allows a user to manipulate the file header data in whatever way is so desired. This is useful for uniform reporting across product suites, manufacturers, and anything else that might not be consistent between products and version.

The overrides are not limited to the File Property entries, meaning that no matter how any fields are blank on the left-side, you can override any value. See this screenshot for an example of this:

Click to view.

• Any instance of Notepad found will report the 'Product Name' as 'Windows Text Editor', the 'Manufacturer' as 'Microsoft', etc.
• What is specified on the left side does not need to be overridden. In fact none of the matching criteria requires this.
• Any value that is blank on the right will keep the value captured during the scan.

EXAMPLE #1

On the right, provide the alternate value you want Inventory Solution to report. The overrides occur before applying the exclusion filters, so this can be used to bypass the exclusion filters by altering the value that initiates the exclusion. You need to report on all Office Products and wish to use 'Microsoft' as the manufacturer. The files that make up the Office suite may have other values, including these possibilities:

• Microsoft Corporation
• Microsoft Inc
• Microsoft Crop
• Microsoft

Using the overrides you can set the Manufacturer as simply 'Microsoft' or any other specific designation to make the Office files all consistent.

EXAMPLE #2

Adobe has many different products, and sometimes the manufacturer name is not consistent. Different versions of the manufacturer could be:

• Adobe Inc
• Adobe Reader
• Adobe
• Etc

Using the left-side you can put in the filename, and on the right put in the Manufacturer as 'Adobe Inc' or 'Adobe' to be consistent. Additional considerations are those products where the corresponding filename has changed. You can create an additional Override rule that coverts the filename and the manufacturer so that they are reported the same way though the version will be the unique value desired.

Files not captured

The Overrides tab can also be used to pull up the header information of a file to see possibly why it is not being captured. The File Header information determines how and if a file is captured by Inventory Solution. The following process can be used to view the header information captured from a particular file: Use the button 'Get Resource Information From File', browse to the file in question, and open it. Ask the following questions with the results:

1. Does file information appear, or is only Filename available? Check the Include Unknown tabs for a possible reason this file isn't being captured.
2. Check the values against the Exclusion Filters list to see if something is filtering it out. For example sol.exe and other OS installed games have Microsoft® Windows® Operating System as the Product Name. This is filtered out by the Exclusion Filters.
3. Does the Product name and Known As signify this is part of a product installation that contains multiple files? The Inventory scan runs by default in Package mode, which means it is only going to report the first instance of a file that is part of a 'Product'. By running the audit scan with the /file mode it will report all files regardless of 'product' associations.

Use the above process to bring up the details on a specific file.

All values provided in the left column must be met for the override to engage. This means, for example, that if a file had a slightly different Known as value, it would not qualify for the override. If you want to remove values to qualify the file for the override, this will broaden the scope of the override.

EXAMPLE

This example covers an example of a file that was not captured by default with Inventory Solution. The use case was to see how many systems had Solitaire included as part of the Windows setup so that a task could be sent down to remove it. This screenshot shows the file-header:

Click to view.

Notice that the Product name value equals Microsoft® Windows® Operating System, the file will get excluded. By changing that value with the overrides, you can then capture that file. I've also narrowed the scope of the matching criteria so that all versions will be included in the Override rule, as shown:

Click to view.

Remember that the above example only overrides the Product name. This will avoid the previously shown Exclusion Filter and report the file. Don't forget to save the file once the overrides have been created by clicking on File and then Save.

Conclusion

Any value can be overridden. If you don't want to change any of the default values, description is a good value to change so that you can customize reportable values in the Altiris database. Whatever the use case you can override any of the header values, including the filename. Hopefully this will provide you the necessary steps and processes to customize how your Inventory is reported, helping to simplify the SQL for reporting, how the reported data is displayed, and how individual files are classified inside of the Altiris CMDB.