How many times have you been asked by an employee to install an application onto their machine? You agree and deploy that application only to receive a phone call a week later saying that another application now cannot run, probably due to some conflict or change introduced by that install over a week ago.

If you are using SOEs within your organisation, Wise Package Studio Professional (This Feature is not available using Standard) has a really good tool called SOE Snapshot that lets you import an SOE into the Wise Software Manager database and then use it for conflict analysis on any new applications you may want to introduce into your organisation.

SOE Snapshot works by capturing a computer's standard operating environment. An SOE consists of the operating system, basic system software, and the applications that are installed for every user or every user in a department. SOE Snapshot stores this snapshot in the form of an .SOE file, which you can import into the Software Manager database to represent a baseline machine in your organization.

Then you capture a third-party application, import it, and run a conflict analysis. You might find conflicts between the application and the SOE. Conflict Manager treats the SOE as another application against which you can find conflicts and lets you resolve any possible conflicts found before you roll out the new application. An example might be a user requests a new software application such as Adobe Reader 7.0. Before enabling the software and installing on that machine you can quickly import the new software into the software repository and run a conflict analysis to make sure the software doesn't cause any problems with the existing SOE, otherwise you may rollout the software and then have to deal with conflicts later. This article doesn't use or mention Software Virtualisation (SVS). For a complete solution you should look into using SVS to help make sure any conflicts that come up can be isolated without having to deny an application for software. An example would be if you needed an older version of excel to run a custom in-house application but this older version conflicts with any new software released. This process would tell you about the risk but you could deploy the new without having to worry about the conflicting packages ever talking to each other.

Some Guidelines for Capturing the Standard Operating Environment

• Capture on a baseline machine with the operating system and the applications installed for every user or user group. To only capture the operating system, run SOE Snapshot on a clean machine.
• Before running SOE Snapshot, exit all other applications to make sure nothing external is detected.
• Before starting the capture, consider increasing the size of the virtual memory page file. Capturing a standard operating environment is a CPU-intensive process that uses a lot of memory.
• The SOE Snapshot process might take a long time, depending on the amount of software on the computer you are capturing.
• If you open an .SOE file in Windows Installer Editor, some operations might take longer than usual because of the large amount of data.
• Although you can edit an .SOE file in Windows Installer Editor, you cannot compile it into an executable installation.

Capturing the Standard Operating Environment Note

Before you run SOE Snapshot, run Setup Capture Configuration to create a configuration file with the appropriate settings.

Setup Capture Configuration helps you create a set of preferences that govern how the Setup Capture and SOE Snapshot tools work. When you use Setup Capture Configuration, a configuration file is created that stores preferences for Setup Capture and SOE Snapshot. Thereafter, when you do a Setup Capture or SOE Snapshot, your preferences are set based on the contents of the configuration file.

The settings you define here should be the ones used most often by your organization. You can change them when you run Setup Capture or SOE Snapshot. You can create multiple configuration files, and choose a different configuration file each time you run Setup Capture or SOE Snapshot. Because Setup Capture and SOE Snapshot are different operations, you might want to create different configuration files for each tool.

Figure 1. Inside Wise package studio professional tools page.

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Use Setup Capture Configuration to:

1. Determine how Setup Capture handles certain types of files and registry entries.
2. Specify the directories to scan for changes and those that you want to exclude during the scan.
3. Build file and registry exclusion lists by determining items that are accessed independently of an installation.

Once you have configured Setup Capture,

1. Do one of the following:
   • On the Projects tab, click the Run link to the right of the task or tool associated with SOE Snapshot. This tool might skip dialogs or populate files based on command like options defined in Process Templates Setup.
   • On the Tools tab, double-click SOE Snapshot.

   The Welcome dialog appears. The Configuration File Location shows the configuration file that will be used for this SOE Snapshot.

2. To review or change the items to be excluded from the SOE Snapshot, click Settings. The SOE Snapshot Configuration dialog appears.
3. Click Next. The SOE Scan dialog appears.
4. Click Next to begin the scan (see Figure 2). The scan can take several minutes. When the scan completes, the SOE Snapshot Inclusions dialog appears. It displays the files, registry keys, .INI files, and shortcuts captured during the SOE scan and will be included in the .SOE file.

Figure 2. running an SOE snapshot.

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5. Modify the inclusions as needed. Click Next. The SOE Snapshot Exclusions dialog appears. It displays the files, registry keys, .INI files, and shortcuts excluded from the SOE Snapshot, based on the exclusion list defined in Setup Capture Configuration settings.
6. Modify the exclusions as needed. Click Next. The Finish dialog appears.
7. In File Name, specify the name and location of the .SOE file, and then click Finish. An SOE file that contains the SOE snapshot is created in the location you specified. Use Software Manager to import the .SOE file into the Software Manager database. Then, in Conflict Manager, check for conflicts between other applications and your SOE.

Note
You might see a message telling you that a service in the capture requires a password to function correctly because the service is not installed under the system account. Because you won't be installing the result of an SOE Snapshot onto another computer, it is not necessary to enter a password.

The Software Manager

Now onto the Software Manager. The Software Manager provides the interface for working with packages in the Software Manager database, which contains information about all the software packages used by your organization and provides a centralized point for managing all applications at any stage of deployment.

Once you have completed the SOE capture open the Software Repository inside Wise Package Studio. Go to the Packages menu and select Import. Browse for the .SOE file just created and import into the Software Repository. Note this process of importing a .SOE file into the Software repository can take a long time to complete. It is probably a good idea to kick this process off before you leave at night rather than sit around and wait for it to complete.

Figure 3. Importing the .SOE into your Software Repository. (This can take a long time)

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Once the .SOE file is in the software repository you can import any new packages that need to be deployed into the environment. Follow the same process by going to the Packages menu and selecting the import command. You can also build new packages using Wise Package studio and the completed package will automatically be imported into the software repository through the workflow (See Figure 5).

Now that you have your .SOE and the new application inside the software repository you can run a risk assessment to determine if any conflicts may occur. To do this click on the impact and risk button on the toolbar to launch the risk assessment window. (see Figure 4)

Make sure 'Impact on Dependencies' is selected and the new package from the package drop down list and it will list all the files and conflicts that may occur if you introduce this software into your environment. Some of these conflicts or warnings may not affect how the software runs. By using Wise Package Studio you will learn how to deal with certain issues and which ones you can ignore.

Figure 4. Running an Impact and risk Assessment.

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Figure 5. The Workflow inside Wise Package creation

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You can also click on the report button to generate a report that you can save for future comparisons or to have an audit trail as part of your ITIL process within your organisation.

Now you have a good process for introducing software applications into your environments and making sure that the risk is minimised before the user opens the application on his/her desktop. You may also want to look into how Software Virtualisation Solution can help resolve dependencies and conflicts that you cannot overcome.