Best practices for identifying software installs? Asset 6
Created: 07 Dec 2009 | 3 comments
We're getting ready to tear into tracking software purchase / usage data in NS6 and I had a question regarding properly identifying and tracking software licenses.
The search rules give you the ability to pull product name from Add/Remove Programs, but also file names from Audit Software. In general, is it best to always depend on Add/Remove Programs? Or should I be defining them all by file name?
I'm especially interested in how others handle software suites like Microsoft Office, since there are similarities between different versions of Office (i.e. all have Word, etc.).
Thanks!
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We're going through the same...
Let me know if you find an answer!
Add/Remove
I try to use Add/Remove for any case where I need to know of something is "installed". A user could have accidentally copied visio32.exe to the Desktop (instead of creating a shortcut), and now it shows up via Audit as being "installed", even though it isn't present in Add/Remove anymore.
My 2 cents...
Thanks,
Kyle
Symantec Trusted Advisor
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I agree with Kyle
I have found the same in our environment. However, if you are forced to use a file name, you can take an additional measure to avoid those false positives by editing your auditpls.ini file to omit certain directories (like temp, downloads, etc., if they are not already defined) where those files may reside but are not truly installed.
That makes 4 cents :)
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