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Software Metering for individual components of Microsoft Office

Updated: 10 Aug 2010 | 8 comments
TheoV's picture
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I would like to be able to generate a report on the usage of the individual components of Microsoft Office. Currently, I noticed that excel, powerpoint, etc are catalogued under one application name: "Microsoft Office XP".
I've checked the AeXAMInventory.txt and AeXAMDiscovery.txt file and both files seem to list these components as Microsoft Office XP.

Is there a way to modify the software metering configuration on the client so that the individual components can be catalogued under their own application name ? Or to have a runtime report that lists these components individually ?

We're running Altiris Notification Server 6.5 ...

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jharings's picture
20
Nov
2009
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Default, out of the box

There are separate polices for Word (winword.exe), Excel (Excel.exe), Powerpoint (Powerpnt.exe), Access (MSACCESS.exe) and I think Outlook as well. These are enabled out of the box. It sounds like you have a custom policy setup.

Jim Harings
HP Enterprise Services
1st Rule of Connect Club: Mark the post that helped you the most as a 'solution'. 2nd Rule of Connect Club:You must talk about Connect club.

TheoV's picture
24
Nov
2009
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Jim, Thnx for the reply. I

Jim,
Thnx for the reply. I have searched extensively for this custom policy setup but cannot find one - any idea where I should look for this particular policy ?

best regards,

 

Theo

jebba's picture
02
Feb
2010
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Try This

https://kb.altiris.com/display/1/articleDirect/index.asp?aid=38166&r=0.4006006

Altiris KB Article ID: 38166

I ran into the same issue with Office 2003

JeffDG's picture
10
Feb
2010
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What are you trying to monitor?

If you are monitoring all of Office, or for that matter if you monitor *.exe, you can still pull the data out of the database by individual application and exe.  You don't need a seperate monitor policy for each individual application you want to monitor.

jharings's picture
10
Feb
2010
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You don't want to monitor

all .exe's. That is the first thing you should turn off or disable. I think you do want to create a policy for each application you monitor (so I disagree), but you should also consider why you are tracking it. For example, is it really necessary to track Word, when all you care is whether or not people are using Microsoft Access? Or are you trying to figure who's using MS Office, when they could be using Open Office?

Jim Harings
HP Enterprise Services
1st Rule of Connect Club: Mark the post that helped you the most as a 'solution'. 2nd Rule of Connect Club:You must talk about Connect club.

JeffDG's picture
10
Feb
2010
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Why not?

The problem with App Metering is that the data cannot be collected retroactively.

I can't count the number of times I've been asked "Can you tell me how many people haven't used application XYZ in the last 6 months?"  If you're defining individual app monitors, your answer (presuming nobody's asked before) has to be "I'll tell you in 6 months"

I don't support generating start/stop events for *.exe, but gathering summary data is incredibly valuable, just make sure you have your archive settings set appropriately.  But you cannot use data you don't have.

jharings's picture
10
Feb
2010
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Ahh yes

summary data yes, start\stop data no, that is what I was referring to.

Jim Harings
HP Enterprise Services
1st Rule of Connect Club: Mark the post that helped you the most as a 'solution'. 2nd Rule of Connect Club:You must talk about Connect club.

JeffDG's picture
10
Feb
2010
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Then we're in complete agreement!

Good God!  Don't ever capture start/stop events for anything you don't have a need for...although it's better now with the batching options, that kind of thing can bring your server to a crawl FAST!