I recently got the question in an Asset Management class: Our discovery sources find all sorts of installations that are just distractions when it comes to Software Asset Management. Is there a way to hide this software by default when viewing Software Installations?
160 Software Installations? Which ones are important??
Discovery sources are going to find things that you may want to know about when troubleshooting a system or to manage patches, but from a Software Asset Management perspective, they might not make much sense to display.
Some examples:
Updates are important, but not necessarily for Software Asset Management.
HP Softpaqs are hardware driver updates.
This isn't VW. Drivers NOT wanted when it comes to Software Asset Management.
So, how do you prevent these from displaying by default but still allow them to be viewed if needed? You need some way to filter those items out. Rather than approaching this from the individual installation perspective, you can leverage the normalized Discovery model records to assist with this.
The first step is to create some field on the Discovery model that identifies the model as one to ignore. This makes sense because you have to actively choose to ignore software rather than choosing to see items. It is better to still display an item you do not want and change it to ignore than to not know it is even there.
A new Ignore field can go a long way to help you out.
Great. Now you can ignore those updates, drivers, and plugins that can make it more difficult to see what you really have installed, but you still have a couple problems:
- How do you use this information to keep from seeing these installations?
- How can you quickly apply this flag to a large number of Discovery models at once?
For the first one, you need to set a default filter on any list where you want to hide the installs. You need to be a System Administrator to do this. For example, if you want to hide it on the Computer CI records Software Installations related list, go to a CI record, view the related list, and define the filter in the builder.
Because the Ignore field is on the Discovery model record and not on the Installation, you need to pull down the filter pulldown three times: once to Show Related Fields, then to show the Discovery model => Software Discovery Model fields, and finally to select Ignore.
Set the filter to Discovery model.Ignore | is not | true.
Run the filter to verify it works the way you expect. If all is good, open the filter again and click Set as Default Filter.
Set the default filter. If you need to remove the filter to see all records, you can remove it.
If you would like to change the module under Software Asset (or Software Asset Management pre-Fuji), right-click the Application Menu and select Edit Application Menu. Then find the Software Installations module and set the filter similar to above.
Now for the second issue. In an environment with hundreds or thousands of devices, you are going to have a lot of Software models to wade through to identify those you can ignore. There are some things you can do to make this a bit easier, though. Some common words can help you find potential records to ignore, such as update, driver, or plugin.
Navigate to Software Asset > Reconciliation > Discovery Models. Personalize or Configure the List Layout to display the Ignore field. Use keywords like those above as filters on the Display name to find groups of Discovery models to ignore. Then use one of two methods to select multiple records to update:
List edit is great, but it may be difficult to select a long list of records.
Select a full page with the checkbox at the bottom of the page and deselect items you do not want to ignore, such as Java versions that include the word update in the name.
So now it is time for some Community involvement. Here are those words again you could use as filters to help identify potential candidates to ignore:
- update
- driver
- plugin
- plug-in
What other words have you come across that you might be able to use to quickly filter?
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