Manual creation of Software Installation record

[andrea_m]

Hi,
I wanted to ask if anyone knows if there is an OOTB way to create a record in the Software Installation table without going through Discovery or SCCM. We are currently importing software installations from Discovery, but some applications are not detected as installed software, is there a way starting from the Product list to create a new record in the Software Installation without implementing custom logic?
Thanks.

[dreinhardt]

Hi @andrea_m,

please check the following payload example for insert records into the sw install table - Sample payload for generic software install records. You could build the same based on a excel file (Publisher, Version, Displayname, Computer) and using an import set to store the data into the table. I remember, similar task was/is part of the SAM training.

Could you please share more details about the software records missing or not detected by your inventory tool ?

Best, Dennis

[davidhill]

I'm going to jump on board this thread since it's new enough to give you an example - Java Applets or Applications.

Doesn't matter the OS, typically Java applications aren't picked up because of the way they are deployed/installed. WAR , JAR etc are not part of installed programs on many systems. 

Could be Homegrown applications, or COTS like IBM Sterling Integrator as an example but I'm sure there are 100s of thousands.   This is an achilles heal for ServiceNow in my implementation and I'm sure for other folks as well. Not sure if this was OPs concern.

[dreinhardt]

Hi @davidhill,

I would almost say that this is a problem with all inventory scanners used in common SAM tools, or do you have examples of tools that fulfill the described use cases OOTB?

For all “not installed programs,” ServiceNow offers File-Based Discovery, which inventories the desired files and, after normalization, recognizes them as software installations.

For all other special cases, either separate ServiceNow Discovery probes/patterns could be developed to read out the desired details, or additional information could be imported from third-party systems (endpoints, file imports, etc.) and transfered into install or usage records.

Best, Dennis