Possible to have Multiple Editions under a single Software Discovery Model?

[Alex Ng]

Hi Community,

We are looking at addressing compliant on SAM Publishers. As ServiceNow may not exactly be bringing in Editions for some these software models, we have took a manual approach to ask some of the SMEs to identify the Edition manually by looking at the Software Installations on those devices associated with the Software Discovery Model.

Example: Let's say we have a Software Discovery Model called Model A. In Model A, we have 10 Software Installations associated with it but with an empty Edition. Upon checking with device owners of those 10 Software Installations, we found that, there could be 3 different Editions - Standard, Pro and Enterprise.

Is this even possible from a single Software Discovery Model? My understanding is that, the discovery patterns group these installation together through a common pattern. My guess is that, technically, they should be the same Edition since in the system itself, a single Software Discovery Model can only be associated with a single Edition.

I would to hear the advices of other experts whom have been through such situation and whether the information from device owners may not be 100% accurate or that, there is a possibility that, a single Software Discovery Model maybe associated with multiple different Edition of a Software Model but from a system perspective, this is not something catered at the moment.

Thanks.

[mikew_samexpert]

Alex - some years ago, I encountered the same issue with Adobe Acrobat where SCCM could not distinguish between the Prof and Std editions because the Adobe ID in the software registry was the same for each edition. 

[Alex Ng]

Hi Mike,

May I know how you resolve this issue then?
Acrobat is also one of the software models that I am facing.
Thanks.

[mikew_samexpert]

Hi Alex - we created a Powershell script which gathered edition information which is stored in a WMI class. The information is synced to the SCCM database through hardware inventory processes.

Email me at mike.whalley@assetsense.com.au if you require any further information.

[Alex Ng]

I see. Thanks Mike.