Software
The purpose of the main Software page is to show a convenient list of all software in the environment in an easy to search list. You can sort by any of the criteria at the top, of which Publisher and Category are self explanatory. Popular is based on usage as determined by Policies. Recent is cookie based for the local session based on prior searches. Guest viewers can click a software title to see a resulting list of any Public Floorplans that contain computers with that Product. If the Product is only on computers in non-public locations, no results will be found. There is also a link out to the publisher website for the product. As an Admin you can also see the install count (machines that have the product) and click to see details of the product (more information on this below).
Manage
For admins of proper privilege there is a sub menu to Manage Software. This provides an easy way to work with some concepts that are also covered in the KeyConfigure sections of this Tour under Products. The two main functions here are deciding to observe or ignore usage (track application launch and quit times), and controlling visibility on the various lists in the Web UI.
On the left is a series of items you can select to filter the list of Products.
- Discovered products are those that are actually installed on computers in your environment. It is often helpful to use this as your primary filter to avoid clutter.
- Related products are versions of Discovered items that are not installed in your environment. That is, if you have Photoshop 2020 that is Discovered. You may not have Photoshop 2015-2019, but they are Related so the definitions are imported due to being in the Family.
- Ignored are products you may have installs of, but they have been ignored by default or choice. This means regardless of installs existing, they will be ignored in all Audits and not show on any lists. Choosing to Observe an Ignored product will change it to Related where it will automatically become Discovered if there are installs.
- Folders can be created and then used as filters in whatever way may be useful to you, and have no impact on status or function. Simply drag and drop Products to Folders to organize as desired.
- Filters include showing only items that are Tracked (have a Policy) or On Map (visible in lists). Attention shows only the items which you have not yet specified whether usage should be tracked or not, as explained just below. Note that Manage in the left navigation will also have a green dot next to it when there are any new Attention items.
It is important to remember that Usage of software (who, when, where, how long) is only logged if there is a Policy. This Web UI offers a simple interface to manage Policies without any understanding of Policy types and their numerous options. As the LabSight tier of our product only offers Observe policies, this web UI is all you need to manage your tracking, where as AllSight customers will likely leverage KeyConfigure to work with more advanced software controls.
So, you can simply click a green dot to Observe (Track) a Product and the server will handle the rest by making a simple Policy. You can click the red dot to choose not to track, which will delete a related Policy if one exists, or simply remove the item from the Attention filter. The checkmark in the far right column dictates if the item will show on the main Software page, as well as in the popups when you click on Computers on Maps. This allows you to hide things that are more utilitarian and not important to the daily users. You can still report on inventory and usage, this option is strictly for web display purpose.
The last thing to understand here are the two different Product icons you will see.
- Editions have the little 3d box icon. These are for one version of a product, and can contain one or more Programs. Google Chrome 87 Win will have a single Program. Microsoft Office 365 Business will have multiple programs (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc.). When you track a Product, you track all Programs it contains.
- Families have the 4 squares icon. These contain one or more Editions. Tracking a family tracks all Editions it contains, and therefore all Programs in all those Editions. As PRS updates definitions (see below), the Family will grow. This means when you track Adobe Creative Cloud as a family, you track all versions of all programs in the suite past, present, and future. When possible, track Families for ease. We will only show Editions in the Web UI when there is no Family containing that Edition.
Details
If you click on any given product you will be taken to the details page for it. A sub navigation pane on the left allows you to choose the section of the product details to look at. An important option here is on the Categorization pane where you can turn off Show in Availability Lists. This will hide the Product from the Software page entirely, which is useful for items installed only on private machines as well as ubiquitous security software users are not interested in.
Note that while you can click the pencil icon in the upper right to edit records, many will be replaced with defaults when the product is updated on PRS. However some like the Web Description, External URL, and Notes will not. The Web Description test replaces the standard Description from PRS. Likewise the External URL overrides the Product URL. Any text added to the Notes will become searchable (but not viewable) text on the main Software page. You can use these to customize your environment as needed. Edition Products will have options to see the Programs they contain as well as the Family they are a member of. For Family products you can see a list of Editions they contain. There is also a list of Computers the product is installed on. The top right drop down menu allows you to run a relevant report on the current Product.
PRS
The PRS sub item under Software allows you to search for and import Product definitions from our Product Recognition Service, our cloud-based repository of thousands of common Software Titles. These definitions normalize discovered Programs into Product that you can track as previously discussed. Without a definition from Sassafras, you need to use KeyConfigure to create your own Product from the found Program(s).
Simply enter text in the search bar at the top and hit enter. You will be shown all items that match that keyword by product name or description in some way. You can then click on items you want to pull down to your server and click Import Selection. Normally this is not needed as the server will automatically pull down definitions nightly that match discovered programs on your computers. However, you may want to get ahead of that nightly process with a freshly deployed application and pull down the Product manually and start tracking it in the Manage section above. It can also simply be useful to verify if Sassafras Software has a definition for an item that is important to your organization. If not, we are happy to work with you to create one and add it to our catalogue in most cases.