BigFix Inventory Usage Data shows <no data> (Amended)

Reporting
1

This question actually originated with a customer, but I’ve duplicated it using “PSInfo.exe” from Systernals.

Basically, within Software Inventory >> Inventory Exploration there is a “Systernals LLC” Publisher. Within there are several PS tools that I use. They all show even though I just ran one (PSList) several times, ran a scan, uploaded the scan data and ran an import in the BFI server.

This is not the only software that displays this though. There are others which I have not actually run before a scan/import to test this, but I figure if I can determine the cause of this one it may correlate to others.

Thoughts?

[on edit]

I found a bit more info that redirected my thinking towards something else:

The usage information that the client uploads to BFEnterprise which in turn gets imported into the Inventory DB appears to be stored on the client in the file “BigFix Enterprise\BES Client\LMT\CIT\app_usage_data”.

So the questions then become:

  1. What mechanism determines which application gets monitored?
  2. How does the data make its way into the file for upload?

Mike

2

Have you activated this analyses globally in console “Application usage statistics”?
if not, do it and perform a data import. That should fix your issue.

3

I should have made that clear from the beginning:

I have enabled all pertinent usage analyses, yet I find that usage is either not collected or not available for some applications…For example:

**

  • You can collect Usage data for Acrobat:

**
(total run count of it, first start time of it, last time seen of it, total duration of it) of application usage summaries "acrobat.exe"
A: 116, ( Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:37:41 -0400 ), ( Mon, 16 May 2016 18:46:26 -0400 ), ( 18 days, 03:09:36.355 )
T: 0.053 ms

**

  • However, no application data is being stored or evaluated for pslist

**
Q: (total run count of it, first start time of it, last time seen of it, total duration of it) of application usage summaries "c:\Windows\pslist.exe"
T: 0.000 ms

4

To answer your questions from OP:

  1. The applications that are present in the catalog are monitored. So here is my question, does your application exist in the catalog?

  2. When you perform the Initate software scan, the information about applications that are present in the catalog are collected and stored in the LMT/CIT dir of your BES Client.