Software inventory report

Morning,

I have been trying to solve the puzzle of building an web report to show installed software on the network that is not listed on the inventory server. Hopefully someone can give a little incite or assistance.

What version of BFI are you running?

There are two reports that can get you started answering your question:

  1. Scanned File Data Report
  2. Package Data Report

Add a Filter for Recognized equal to No. This will remove any entries that were found in the Software Catalog. See the documentation here for more information on the available reports.

You can also add another column, which is disabled by default due to the potential performance impact, called Caused Detection. See the documentation here for more information on this column.

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I am on Version: 9.2.14.0, Thanks I will give this a shot.

Hi @itsmpro92 looks like this is directing me to run this report in inventory? Will that give me the same results as I am attempting to find in web reports?

Yes - I was referring to a BFI report.

The challenge with using a Web Report is that it is based on BigFix Platform data. BigFix can provide you the list of Installed Windows Applications and Installed UNIX Packages. But, since it has no knowledge of the Software Catalog, you would have to manually consolidate and compare the data with the Catalog (which is in BFI). Ultimately, you would get the same results.

Running the report from BFI will be a lot less work. :slight_smile:

@itsmpro92 my thoughts exactly in thoughts of running and BFI report but if its not labeled & inventoried in the BFI would the method you showed me be the way to go?.

Here is what I am trying to accomplish.

Identify software that is installed on workstations – identified in BigFix web reports – that does not have an entry in the BigFix Inventory software catalog. The entry is important because the BigFix inventory report identifies Usage and Software identification tags (SWID tags) information that we will need for the subject project.

@tommy.love

Short version: run the Package Data Report and filter out recognized packages to find un-cataloged software.

Software ID Tags are one of several signature types that BigFix Inventory uses to identify installed software and link it to a catalog entry. Others include finding specific files (by name, size, and/or version), registry entries in Windows and packages in Unix.

The Scanned File Data Report returns a list of files based on standard executable file extensions, such as .sh and .exe., found on all machines that run the File System Scan (which is on by default).

The Package Data Report returns a list of Packages (Unix Package and Windows Registry Uninstall Keys) found on all machines that run the Package Data Scan (which is on by default). Note that the data in this report corresponds with the data you identified in BigFix web reports. Add the filter for Recognized equal to No to show you what’s not in the Catalog.

I found only one package out of about 2200 in my environment that matched a signature in the catalog, but didn’t have enough information to cause detection of the related software, so you can probably hold off enabling the Caused Detection column (see above). If you decide to enable it, I recommend that you only leave it enabled if there is no significant increase in duration of your data imports.

@itsmpro92 thank you sir… I will definitely give it a try I have been beating myself up trying to get a webreport show that info.