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Managing software inventory and metric utilization
Learn how to classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
Software catalogs
To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Periodically import a new catalog that contains the most recent software products. Also, manually add products that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.
Exporting and importing custom signatures
You can export custom signatures to an XML file and import them to a different instance of BigFix Inventory to augment you software catalog. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one. You can also import signatures that are published on the signature community or export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community.

Managing software inventory and metric utilization
Learn how to classify the discovered software so that reports in BigFix Inventory reflect your entitlements and properly show utilization of license metrics by particular products.
- Software catalogs
  To correctly identify components of software products in your infrastructure, ensure that your software catalog is always up-to-date. Periodically import a new catalog that contains the most recent software products. Also, manually add products that are installed in your infrastructure but do not have corresponding entries in the catalog.
  - Updating the software catalog to ensure accuracy of software discovery and reporting
    The software catalog is automatically updated during every upgrade of . However, as an exception, you can manually update the software catalog for troubleshooting purposes.
  - Checking product components and their signatures
    You can browse the software catalog to check what components belong to a particular product and what signatures cause that these components are detected.
  - Expanding the custom software catalog
    To ensure that all software items that are installed in your infrastructure are discovered, create custom signatures. You can create them from scratch or directly from the Package Data and Scanned File Data reports. You can also create extended signatures to discover software that is not detected by using file or package signatures.
  - Exporting and importing custom signatures
    You can export custom signatures to an XML file and import them to a different instance of BigFix Inventory to augment you software catalog. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one. You can also import signatures that are published on the signature community or export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community.
  - Deprecated: Synchronizing software catalog content
    You can export your custom catalog content from one instance of BigFix Inventory and import it into another to merge the custom data. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one.
- Enterprise applications inventory
  Software components are discovered by software scans. The scans correlate data that is collected from the computers with the content of the software catalog, and thus determine whether a component is installed. However, software scans do not discover details of some enterprise applications, for example licensable options of Oracle Database or editions of Microsoft Exchange. The details are discovered by dedicated fixlets. If you are interested in discovering additional details of enterprise applications, run the dedicated fixlets apart from scheduling software scans. Otherwise, running the fixlets is not required.
- Software classification
  After new components are discovered, they are assigned to products based on bundling rules. If the initial assignment does not reflect your entitlements, work with the software inventory until it matches the entitlements. To make metric calculation accurate, assign each component to a product, exclude, or suppress the instances that should not be included in the calculation, and confirm your actions. After you confirm the actions, the classification is complete, and the metric calculation is accurate.
- License metrics
  BigFix Inventory provides two types of information about license metrics utilization: aggregated utilization and raw utilization. The former shows utilization of the assigned license metric by all instances of a particular product within the reporting period. However, it is limited to a subset of license metrics. The latter shows data that is collected from .slmtag files. It shows raw utilization of all license metrics that can be used by a particular product. The data is not aggregated and requires further processing.
- Software license optimization
  BigFix Inventory helps you optimize your software licenses. You can analyze the software inventory in your environment and maximize the utilization of your assets. Learn how to minimize the costs of acquiring and maintaining licenses and track license compliance for the software products that are installed in your environment. You can verify the needs and requirements of your environment and then apply the most appropriate license model.
- Reports
  Reports provide detailed information about the computers in your infrastructure and the software items that are installed on these computers. You can decide what type of information you want to display by choosing the appropriate type of report. You can also customize the type and amount of information that is displayed in a report and save the report settings to reuse them.
- Contracts
  You use contracts to track license compliance for the software products that are installed in your environment. When you purchase a software license, you create a contract that contains information about the cost of acquiring and maintaining the license, and the period of entitlement. You use that information to track spending that is associated with software licenses and manage costs of extending or downsizing licenses for the software products. You can also avoid costs that are related to license non-compliance by ensuring that enough software licenses are purchased.

Exporting and importing custom signatures

You can export custom signatures to an XML file and import them to a different instance of BigFix Inventory to augment you software catalog. It is useful if you maintain separate instances of BigFix Inventory for test and production sites. In such case, you can reuse the custom catalog content instead of creating the new one. You can also import signatures that are published on the signature community or export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community.

Before you begin

An icon representing a user.

You must have the Manage Catalogs permission to perform this task.

About this task

The signature community is a place where you can find custom signatures that are created by members of the community. You can download such signatures and import them to BigFix Inventory. You can also export your custom signatures and contribute them to the community for other members to download.

Procedure

Export custom signatures to an XML format.
1. In the top navigation bar, click Management > Catalog Customizations.
2. Click Export Mode.
- To export only a selection of signatures, check the appropriate check boxes and click Export Selected. You can select individual signatures, or all signatures for a publisher. Each signature is exported to a separate XML file, and compressed. When you select multiple signatures, all XML files are compressed into one ZIP file.
- To export the entire custom catalog, click Export All. You export all signatures, regardless of your selection, or filters, in a form of one ZIP file that contains individual XML files.
Import custom signatures in an XML format to the other instance of BigFix Inventory.
1. In the top navigation bar, click Management > Catalog Customizations.
2. Click Import to open the Import Signatures window.
3. Browse to the location of the file that you want to import.
4. Select the file and click Import. You can either import a single XML file or a ZIP package that contains one or more XML files.
5. Click Done.

Results

The imported signatures are available on the Catalog Customizations panel. They are now used by software scans to discover software in your environment.