"Update existing applications" and "Application ID"

NGA10 asked a question.

January 17, 2019 at 8:00 AM

Hi Snow Community, I have a (hopefully not stupid) question… We’ve added a Custom Field to Applications to provide an internal categorisation of software which is more specific to our business than the Snow categorisation. The business took a spreadsheet exported straight out of Snow’s web interface of our approximately 9,000 applications (and versions thereof) and added their Category against the Application Name and Manufacturer Name. In trying to upload this data into Snow I’ve found a few challenges. So the question is has anyone else come across these challenges and found a good way of dealing with them? When you try to import data and “Update existing applications” you have two choices to map to – the “Application Name” or “Application ID”. Snow (sensibly) won’t allow you to upload updates to non-unique Application names and Snow (not sensibly IMHO) does not expose the Application ID in the SLM web interface (that I’ve found). So if you have duplicated Application names (and we do) then you are left with no alternative but to use the Application ID. So I took to SQL… When you look in the SQL output from Snow for all applications, you find there are applications with the same Application Name and Manufacturer name but with different Application IDs so although this provides 95% of the Application name to Application ID mapping there’s still some manual work to do. So I took to SLM’s SMACC... to find out what is deployed in the estate. The best rule (sorry) seems to be that if there are duplicates in SMACC, choose the one whose rules have hits. You then have to manually re-key (I couldn’t find a way to copy an Application ID out of SMACC) the Application ID into your upload spreadsheet. Now either I missed something or this seems rather complicated and potentially easily solved if the SLM web interface exposed the Application ID. Advice and guidance very welcome ;-) Regards, Nick.

Portal User
8 years ago
If you open an application in the SLM web. You will see the ID of the application as part of the URL.
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- NGA10
  8 years ago
  Thanks Johan! That's great for when you need to see what the SLM web application is mapping to or when you need the ID as a one off. I'm sure there are other use cases ;-) Regards, Nick.
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DavidH
8 years ago
Hi ?, I need to get the Application ID sometimes too ... but I don't have to manually re-key it. You can copy and paste it from the SMACC on the SLM server. This is what I do - if you find the application you want under "Application Definitions", like this: You can use the column chooser to bring in the Application ID, like I've done there. After that you can highlight the row and use CTRL+C to copy the whole row ... I normally paste it into notepad. I hope that helps a little, it should save you some typing Regards, David
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- NGA10
  8 years ago
  Thanks David! I tried to select just the Application ID which didn't work. I've tried your suggestion and it works for me. I'm very grateful for anything which saves typing long random strings ;-) Regards, Nick.
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Shaz_Berry
6 years ago
Hi All, If Application ID is a field in Application definitions then when cannot it be exposed in SLM? it just seems daft to have to go back out to SMaCC.
Ok. Officially Daft. Far too many results to highlight and copy paste to notepad.
Im searching ideas. Hope someone backs me up.
Shaz
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- Shaz_Berry
  6 years ago
  Note to all: Application ID is not a required field on the "update application" template. 👍
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