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We don’t make use of Categories very well in our App Portal. Our users only search for applications, never browse.
I’d like to set up intuitive categories but am at a loss at where to start. We have 1000+ applications.
We don’t have our App Portal integrated with FMNS, but saying that I was not blown away with the FNMS categorizations.
Has anyone managed to use the Categories effectively – or do your users just search for what they want?
Oct 01, 2020 09:20 PM
@Ralph_Crowley Thanks for jumping in. I'd love to see what input other customers have as well, so everyone out there, please join in.
In the meantime, I'll throw in a few random thoughts of my own:
Oct 06, 2020 02:17 PM
Hello Nicola
As your account does purchase both App Portal and FNMS, therefore you should have a way to refer both side of 'content' at hands.
I am not 100% of sure your real challenge in your case though , but this is my guess
1. You want to have a quick way to match ARL's applications and find out what 'ARL's category' of those mapped one? then try 'rectify' the category in your App portal accordingly ?
2. Or you want to a bulk 'introduce' all the 'ARL Category' items into App Portal categories during 'new creation' ...then in future your App Portal will have a complete 'category list' from FNMS product ?
Regardless which one is your real question, this is indeed a good use and suggestion here , So forum is a good place for you to use and listen other customers' inputs.
The key here is how you can quickly mapping the existing catalog in App Portal vs FNMS ARL here. In FNMS ARL, all the applications are carefully classified into the following fields "ProductName/ Version/Edition/Publisher/ Classification (commercial or freeware etc)/ Category (Office tool or game etc ) . The table in FNMS you can utilize is dbo.SoftwareTitleInfo table. I am sure you are able to find it useful. It will fully depends on how your App Portal existing 1000 category naming convention is used, but it's feasible to do some mapping by excel or sql to give you some quick 'mapping' (certainly some manual/review is required for those not mapped between two products).
If the question is simply to introduce the ARL category list into App Portal. The list in ARL system you can quickly extract is via below sql query
select * from groupex where GroupExId Like '4%'
It's about 170 rows items that you can consider what to add in App Portal
HTH
Cheers
Kevin
Oct 04, 2020 06:15 PM
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the reply.
I don’t really want to use the FNMS categories as:
I was really just wondering if other organisations ever found a way to effectively set and use categories, and also, do their users even use them, or do they just search for Applications like mine seem to do.
Cheers,
Nicola
Oct 05, 2020 08:02 PM
We use categories mostly for controlling access to groups of catalog items. Line of business apps are available to everyone, & core applications (which should be on every client) are mostly 'hidden' & only visible for our power users (Desktop Support techs). Other than that, we find most users do use global search to find the specific catalog item requested. Hope that helps
Oct 06, 2020 07:58 AM
@Ralph_Crowley Thanks for jumping in. I'd love to see what input other customers have as well, so everyone out there, please join in.
In the meantime, I'll throw in a few random thoughts of my own:
Oct 06, 2020 02:17 PM
Those are great thoughts for Random thoughts!!
I’m going to start to update our categories based around your point 3. I have already matched (in a spreadsheet) our App Portal items to the FNMS categorizations, I’ve used a cut down category list and added some other categories that are specific to our organisation.
If nothing else it will improve the look of our App Portal because the current categories we have defines are not great.
I like the idea of periodic user research studies, this is something else I will set up.
Thanks again,
Nic
Oct 07, 2020 06:54 AM
Thanks for sharing that Ralph. Using 'Hidden' Categories is something we just started doing too, it's a good feature to use.
I imaging most users out there are comfortable with the search option, I know mine are. If they can't find what they are looking for, they'll request to onboard a new application.
I might try using the categories @jdempsey mentioned in his reply , MAYBE then some users might take a browse around the categories if they don't initially find what they are looking for in their search. They might find an alternate application which has similar functionality, instead of requesting to on-board another one.
Oct 07, 2020 06:38 AM