Installer Evidence shown after deinstallation

[bnikol]

Hi everyone,

After deinstalling applications, in the evidence tab, we still see a number of installed instances. 

The owners of the application argue that it has been decommissioned properly.

Why do we still see the evidence? 

Thanks!

[ChrisG]

Some possible reasons I can think of that "old" installer evidence may continue to appear are:

• The evidence still actually exists on the computer (for example, because the package uninstall process didn't cleanly remove it).
  
  
• Fresh inventory has not been gathered since the evidence was removed from the computer.
  
  
• A tool has been used to gather data from the computer in the past but is no longer used, but FlexNet is still importing data from the old tool. For example: SCCM was used in the past to gather data and now the FlexNet agent is used, but old SCCM data is still in the system.

[bnikol]

Thanks Chris!
For reason 3, we are still using "old" tool - ADDM, hence I do not think this is causing troubles.
If we say that owners can prove that no installation evidence is visible on the computer (1), how would we make sure that fresh inventory is gathered (2) and not old one showed? What would be the best practice in solving the evidence that should not be there?

[ChrisG]

A starting point would be to check whether the installer evidence still appears in the ADDM data. Knowing whether the stale data exists in ADDM or not will allow you to focus either on the cleaning up the data in ADDM or in FlexNet Manager Suite as a next step. You may need to work with the ADDM team to check this if you don't have direct access to ADDM.

I don't know ADDM to be able to give much specific guidance on exactly how to check data in to ADDM, but hopefully the following comments help to at least point somebody who does know ADDM in the right direction.

The main objects and relationships to look at in ADDM for installer evidence data are:

• Host:HostedSoftware:InstalledSoftware:Package
• RunningSoftware:HostedSoftware:Host:Host

Here are specific ADDM queries that FlexNet Manager Suite uses to extract installer evidence data, including the key installer evidence "name", "version" and "publisher" fields, along with which device (identified by "HostKey") each piece of evidence is found on.

Query 1: Get a list of simple installer evidence records

SEARCH Package
SHOW
	key AS 'PackageKey',
	name AS 'Package',
	version AS 'Version',
	vendor AS 'Vendor'

Query 2: Get which devices each installer evidence record (identified by PackageKey) is found on

SEARCH Host
STEP IN Host:HostedSoftware:InstalledSoftware:Package
SHOW
	#:InstalledSoftware:Package.key AS 'PackageKey',
	#:Host:Host.key as 'HostKey'

Query 3: Get software instances running on devices (this data is also treated by FlexNet Manager Suite as installer evidence)

SEARCH SoftwareInstance
WHERE (NODECOUNT(TRAVERSE RunningSoftware:HostedSoftware:Host:Host) > 0)
	AND vm_type IS NOT DEFINED
SHOW
	type + (edition AND (' ' + edition) OR '') AS 'Name',
	product_version AS 'Version',
	(publisher OR single(#Element:Maintainer:Pattern:Pattern.publishers)) AS 'Publisher',
	EXPLODE #RunningSoftware:HostedSoftware:Host:Host.key AS 'HostKey',
	key AS 'SoftwareInstanceKey'

[kclausen]

On the Evidence tab of an Inventory Device, make sure that you have the Inventory Date and the Inventory Source columns added to the view.

You can then filter on the Recognized Application.  This will show the raw Installer Evidence that is being used to recognize the application.  For each piece of Evidence, you can then see what source of Inventory that this evidence came from, as well as the Last Inventory Date.