Where it is possible to see installation date of the applications found

[marcog]

Hi all,

we are looking for the installation date of some products we found during FNMS inventory.

I checked inside the details of the server clicking in the page "All inventory"

Is there a way to see when an application has been installed?

Thanks

[ChrisG]

Data sourced directly from client computers tracking actual installation dates of software components on computers are notoriously unreliable and are not exposed directly in FlexNet Manager Suite. However you can see link/unlink events with dates from when FlexNet Manager Suite recognizes that an installation appears/disappears on the History tab of application and inventory device records. There is also a Discovery date column available in the Installation object when configuring reports.

These events will often occur when the software was installed/uninstalled, or can also occur when inventory for the computer was first imported or the ARL was updated to recognize the software.

[marcog]

Thanks ChrisG, and is there a oob report that shows the date of the history tab? So that we don't need to go inside every server. Thank you

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

If you wanted to see the discovery date for all devices that a particular application is installed on, I would start by looking at the Devices tab on the application record.

If you wanted to see the discovery date for a number of different applications on different devices they you would have to configure your own report with appropriate filtering, and include the installation Discovery date column.

As a side note, be careful to configure appropriate filtering on any report that includes the installation object to avoid getting an unmanageable amount of data returned. See the following recent threads that discuss reporting on installations:

• Custom Report Application Installation Count Changes
• Custom report data limit

[qmhj_nnit]

Hi Chris

I also often wish for the installation date. Other tools provide this including SCCM and I believe you can see the installation date in the Add- Remove Programs. Wouldn't it be possible just to display this information in FMS? 

Thanks

Br. Michael

[ChrisG]

Raw data for installation dates is not gathered by current versions of FlexNet Manager Suite, so it isn't currently possible to display this. You could consider submitting an Idea in the Flexera Ideas Portal for this if you think it would be a valuable addition.

With that said, installation date data gathered from Add Remove Programs on Windows is notoriously unreliable (try doing an internet search for phrases like "Add Remove Programs install date wrong" and see how many hits come up!), so I've always been somewhat skeptical about the real value of gathering data like this.

[qmhj_nnit]

Done! 🙂