Software Usage Metering - How to Monitor Unknown Product Known?

[#1]

Summary

How to implement usage tracking on UNKNOWN PRODUCTS's

Synopsis

When the below can be seen in your usageagnet log, (once usage tracking has been setup) it means you will not be getting monitoring usage on the application.

Session logging: UNKNOWN PRODUCT Session end (Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe, product is unknown) Session will not be added to cache.

Whenever a product is unknown no usage information is collected.

Discussion

By default the usage agent only recognizes MSI and ManageSoft packages, but application such as Firefox lack these so won't be tracked by default. However it is possible to track these applications, but it has to be configured manually, by using manual mappers.

The manual mapper relates to actual files to track e.g. .exe files so it's not the registry key names that matter - within the manual mapper registry structure you can name the key as desired as long as you follow the correct hierarchy as covered in documentation (which i have attached, please view page 425) e.g. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Usage Agent\CurrentVersion\Manual Mapper\ApplicationName] then you create the strings mentioned i.e.

Application=WebSphere
ExecutablePath= D:\Websphere\WebSphere.exe
Version=*
Regex=False

This would monitor an executable called WebSphere.exe in the D:\WebSphere directory.

You will then also have to set 'UseManualMapper ' to true (false by default), this should allow you to track the mappers. The attached documentation is quite old, but the section on manual mappers mostly still applies.

[Tooling42]

Hi @jkeighley,

thanks a lot for your information and the PDF. It was very helpful.

The only thing  what I have noticed during my tests was
my ExecutablePath is working without double \ in the path, e.g.
c:\program files\notepad++\notepad++.exe

I have tried this, because with double \ the logfile has shown:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adding product 'Notepad++' (priority 20) to product cache
Adding file '"c:\\program files\\notepad++\\notepad++.exe"' to product 'Notepad++'
...
UNKNOWN PRODUCT Session end (Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a single \ I got:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adding product 'Notepad++' (priority 20) to product cache
Adding file 'c:\program files\notepad++\notepad++.exe' to product 'Notepad++'
...
KNOWN PRODUCT Session start (Path: C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe, Product: Notepad++, Product version: *)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Best regards

[Tooling42]

Hi,
today I have made an export of the the regkey to a *.reg. Here I can see the double \

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ManageSoft Corp\ManageSoft\Usage Agent\CurrentVersion\Manual Mapper\Notepad++]
"Application"="Notepad++"
"ExecutablePath"="c:\\program files\\notepad++\\notepad++.exe"
"Regex"="True"
"Version"="*"

Best regards