Rationalize applications

Aug 14, 2017

This topic provides an overview of rationalizing applications in the Discover Applications screen. In this context, rationalization involves examining your inventory of applications and deciding which ones to keep (and if relevant to import into AppDNA) and which ones to discard. The Discover Applications screen provides the raw inventory of Windows applications that have been tracked by SysTrack.

As you work through the applications in the Discover Applications screen, you change their rationalization status from the initial Review status to Migrate or Retire. You can do this for individual applications by using the drop-down list in the Rationalize column. To change the rationalization status for multiple discovered applications, CTRL-click or SHIFT-click the applications in the Rationalize column, then right-click and from the shortcut menu, choose Review, Migrate, or Retire.

Dealing with duplicates – Typically there is some duplication in the applications – particularly those that are not managed. You may find, for example, that an application appears five or six times and the only difference between them is in the build or revision part of a version number that has the form major.minor.build.revision. Typically, you only want to keep or migrate one or two of these – usually the latest one. (Sometimes you may find duplicates that are apparently identical. These have differences in their package or installation unique identifiers – called GUIDs – which are not shown in the main list.

Use the Duplicates Filter discovered applications to restrict the list of applications to those that have duplicates. This also sorts the applications so that they appear in name, manufacturer, and version order. This means that the duplicate applications appear next to each other in the list. Be aware that if you have filtered the list in other ways (for example, on the number of active users), this may have filtered out some of the duplicates. Set the Rationalize status to Migrate for the applications you want to keep and to Retire for those you want to discard.

Installation and usage statistics – The Discover Applications screen has columns that show the number and percentage of machines on which each application has been installed and on which it has been used. Columns also provide a variety of usage statistics. This provides useful information when you rationalize your applications.

You can sort the list of applications by the data in any of the columns (simply click the column header, and click it again to reverse the sort order). You can also filter the list of applications on the data in these columns. There are a number of quick filters that make this easy.

Note: These statistics are provided for each individual application and do not show aggregated statistics for groups of duplicate applications. When you filter on these columns, some of the applications in a group of duplicates may be excluded and some included.

Managed applications – If you manage applications through Active Directory or Configuration Manager, you can link discovered applications with the corresponding managed application. The discovered application then has a check mark in the Managed column.

Export rationalization decisions for review – You can use the Export > Current View option on the toolbar to export your rationalization decisions for review.

Import discovered applications into AppDNA – Once you have decided which applications you want to keep and potentially migrate, you need to import them into AppDNA. In order to do this, you need the application’s installation package or App-V (.sft or .appv) file. The installation package can be in the form of a Windows installer package (.msi file) or another type of installation package. If the discovered application is managed through Active Directory or Configuration Manager, you can match the discovered application with the managed application’s deployment information and then import that. For other applications, you can export a list, in which you then fill out the name and location of the installation package before using it to import the applications into AppDNA.