Merging Software Products

You can merge several Software Products into one "master" product, and Alloy Discovery will report the presence of that product if any of its "detail" products are detected. For example, you may want to merge several minor releases of a product to track them as one product. After merging, recognition rules and discovered installations of the source product(s) will be added to the target Software Product, and the original Software Product(s) will be deleted.

NOTE: When the Inventory Server uploads the audit data, software recognition rules are added automatically. These auto-added software recognition rules differentiate only product major releases so that minor releases of the same product are automatically merged to into one major release. It helps you keep Software Catalog uncluttered.

Before you begin, make sure the Software Catalog contains the Software Product which should become the master (or target) product. If such product does not exist yet, add a new product.

INFO: For details, see Adding Software Products to Software Catalog.

To merge one or several source products to a single target product, follow these steps:

1. In the Desktop App, go to the Software Catalog, select the product that you want to make target , right-click the selection, and click Merge with. You can also use Merge with on the Module menu. The Merge Software Product Wizard starts.
2. On the Source Software Products page, select source software products to merge into one target product. The grid below the Product Name and Version boxes shows the Software Catalog products that meet the default search criteria specified in that boxes. Their default values are the name and major release of the target product.
   • If you are satisfied with the default search results, select one or more source software products from the grid, and click Next.
   • Otherwise, change the default values of the Product Name and Version boxes to define your own search criteria, and click Find. Select one or more source software products from the grid, and click Next.
3. On the Recognition Options page, choose how to process auto-added recognition rules of the source software products selected on the previous page. You can choose one of the following options:
   • Add auto-added rules to the target product
   • Replace auto-added rules with a rule with unspecified Product Version in condition
   • Replace auto-added rules with a rule with this recognition condition. If you choose this option, review New Version of Target Product and Recognition Condition boxes and change their values, if necessary.

   Click Next.

4. On the Ready to Merge page, review the specified merge settings. If you want to change any of them, click Back to go to previous wizard pages. To complete the merge process, click Merge.
5. The Merging page informs you that the merge process is completed. To close the wizard, click Finish. To start a new merge process, click Back.