ClearApps Blog

Yes, PC Inventory Advisor 3.1 hits the stores now. It is the first major upgrade since the release of the 3rd edition of our network inventory solution back in March. Since that time we were attentively listening to our clients’ feedback and were doing our best to implement only the top requested features, still keeping to the main project roadmap which we have in mind. Now, after several closed betas, we are ready to present PC Inventory Advisor 3.1 to the public.

The major new features which we introduced are:

• Macs inventory: now you can easily inventory Mac OS X computers which are on your network, get all their details on applications and hardware, as well as  preferences, network configuration, video and audio settings and even system logs
• New export format: now you can export your inventory and assets reports directly into SQL, so you can sync your inventory data easily with your database. Additionally, CSV and XML export options are completely re-designed now
• Logon script scanning: add a special agent call to your Domain Logon Script and inventory all your network assets automatically whenever users logon to the domain, PC Inventory Advisor will automatically notify you when there’s a new asset available for reviewing

• Standalone audit agent export: do you want to track any assets which are not on your network but still in your area of responsibility? And you still want to keep all of them in one convenient place for centralized inventory and reports? Wait no more! Simply export an agent utility directly from your admin PC where PC Inventory Advisor is installed, copy it to your Flash drive or whatever, and run this inventory agent at the target system. That’s it, now you have a special inventory data file which you can easily import into your Assets tree, and have all your assets in one place
• Central Repository: with the new options for logon or e-mail scanning (or by simply asking all your users to run the inventory agent when they have time), you can collect all the inventory data and import it into your admin copy of PC Inventory Advisor automatically with the help of publicly accessible Central Repository, which can be easily configured in program’s settings
• Pre-configuration wizard: if you are not familiar with PC Inventory Advisor settings being a first-time user, you will be presented with a very simple pre-config wizard; answering just 3 simple questions, you will help pre-configure software settings to match your network configuration better
• More data snapshots settings: we introduced 2 new settings to make your experience with going back into your inventory history much more fluent. One is snapshot age, and the other one is snapshots pruning. They will help you prevent constant re-scanning of the assets when you build a report, and will also make sure you are not overwhelmed by the number of data snapshots which you have in your repository for numerous assets which you handle
• Updated ‘All software’ report: network summaries show you the list of computers you manage, all software installed in your net as well as hardware and more. Now you can easily compare the version and installation date of software titles present in your network to make sure you have theall critical updates on every asset of yours

• New repors on users logged on: now PC Inventory Advisor will show you who is logged on where, and provide you with up to 20 parameters on every user on every PC you manage
• New Icons: now you can easily visually distinguish your assets,  as the icons in the Assets tree now reflect the type of the device (laptop, desktop PC, server, Mac) and notify you when there’s a new inventory snapshot which you haven’t reviewed yet

Is this all? No, of course not. Add several hundres minor glitches and bugs fixed, new ribbon look, extended options in inventory wizard, enriched Settings dialog, new network factsheet, etc, etc, etc… and you will get all new greatly enhanced PC Inventory Advisor 3.1, which is by the way a free upgrade to all current users of version 3.x.

Happy network inventorying and downloading!

Yes, this is another minor enhancements build. The new features include software accounting, reports improvements, better support of Windows 64-bit editions and much more! This upgrade is free for all registered users. Just download the newest demo and install it without removing the previous version you have, in this way you will easily save all the previous network inventory reports that you had.

Software and hardware accounting

Now you can easily build reports on your whole network to find out where certain software or hardware is installed. It’s really simple to do, just go to Network Summary (used to be ‘My Network’ in previous builds), then navigate to ‘All software’ or ‘All hardware’ tab, find the title of interest and click the ‘installed on…’ link. That’s it. You now have the list of assets which have this software or hardware installed. Additionally you can see the list of assets where it is missing, and the number of offline assets for the time of scanning. Export or print the report now or just leave it in PC Inventory Advisor, it is associated with the timestamped network inventory summary, and will always be here!

Reporting improved

We’ve also added several enhancements in the reports:

• Asset Serial Number is now correct, and equals the BIOS serial
• More details on Microsoft Office version and installation are now aggregated
• Every software title in the report now provides the details on Installation source, Uninstallation string and current Installation directory
• Program Files folder is scanned along with Program Files (x86) folder, as well as both 32-bit and 64-bit software installed is handled correctly
• Several enhancements in CSV exporting

We also worked on timing, and in some cases we managed to improve scanning speed almost 30%. So, happy downloading! As always, we are ready to hear your comments.

Yesterday we uploaded the new version. It’s ready for download and we are waiting for your comments.

PC Inventory Advisor 3.0.386 re-introduces several core features of network inventory tasks within our solution. The new download is surely a free upgrade to all current users, auto-update is off for this build as well, but will most probably be enabled in the next upgrade that we’ll have. We tried to add most of the requests that we got since the major release into this new compilation, more to come in the nearest ones.

As for the details of the 3.0.386 version:

1. Now you can easily track Windows OS product key in the asset reports. This feature was previously available as well, but was OS compilation-dependent, now it’s working with any Windows version. Just re-scan your network with the new PC Inventory Advisor, and all your OS product keys will be there.

2. Network summary: All Software report is alphabetically sorted now, which makes searching for particular software much easier. BTW, did you know that you just need to press CTRL+F to start a search in any report in PC Inventory Advisor?

3. Network price is calculated more accurately no matter which asset price is or is not specified.

4. Scanning process can be cancelled any time, no matter what PC Inventory Advisor does at the moment: pinging, querying DNS, etc.

5. While scanning you are presented with the asset network name and network group or domain.

6. Navigation throughout the reports is greatly enhanced. Hyperlinks to other assets are now more responsive than before. You don’t have to get back to the assets tree all the time you want to go to a different asset report from a network summary any more, just go on and click the asset name wherever you find it underlined.

7. Assets can be renamed. No matter how your DNS server is configured now, you can easily rename any asset and it will use the new name in all reports and network summary as well. So you have total control over the assets tree in PC Inventory Advisor now: re-group, relocate, rename, reset grouping in just a single click!

8. Easily distinguish real printers from the virtual ones by knowing which one is the default printer in the asset’s environment.

9. We also improved the core of the reports: you will find the serial number of the hard drive, manufacturer and serial number of your assets’ motherboards and more…

10. PC Inventory Advisor now handles WMI errors more accurately. Depending on the severity of the error (either caused by corrupted installation of WMI or by its limited version, say, in OEM operating system installations) , we will now either omit the error or correct it automatically to ensure smooth and effective scanning of your network without additional interruptions.

11. Software installation date is also collected now. That’s the first step to a more global software inventory and internal user activities.

And among other fixes, I’d point out fixes in relation to time and date calculation on the snapshots bar, splitting of CIM_LogicalDevice into smaller categories, several usability enhancements for smoother scanning of the network with wizard, purging of XML and HTML reports internals, and some other minor improvements.

We’ll be back with an update and hopefully a new build sometime next week. Thanks for downloading and support!