Defining conversion variants

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Use the Software Catalog application to manage the names of discovered software in the Maximo® database through the use of conversion variants. A conversion variant is simply an alias of the preferred software name. The names of software that originated from Asset Discovery for z/OS® must be managed in that application.

About this task

You can use an existing or new software catalog record to define the naming conventions for software, provided the software data was imported from a source other than the Knowledge base or Asset Discovery for z/OS. Names that originate from the latter sources must be managed by them. You cannot rename a software catalog record whose data originated from the Knowledge base or Asset Discovery for z/OS (the records are read-only), nor can you use the records themselves as variants. Asset Discovery for z/OS control those relationships. You can, however, add as variants to Asset Discovery for z/OS or records catalog records that were imported from discovery tools.

Because software found by other discovery tools is often named inconsistently, you will usually need to establish a naming convention for that software. Their software catalog records are also read-only and cannot be renamed. But if already named correctly, other catalog records can be assigned to them as conversion variants. (If you could rename the catalog records themselves rather than use variants, the new names would be overwritten in the database the next time, and every time, fresh data was imported from the discovery tool.)

Any existing or new software catalog record that defines the naming convention must have a target name that is the preferred name for the software. If no existing catalog record has the preferred name, you can define a new catalog record by adding software (with the preferred name) to the catalog manually. You can then specify as conversion variants all software catalog records with variations of that name, so that thereafter they will be referred to only by the preferred name in Software Catalog and other applications.

The steps for defining conversion variants follow.

Procedure

  1. On the navigation bar, click Open Menu > Administration > Deployed Assets > Software Catalog.
  2. Open the catalog record with the target name for the software that requires variants by doing one of the following things:
    • Open an existing software catalog record that already has the preferred name, if such a record exists.
    • Create a new software catalog record, and give it the preferred software name by adding it to the catalog manually.
  3. Make one or more existing catalog records a variant of the preferred one from step 2:
    1. On the Software tab, in the Conversion Variants section, click Select Software to list existing catalog records that can be associated as a variant of the current software catalog record.
      Note that the Select Software window does not show records originating from the knowledge base or Asset Discovery for z/OS, because they cannot be used as conversion variants.
    2. On the Select Software window, select one or more existing catalog records from the software list. (If the list is too big, use the table filter.)
    3. Click OK to save the existing catalog records as conversion variants of the record from step 2.
      Note: Any previously associated variant can be disassociated. To disassociate an item listed in the Conversion Variants section, you can click the Mark Row for Delete icon (in the rightmost column of the row), then click Save. The variant again becomes an independent software catalog record.