Since nobody wants to educate me on that let me ask why there are differences between my Inventory and discovered products. Inventory says the software is loaded 38 times, discovered products says 33 times. The list of machine names is not the same either.

Sorry for the slow pickup. Working a customer project during the days and doing my day-job evenings.

So, IF (my emphasis) the suites are defined within the ZENworks inventory, then the recognition should understand what the component applications are that are included in the suite. Under those circumstances, if the suite is installed on a device as defined by a registry key or something else that distinguishes the suite from the standalone application installations - then a license will be counted for that suite installation. If there are standalone application installations on the same device, they should be counted separately. Standalone application installations by themselves on machines should be counted as licenses of standalone applications, not suites. This all keys off of the aforementioned registry key that says "this software was installed as part of a suite.

Microsoft is quite good at deploying the essential registry key so that recognition will hit on the suite rather than the standalone applications that are common to the suite. Unfortunately, not all manufacturers of so-called suites are that good and the labeling of a suite is just that: a label. At that point, the only thing you can do is define a collection according to the documented rules and methods for building a collection. In a collection, there are applications that are required and those that are optional. depending on the configuration of the possible elements, recognition will key on the collection or on the standalone elements that can also be part of the collection. Sounds a whole lot like a suite, but when building a collection we don't have the ability to key off of a registry key that definitively confirms installation of the suite rather than standalone applications.

Good example was the earlier versions of the Adobe Creative Suites. Up until I believe CS 5, Adobe was not nice enough to supply a registry entry that recognition could be keyed to. Remember that in the beginning, CS was quite literally a large box filled with the individual shrink-wrapped applications, but sold as a suite. I spent a full two days one project in a rich Adobe shop attempting to model a collection for the CS suites present - I'm convinced it can't be done as there was no applications that absolutely positively were required to be installed. It was still the Wild West.

If you can build a collection that reliably triggers according to your required/not-required applications, then it will work the same as a suite with regard to compliance calculations and the extraneous standalone applications will be counted exactly as that: standalone.

In answer to your last specific question, no - you create a licensed product for the suite and the individual standalone applications that are listed as separate licensed products. The compliance engine will sort things out.

Without looking at the actual data it's hard to answer this question. Best guess I can make from your brief description is that there may be some versions that are seen in the full inventory that - for whatever reason - are being auto-excluded by the compliance engine when calculating discovered products. Or, maybe it's as simple as the compliance engine not running since the inventory was loaded? Compliance engine only runs once a day and inventory counts are updated in real time as loads take place. Beyond those guesses, I'd have to look at data to see if there's something amiss to recommend a bug filing.

Thanks for getting back to me!

The first suite I wanted to look at was Adobe CS 6, the suites is shown but the separate applications also show up. Because I don't work with this all day, every day, I don't have the expertise to say what is going on. I will likely open an SR to get help figuring out what I have going on and if I need to change my configuration or clear existing data and start over.

Well, with CS 6, you "should" get positive suite recognition via a registry entry supplied by Adobe. So, any applications that you're seeing that appear as stand-alone apps "should" actually have been installed from different media than the suite media. Lots of "shoulds" in there, I know, but CS 6 is past the point where Adobe got with the proverbial program.

Before opening an SR, I'd recommend at least having a peek at the help-about windows on an installation or two to see if a) the suite installation shows up where it belongs and then b) if the stand-alones look like the really were installed with the suite or as stand-alones. Could be that Adobe has done a poor job of bundling apps into the suite installer and the issue is on their end. Not trying to point fingers or assign blame, but I'll note for the record that, even after Adobe started doing things the way we need for them to for proper suite recognition to come through, there have been, um, inconsistencies on both sides of the recognition.