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Catalog Preflight

Software Asset Management Guide
Importing Licenses

Catalog Preflight

License imports succeed when every row's SoftwareProduct value matches an existing Product Code in your Software Catalog. This page is the checklist for getting the catalog ready before you run a bulk import — preventing the most common cause of failed imports.

Why Preflight Matters

The Standard License Import does not auto-create catalog entries. A row whose product is not in the catalog is rejected outright. If 30% of your import file references products that are not yet in the catalog, 30% of your file fails — and you do not find out until after the import runs.

Spending 15 minutes on preflight before a 500-license import saves an hour of post-import cleanup.

The Preflight Checklist

1. Extract Unique Products from Your Import File

In Excel:

  1. Select the SoftwareProduct column.
  2. Data → Remove Duplicates on a copy of the column.
  3. You now have the unique list of products that need to be in the catalog.

2. Compare Against the Existing Catalog

Open Licensing → Software Catalog. The catalog list shows every existing entry with its Product Code in a column.

For a small list, eyeball the comparison. For a longer list, export the catalog (Query menu → Export to Excel) and compare in a spreadsheet.

The matches need to be exact, including case and punctuation. "Adobe Acrobat Pro" and "Adobe Acrobat Professional" are different products — pick one and use it consistently in both your import file and your catalog.

3. Add Missing Catalog Entries

For each product in your import file that is not in the catalog:

  1. Open Licensing → Software Catalog → Create a new Software Catalog Entry (from the Software Product Catalog menu).
  2. Fill in:
    • Description — the human-readable product name (often what you will use as the Product Code)
    • Product Code — the value the import will match against. If empty, the system will use the description.
    • Publisher / Manufacturer — important for grouping in reports
    • License Type — critical, see below
  3. Save.

4. Set the License Type on Every Catalog Entry

The catalog entry's License Type is the default that consumptions will use. It is also what the engine falls back to when a license record's type is not set. A catalog entry with no License Type produces broken consumption math.

For each new catalog entry, choose the License Type using License Metrics:

  • Per-user SaaS (M365 user, Adobe CC, Salesforce) → USER
  • Per-device boxed software → SERVER
  • SQL Server → CORE or CORE4
  • Windows Server Datacenter → CORE8
  • Free utilities → FREE

Getting this right at catalog-creation time is much cheaper than fixing it after thousands of consumptions have been posted with the wrong metric.

5. Confirm Defining Titles

Each catalog entry needs at least one defining title so the recognition engine knows when an asset has the product installed.

For products you have already discovered, the recognition database may already have defined titles for the product. Check by:

  1. Open the catalog entry.
  2. Look at the Software Titles related list.
  3. Confirm at least one is flagged as Defining.

If none are, the catalog entry exists but no consumptions will be posted for it — which means the imported licenses will sit unallocated forever. See Software Catalog: Defining Titles.

Quick-Diagnostic Approach

The fastest spreadsheet-based diagnostic:

  1. From Licensing → Software Catalog, use Query → Export to Excel to dump the catalog with the Product Code column.
  2. In your import spreadsheet, add a VLOOKUP against the exported catalog's Product Code column.
  3. Any row that returns #N/A is a product missing from the catalog — add it before importing.

For a recurring preflight check, build an xAssets query that takes a list of product names as a parameter and reports which are not in the catalog. Save it under the License menu so it can be re-run before each bulk import without spreadsheet work.

Pilot Before Bulk

After preflight, do not run your full file straight in. Pilot with 10–20 rows that span:

  • Multiple manufacturers
  • Multiple license types (per-user, per-device, per-core)
  • At least one row using each lookup field (Location, Custodian, Cost Centre, Department, Supplier)
  • At least one row with an Agreement reference, if you use agreements

Run the pilot, verify in Licenses that the records loaded with the right product, then run the full file.

When Preflight Reveals Bigger Problems

If your preflight surfaces 200 missing catalog entries, you do not have a license import problem — you have a catalog problem. Stop and decide whether to:

  1. Bulk-import the catalog first. A catalog import follows the same shape as a license import (tab-separated, lookup-based) but targets CategoryID = 143. Build it first, then import licenses against it.
  2. Use recognition to populate the catalog. Run a network discovery pass with the recognition database up to date. The catalog will fill out automatically with products that are actually in use.
  3. Trim the license file. If many of the products in your file are not in use anywhere on your network, are you sure you need to track them? Consider importing only the active ones.