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Preparing the Catalog Before Importing

Software Asset Management Guide
Importing Licenses

Preparing the Catalog Before Importing

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.

Why It Matters

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

Spending fifteen minutes preparing the catalog before a 500-license import saves an hour of post-import cleanup.

The 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 → Licensing Position. 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 (casing differences are tolerated). "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 → Licensing Position → 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 — important, 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

Setting this at catalog-creation time is much easier than fixing it later, after consumptions have already been posted with a different 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. See Software Catalog: Defining Titles.

A Quick Way to Check

The fastest spreadsheet-based check:

  1. From Licensing → Licensing Position, 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 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 preparing the catalog, 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 the Check Reveals Bigger Problems

If your check 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, you may not need to track them. Consider importing only the active ones.