Getting started with Installed Applications policies

Installed Applications policies control the collection of information about the software applications installed on your active Windows and Mac devices. The collected information is made available in the Applications area, which you can use for software inventory and license management, and to identify essential and non-essential software applications.

You can activate Installed Applications policies on devices running a supported version of the Windows or Mac operating system. To see application data in the console, each device's Secure Endpoint Agent must be regularly connecting to the Absolute Monitoring Center.

The SNG component A lightweight software component of the Secure Endpoint Agent that detects software applications installed on a device. The SNG component is deployed on a device only when the device is associated with a policy group in which the Installed Software policy is activated. of the Secure Endpoint Agent is responsible for collecting all available information about the software applications installed on your devices. When you activate an Installed Applications policy, the component is activated on each device after the agent's next successful check-in to the Absolute Monitoring Center.

After the SNG component is deployed, it scans the device for installed applications, encrypts the detected information, and uploads it to the database using a secure connection that is independent of the device's scheduled check-in to the Absolute Monitoring Center. Going forward, the component scans the device for changes in its installed applications at 5 minute intervals. If a change is detected, the new information is uploaded on the device's next agent connection, which is typically within the next 15 minutes if the device is online (note that if more application changes occur after the upload, the next upload is delayed by an hour). A full scan is also uploaded every 24 hours.

The Installed Applications policy collects the following application information from each device:

This section only applies when an Absolute Resilience product2 is associated with a device. View my licenses

When you activate an Installed Applications policy, application health information is also collected.

Learn more about the Application Health feature

The SNG component A lightweight software component of the Secure Endpoint Agent that detects software applications installed on a device. The SNG component is deployed on a device only when the device is associated with a policy group in which the Installed Software policy is activated. of the Secure Endpoint Agent can be configured to collect information about the usage of the software applications installed on your Windows and Mac devices.

When you activate an Installed Applications policy, you can select the Include Usage data option to collect the following information about an installed application's usage:

  • Total minutes that an application is in focus (application is able to accept user input)
  • Total minutes that an application is in use (application is open but may or may not be in focus)
  • Average CPU usage of the application
  • Average memory usage of the application

The SNG component collects this information on an hourly basis and uploads it to the Absolute Monitoring Center once per day.

Application usage information is not available in reports. To view application usage for your devices, create a dashboard widget based on the Application usage data source. Learn more

By default, the Global Policy Group includes a preconfigured Installed Applications policy, which is set to Inactive. Although you can activate the policy in the Global Policy Group, best practice is to create custom policy groups and activate each policy group's Installed Applications policy, as required.

You can view the application information collected by the Installed Applications policy on the Applications page and the Installed Applications report. You can also view this information on the Applications page for each device.