Guidelines for Developing SMS Inventory Support

Each product revision must include revised prodspec.INI and PDF files to ensure that SMS accurately inventories the revised product.

The following seven-step procedure is recommended for developing SMS inventory support:

  1. Early in the development cycle, create the prodspec.INI file, choosing a unique file name appropriate to the product. Include enough detail in the file to ensure that it will be unique in subsequent shipments of the product.

    If there are different versions of the same product, you can have a prodspec.INI file for each. For example, a product may have client and server pieces that can be installed on the same machine as individual components.

  2. Add the newly-created prodspec.INI file to the product build process and modify your setup application to ensure that the file is shipped and installed with the product.
  3. Develop the inventory rules for the PDF file, including any other files that help to uniquely identify the product. Add the completed PDF to the shipping product image.

    Note that the PDF file simply ships on the product media; it does not have to be installed with the product. An SMS administrator uses the PDF file when preparing the product for installation.

  4. Add a step to your normal development cycle to ensure that Steps 1, 2, and 3 above are followed each time you revise a product or create a new product. This step is important to ensure that new personnel are aware of the requirements.
  5. Update the product testing specifications to ensure that testing checks for the presence of the prodspec.INI and PDF files, and that the contents of these files are correct and consistent. Because the PDF and prodspec.INI files have dependencies on each other, they must be reviewed and tested together for accuracy.
  6. Add a step to your normal testing cycle to ensure that Step 5 is followed each time you revise a product or create a new product. This step is important to ensure that new personnel are aware of the requirements.
  7. Where possible, use SMS to test the product for correct software inventory as developed in the product. Testing should ensure that different versions of the product are inventoried as being unique. SMS reports the package using the Product and Version in the [Package Definition] section of the PDF, so these should be different for each version of the product.