Rationalising Apps Manually (with ACE)

Modified on Thu, 27 Apr 2023 at 05:21 PM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What is ACE?
ACE Usage

What is ACE?

See here for an overview of ACE.

ACE Usage

Overview

To view the ACE suggestions navigate to the Applications module, you may need to enable Pending applications in the Rationalisation Status ribbon (you can process any application, but the most common use-case is to process Pending apps)

Select some (or all) of the applications in the main grid, then click the ACE Recommendations button in the ribbon

The ACE window will open showing recommendations in yellow. The rationalisation and normalisation suggestions can be turned on and off using the toggle buttons.

Application Normalisation and Categories

Overview

Normalisation is the process of cleaning up application names and making them more consistent across multiple products from the same vendor. This is generally done before application rationalisation, because having a consistent set of names and versions makes rationalisation easier.

Field	Changes	Discovered example	Rationalised example
Vendor	Changed to a user-friendly name	Adobe Inc / Adobe Incorporated / Adobe Ltd	Adobe
Name	The vendor name is dropped, other "cleaning" also applied	Adobe Reader	Reader
Version	The version is cleaned up into the standard version format of Major.Minor.Build.Revision, superfluous zeros are dropped, as are any text characters	11.00.0002.3"	11.0.2.3

Application categories can be applied as part of the normalisation process. Example of categories are Multimedia, Finance and Application Components.

How to Normalise and Categorise Applications

In the Applications module ensure that the applications which require normalisation are visible. In most cases this will require that you enable Pending in the Rationalisation Status in the ribbon.

In the main grid, select the applications to be normalised (or click Select All)
Click the ACE Recommendations button in the ribbon

A new window will open. It may help to turn off the Rationalisation suggestions (optional)

Any normalisation suggestions will be highlighted in yellow. In the example below the following changes are suggested:
1. The category App Components to be added
2. The Vendor is changed to Adobe
3. Double space characters are removed from the name
4. A zero is dropped from the version
5. A quote character is dropped from the version

Firstly the suggestions must be approved.
1. Approvals can actioned one at a time by clicking the toggle button to the left of the suggestion (the suggestion will turn green)
2. Or in bulk by selecting a number (or all) of the rows, then clicking Quick Approve Normalisation
3. Or in bulk by selecting a number (or all) of the rows, then right-clicking -> Approve -> Normalisation -> All (more granular options are available here too)

To apply the approvals click Apply Approvals
The approved items will be highlighted in green

Click Close to review the changes in the Applications grid

Application Rationalisation

In the Applications module ensure that the applications which require rationalisation are visible. In most cases this will require that you enable Pending in the Rationalisation Status in the ribbon.

In the main grid, select the applications to be rationalised (or click Select All)
Click the ACE Recommendations button in the ribbon

A new window will open. It may help to turn off the Normalisation suggestions (optional)

Any rationalisation suggestions will be highlighted in yellow. In the example below the following changes are suggested:
1. Accept Adobe Acrobat v15.x, v19.x and v21.x as these all have unique major versions
2. Accept Adobe Acrobat v22.x as this is the highest version of the three Adobe Acrobat v22.x instances
3. Rationalise the two earlier versions of the Adobe Acrobat v22.x instances to the latest v22.x

Firstly the suggestions must be approved.
1. Approvals can actioned one at a time by clicking the toggle button to the left of the suggestion (the suggestion will turn green)
2. Or in bulk by selecting a number (or all) of the rows, then clicking Quick Approve Rationalisation
3. Or in bulk by selecting a number (or all) of the rows, then right-clicking -> Approve -> Rationalisation-> All (more granular options are available here too)

To apply the approvals click Apply Approvals
Click Close to review the changes in the Applications grid