Software Discovery

To watch or start the AI discovery of software publishers and products, open Software Discovery. This AI-assisted pipeline keeps the global catalog growing. It works in two stages: first it discovers vendors (software publishers), then it discovers the products each of those vendors sells. Nothing it finds becomes a catalog entry immediately. Vendors and products wait in staging lists on this screen until enrichment succeeds, and a product that enriches successfully is written to the global catalog and approved as part of the same run.

OpenLM Platform runs the pipeline automatically on a schedule, so you don't need to start it manually. Use this screen to watch what the pipeline is doing and to start an extra run when you want one.

Cloud only

Software Discovery is available in OpenLM Platform. On an on-premises deployment the screen is not reachable and SAM Catalog opens on Software Catalogs instead.

Check pipeline totals and recent jobs

To start a run, use the Overview tab and select Discover Vendors or Discover Products. The tab also summarizes the pipeline. The following image shows the Overview tab.

Software Discovery Overview tab with totals and recent jobs.

The following table lists the tiles on the tab:

Tile	Shows	Caption underneath
TOTAL VENDORS	Vendors discovered in total	The number of vendor discovery runs behind that total
TOTAL PRODUCTS	Products discovered in total	How many of them were enriched successfully
SUCCESS RATE	Share of enrichments that succeeded	How many enrichments failed
TOTAL API CALLS	AI calls made across every run	None

Recent Jobs lists runs with their Type, Job ID, Status, Started At, and Duration.

Discovered Vendors

To see the publishers the pipeline found, open the Discovered Vendors tab. It lists every software publisher the pipeline has found.

Discovered Vendors tab with publishers and their product discovery status.

The following table lists the columns:

Column	Meaning
Name	The publisher's name.
Aliases	Other names or ticker symbols the publisher is known by.
Categories Processed	The product categories already covered for this vendor.
Discovered At	When the vendor was first found.
Discovery Category	The category the vendor was discovered under.
Headquarters	The vendor's stated headquarters.
Is Included	Whether the vendor is in scope for product discovery.
Product Categories	The categories product discovery covers for this vendor.
Product Discovery Status	Pending, Partial, or Complete.
Source Url / Website Url	Where the information came from, and the vendor's own site.

The toolbar has Add Vendor, Delete, and Trigger Vendor Discovery, plus Refresh and Search. To use Delete, select a row with the option in the first column. Only administrators see Delete. To edit a vendor, hover over its row and select Edit Vendor.

Add a vendor by hand

To add a publisher the pipeline has not found, select Add Vendor to open a form. Only Vendor is required. Alias, Discovery Category, Headquarters, Source URLs, and Website URL are optional, but they add detail to the vendor.

Trigger vendor discovery

To search for publishers in the categories you choose, select Trigger Vendor Discovery. The following image shows the dialog.

Trigger Vendor Discovery dialog with the category checklist and the vendors-per-category slider.

To trigger vendor discovery:

1. Select one or more Categories.

   The following 10 categories are included:

   • CAD and 3D Modeling
   • Video Editing and VFX
   • Office Productivity
   • Developer IDEs and Build Tools
   • Database and Data Warehouse
   • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
   • Cybersecurity and Endpoint Protection
   • Cloud Infrastructure and DevOps
   • Business Intelligence and Analytics
   • Collaboration and Communication

2. (Optional) To look somewhere else, enter a category next to Add custom category and select Add.

3. Set Max vendors per category, between 1 and 30 (15 by default).

4. Select Start.

   Start is unavailable until you select at least one category.

The run is queued instead of running immediately, and the dialog closes. Watch it on Job Runs & History.

Discovered Products

To see the products the pipeline found before they become catalog entries, open the Discovered Products tab. The following image shows the tab.

Discovered Products tab with publisher, discovery vendor, and enrichment status.

The following table lists the columns:

Column	Meaning
Software Name	The product's name.
Publisher	The publisher named on the product.
Discovery Vendor	The vendor record the product was discovered under.
Status	The enrichment status: Pending, Enriched, or Failed.
Category	The category the product was discovered under.
Is Package	Whether the product is a suite or bundle.

The Status column has these values:

• Pending: Found, and waiting for enrichment.
• Enriched: Enriched successfully and written to the global catalog.
• Failed: Enrichment did not produce a usable entry. Failed products stay listed, so you can see what the pipeline couldn't resolve. They never become catalog entries.

Trigger product discovery

To discover products for chosen vendors, select Trigger Product Discovery. This runs the second stage against the vendors you pick. The following image shows the dialog.

Trigger Product Discovery dialog with the vendor list, limit sliders, and API call budget.

To trigger product discovery:

1. Select the vendors to run against.

   The list is labeled Categories but holds vendor names. It only offers vendors whose product discovery is unfinished, so it is empty, and Start is unavailable, after every vendor has been processed.

2. Set Max categories per vendor, 1 to 30 (10 by default).

3. Set Max products per category, 1 to 30 (15 by default).

4. Set the API call budget for the run (200 by default).

   The run stops when it has used that many AI calls. This limits how many AI calls an over-broad request can make.

5. Select Start.

   Start is unavailable until you select at least one vendor.

Job Runs & History

To check running or finished jobs, open the Job Runs & History tab. It has two tabs.

Active Jobs shows a card per running or queued job and refreshes automatically. Each card names the job type, its status, and two progress bars: Items (how many vendors have been processed) and Budget (how many API calls have been spent out of the run's budget). It also shows when the job started or was queued.

Run History lists finished runs with their Job ID (shortened to its first eight characters), Status, Type, and Triggered By. Type is Publisher for a vendor run and Product for a product run. The OpenLM discovery account, not a person, triggers scheduled runs.

To open a run's detail panel, select a run whose status is Completed. Select the same run again to close it. Runs with any other status have no detail panel.

The following image shows a run selected in Run History.

Run History tab with a run selected and its detail panel open.

The following table lists the tabs in the detail panel:

Detail tab	What it holds
Input	The parameters the run was started with: the categories, the per-category limits, and the AI model used.
Results	What the run produced: categories covered, how many were skipped, how many items were discovered, how many were Duplicates of records already held, and the Net New count.
API Metrics	Total Calls, Successful, Failed, and Avg Response time.

Track Net New: the count of items the run added after duplicates are discarded.

Find discovered products in the catalog

Discovery never writes to your organization's local catalog. Discovered vendors and products sit in their own staging lists, the Discovered Vendors and Discovered Products tabs, and a product only becomes a catalog entry after enrichment succeeds. Then it is written to the global catalog that OpenLM maintains and approved automatically as part of the same run, so it never appears on Pending Catalogs.

Your organization sees the result on the Global tab of Software Catalogs, alongside every other OpenLM-managed entry.

Related

For more information, see the following pages:

• Pending Catalogs: The approval queue for the entries that do need review.
• Software Catalogs: The working catalog.
• SAM Catalog: Concepts and the approval lifecycle.
• Product Discovery: A different discovery, the inventory of software installed on your workstations.