Including a Software Identification Tag for Your Product

InstallShield 2018 Express Edition

Project • This information applies to Express projects.

ISO/IEC 19770-2 is an international standard for the creation of software identification tags. A software identification tag is a small XML-based file that contains descriptive information about the software, such as the product name, product edition, product version, and publisher. Software asset management tools collect the data in the tags to provide accurate application identification for software that is installed in an enterprise.

Software identification tagging is evolving as an industry standard, enabling independent software vendors to create smarter applications that give their customers better information for software asset management and license optimization initiatives. Including the identification tag in your product’s installation makes it possible for your customers to use tools that can monitor their internal usage of your product, allowing them to understand, manage, and optimize the number of licenses of your product that they obtain from you.

Proper tag creation requires that you configure standard General Information settings such as Product Name and Product Version. It also requires that you configure a few identification-specific settings, which are also in the General Information view.

To include a software identification tag in your installation:

1. In the View List under Organize Your Setup, click General Information.
2. In the Software Identification Tag area of the view, modify the values of the settings as needed.

The Use Software Identification Tag setting lets you specify whether you want to include a tag in your installation. Select Yes, which is the default value, and then configure the other settings in the Software Identification Tag area as needed.

At build time, if the following conditions are true, InstallShield includes the software identification tag with the installation that it builds:

Yes, the default value, is selected for the Use Software Identification Tag setting in the General Information view.
The Unique ID, Tag Creator, and Tag Creator ID settings in the General Information view have values.

Note that if tagging is enabled but you have not entered values in one or more of the three aforementioned tag identification settings, InstallShield generates a build warning to inform you that the tag could not be included in your release. To resolve this warning, configure the settings in the Software Identification Tag area of the General Information view as needed.

When you use tagging in your project, InstallShield adds the tag to the Always Install feature in your project. At run time, the file is installed to two different locations:

INSTALLDIR
CommonAppDataFolder

If you configure your project to include a software identification tag and you also configure the release in the Releases view to use a .pfx file to digitally sign your release, InstallShield digitally signs the tag at build time. Note that the .NET Framework 3.5 must be installed on your build machine in order to sign a tag file.

See Also