Group by application name (combine versions)
In the application report in PDQ Inventory is there a way to group applications by the "base" application name so that different versions of the same application will be combined? In my case, I'm trying to see a simple list of all applications in the environment and which machines they are installed on. The specific version is secondary. The problem is that many applications include some sort of version identifier in the "name" attribute so, for example with 7-Zip, I get about 8 different groups for the various version and architecture combinations. For some, such as Bomgar Jump client, every installation has a unique identifier, so every single install is counted as a different application.
It doesn't appear that most applications have any attributes that contain just the name without the version number, so wouldn't it be great if there were some way to create a dynamic column based on my own criteria? For example, a dynamic column named "BaseName" and a list of rules such as {If Name startswith 'Bomgar Jump Client' then BaseName = 'Bomgar Client'} or even just a way to list which words are important in an application name: {"7-Zip", "Adobe Acrobat", "Microsoft .NET Framework"} and automatically combine all matching applications into a single group.
Comments
Just drag the column header for "Name" up just underneath the name of the report "Applications". That will group the results by the application name regardless of version.