Organizations have a need to determine, at any given point in time, the installation and license-related information about the software products deployed on their systems. This helps them in their Software Asset Management (SAM) tasks, and helps them to deploy the products effectively, while also complying with the licensing terms.
As the number of employees in an organization and/or the software products deployed increases, the problem of maintaining the installation and license-related information becomes more and more challenging. Identification of standard Creative Suite application installs compared to Creative Cloud subscription based applications can also be difficult.
One approach to addressing this challenge is use of software tagging. Software tagging is the process of maintaining a set of tag files (.swidtag) on a client machine to determine the installation and license state of various software products. A software tag file is an XML file that contains information for identification and management of software products. The tag format that Adobe utilizes is the ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009.
For asset management, an administrator can run a SAM tool that scans the tag files on the client machine and parses them for analysis and reporting. Software tagging can thus be an important part of Software Asset Management.
Tag | Description |
entitlement_required_indicator | true for serialized/activated false for trial/unlicensed |
product_title | Adobe InDesign CC |
product_version
|
|
software_creator
|
|
software_licensor
|
|
software_id
|
|
tag_creator
|
|
Tag | Description |
license_linkage
|
|
serial_number | This is the product serial number and is held in encrypted form. |
The location is platform specific. For Creative Cloud the .swid tag files are created in the following locations after install/first launch:
- Windows XP: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\regid.1986-12.com.adobe
- Windows Vista & Windows 7: %PROGRAMDATA%\regid.1986-12.com.adobe
- Mac OS: /Library/Application Support/regid.1986-12.com.adobe
You can determine the Creative Cloud version looking at the SWID tags.
For custom offerings, the SWID tags mention the type of offering of Creative Cloud between "CreativeCloudEnt" and the version "1.0-Mac-GM-MUL.swidtag". For example, following are the SWID tags for the custom offerings of Creative Cloud for Mac and Win:
Mac (custom offerings):
1. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntVideo-1.0-Mac-GM-MUL.swidtag
2. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntWeb-1.0-Mac-GM-MUL.swidtag
3. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntDesign-1.0-Mac-GM-MUL.swidtag
WIN (custom offerings):
1. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntVideo-1.0-Win-GM-MUL.swidtag
2. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntWeb-1.0-Win-GM-MUL.swidtag
3. regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEntDesign-1.0-Win-GM-MUL.swidtag
For Creative Cloud All Apps, the swid tags mention nothing between "CreativeCloudEnt" and the version and platform.
For example, the SWID tag for Creative Cloud All Apps for Mac and Win are:
Mac (All Apps)
regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEnt-1.0-Mac-GM-MUL.swidtag
Win (All Apps)
regid.1986-12.com.adobe_V7{}CreativeCloudEnt-1.0-Win-GM-MUL.swidtag
You can use the value of the unique_id tag to determine the software. The value maps to the unique Licensing Identifier (LEID). For example:
- Creative Cloud for teams: <swid:unique_id>V6{}CreativeCloudTeam-1.0-Mac-GM</swid:unique_id>
- Creative Cloud for enterprise: <swid:unique_id>V7{}CreativeCloudEnt-1.0-Win-GM</swid:unique_id>
The attached Zip file includes three sample SWID Tag files:
- Creative Cloud
- Creative Cloud for teams
- Creative Cloud for enterprise
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