Flexera Technopedia provides a catalogue of over one million hardware and software products, which includes versioning, lifecycle, compliance, compatibility and various other details. The ABACUS Technopedia Sync Module allows you to search the catalogue and import the details for any products that you use in your enterprise. Once products have been imported, their details can be refreshed automatically at configurable intervals or by manually clicking a menu button.

ABACUS Technopedia sync currently works with version 5 of the Technopedia API, which is a RESTful API that uses OData for querying. It allows for products details in Technopedia to be imported as either standards or as components within architectures. These standards or components can then be mapped to other components that implement the products in your organization. This allows you to associate key details such as vendor support dates or pricing with the hardware devices and applications in your enterprise.

 Note

In addition to an ABACUS Technopedia sync licence, this feature requires an active Technopedia subscription. Technopedia is licensed into “content packs” and the exact properties you receive from Technopedia will be determined by which content packs have been purchased.

 Note

If the use of a HTTP proxy server is required, you will be prompted for the authentication.

Setting up Technopedia Sync

Before setting up Technopedia sync, you will need the login credentials for an active Technopedia subscription along with the URL of the Technopedia server. Once you have these details you can set up Technopedia as follows:

1.Ensure you have your project open in ABACUS.

2.Go to Tools | Technopedia Sync | Options

3.Enter in your details for the API URL, username and API Key to connect to the Technopedia repository.

Technopedia Options Dialogue

4.Decide how you would like to structure the data that is imported and select the relevant options in the Import Options section. You can either import the products from Technopedia as standards in the metamodel or as components in one or more architectures. Attributes of the Technopedia object will be imported as properties on the relevant standard or component in ABACUS.

 Note

In most cases, Avolution recommends mapping Technopedia products to components within any relevant architectures. This allows the product to be included in diagrams, catalogues, charts and matrices.

5.If you wish to automate the import process, check the option under ABACUS Analytics Engine Settings and provide the necessary details. Note that the ABACUS.Console.exe program must be running in order for the import process to occur automatically.

6.Optionally you may cache the results you have retrieved from Technopedia for your ABACUS session by checking the Cache results of HTTP queries checkbox. The Cache Age setting will determine how long the cache remains in memory during your ABACUS session and the Cache Size is the number of queries that ABACUS will retain.

           Note

The Cache Size queries are on a per word basis, so a "Microsoft" search will count towards as one query and "Microsoft Desktop" will count towards as two queries to the total Cache Size.

7.Click the Save button.

Importing New Technopedia Products

Once you have entered your Technopedia credentials you will be able to search the catalogue and import any products that are relevant to your organization. This can be done as follows:

1.Go to Tools | Technopedia Sync | Import

2.Enter in a product name to search for and select whether you wish to search the hardware, software or both catalogues.

 Note

Searching Technopedia can be a lengthy process. Searching both the hardware and software catalogues will double the search time, so it is recommended that only software or hardware are selected in most scenarios.

3.Check the Manufacturers, Products and Models / Releases checkboxes for the corresponding fields to search for.

 Note

If you do not check the Models / Releases checkbox, the Model / Releases in the results section will be left as a blank result and you will be prompted to select from one or more releases in a separate dialog should multiple releases exist.

Technopedia Search Dialogue

4.Click on the search button and wait for the list view to be populated with search matches from Technopedia

5.Select any standards from the matches list (you can select multiple entries by holding the Ctrl key while clicking) that you would like to include in your model and click Import.

 Note 

If you receive a large number of results, you can click on the Load More link below the product list to view additional matches

Model / Release Selection Dialog

6.As ABACUS completes the import process, it may prompt you for any products that have more than one release or variant. You will then be able to select which versions you would like to import using Ctrl + Click or Shift + Click.

 Note 

One of the properties that is imported on each Technopedia product is the primary key – External | Technopedia ID. This property is used for synching with Technopedia to ensure all details about the product remain up to date. As such, the property should not be modified. It is recommended that Role-Based Access Control be used in ABACUS to prevent users from making unintentional changes (See Section Name).

Synching Technopedia Information

After products have been imported from Technopedia into ABACUS they do not need to be specifically imported again. Instead, ABACUS will be able to use the External | Technopedia ID property to look up the product in Technopedia and ensure the properties in ABACUS match the attributes in Technopedia.

This can be achieved automatically by configuring the ABACUS Analytics Engine Settings as per the steps above and running the ABACUS.Console.exe application with the same ABACUS Collaboration Server project.

Alternatively, an update from Technopedia can be automatically initiated using Tools | Technopedia Sync | Sync Existing (Ctrl + Alt + T).

Progress of Syncing with Technopedia

Technopedia Properties

The following table lists the default properties that can be imported from the Technopedia repository and will be overwritten whenever synchronisation is performed. It is important to avoid adjusting the Technopedia ID property, as this is used to synchronise the data from the server and adjusting this property's value will cause the mapping to no longer be valid. 

* Technopedia offers separate content packs for Windows 7, 8 and 10 compatibility. ABACUS will import the relevant data into separate property types that correspond to the information.

** Technopedia offers a single content pack for Windows Server compatibility. Information about different variants of Windows server (e.g. 2012, 2008) will be imported using different property types that correspond to the information.

See Also

Populating your architecture - Overview | Populating your architecture manually

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