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Software Catalog

The Software Catalog is the master list of every software product known to ELM. Each row is a product (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Pro, AWS EC2, Datadog Pro) with its publisher, category, deployment model, risk rating, and approval status. License records on the Licenses page bind to entries here, so the catalog is the central place to govern which products are sanctioned.

Filters​

  • Search — Free-text match on product name
  • Filter by publisher — Narrow the catalog to a single vendor
  • Group by publisher — Toggle to collapse the table into vendor-grouped sections

Table Columns​

ColumnDescription
Product NameDisplay name of the product (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud)
PublisherVendor / publisher organization (e.g. Adobe, Microsoft, Datadog)
CategoryTop-level category — SaaS, IaaS, desktop, etc.
SubcategoryFunctional grouping — productivity, design, engineering, compute, monitoring, collaboration, development
SaaSDeployment model — SaaS or On-Prem
RiskRisk rating from the optimization engine
ApprovedYes or No — whether the product is sanctioned for use
ActionsEdit (pencil) and Delete (trash)

Add Product​

The + Add Product button opens a Create Product dialog with fields for product name, publisher, category, subcategory, SaaS / On-Prem flag, risk rating, and approval status. Adding a product here makes it available for binding from the Add License form.

Best Practices​

  • Keep Approved aligned with procurement policy — rejected products will surface as recommendations in Optimization when they appear in inventory.
  • Standardize publisher names — AWS and Amazon Web Services should not co-exist, since they break the vendor rollup in Cost Management.
  • Use Subcategory to drive the chart in Cost Management → By Category — granular subcategories produce sharper category insights.
  • Toggle Group by publisher when reviewing the catalog with a vendor manager — the grouped view collapses redundant rows for a single vendor.
  • Licenses — License records that bind to catalog products
  • Cost Management — Spend rolled up by publisher and category
  • Optimization — Risk-based and approval-based recommendations