InstallShield 2012 Spring Express Edition User Guide

Chapter 7: Specifying Installation Information
Including a Software Identification Tag for Your Product
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.
Task 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 2.0 or later must be installed on your build machine in order
to sign a tag file.
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