this is a general question about software and i hope this is the right platform for it. maybe superuser.com is the right place but i will try it here first. i already searched the net for anwers but didn't find anything usefull.
i have a customer that is using about 300 different applications in his environment. the computers are all running windows 7. we have a packaging workflow and patchmanagement (for windows updates). product owners, managers etc and everything is fine.
but what we don't have: something that notifies us once a new version of a software is released
currently we check the websites or news articles on a regular basis, but i don't want to waste human ressources on that task and create some software that saves us the work and time.
i played a bit with tools like the CNET techtracker or allmyapps, but its not what i am looking for (i scans your PC for software and checks it own database for newer versions)
so far i thought of following solution:
- find a URL on the software vendors website which contains the software version for each application
- build a html/rss parser that reads the URLs (with filter criteria)
- notify me about changes e.g. by putting that all in a RSS feed
but this has a few flaws:
- kinda a lot of work finding those URLs
- if the vendor makes weird changes to their website it will break.
how do you guys solve that problem in your environment?
do you have a tool or workflow that handles it?
or do you just wait till a customer demands an update?
please share your ideas, maybe we solve this general problem for us and comming generations :)
