How to Find Software Dropped During the Pandemic

January 17, 2022 |  Data, Reports
1 min

Do faculty, staff and students still need a full suite of applications that used to be available in computer labs and on campus offices before the pandemic?

Faculty teach differently now. Students study differently now. It’s time to check in on what software faculty, staff and students are actually using. 

Most people are using laptops, Chromebooks or home desktops now. Do they still need a full suite of applications that used to be available in computer labs and on campus offices?

Through working with thousands of universities around the world, we’ve dialed into about 80% of the software applications that most schools have in common, and we track them by default. LabStats automatically monitors 200 software applications, and also covers version changes for the most common applications.

Related: How to Check Software Inventory 

With LabStats, you can check to see if you are still supporting software that faculty and students dropped during the pandemic.

How to find software that faculty, staff and students aren’t using:

With LabStats, you can see the software that’s installed on university machines, along with how much or how little each application is used. To do this, run Software Inventory, review the Application Dashboard, and dig into the Application Launch History reports.

  • Software Inventory finds all the applications on the computers in your environment, even the software that isn’t being used. 
  • The Application Dashboard shows the number of stations that have each software application installed.
  • The Application Manager shows a list of all applications installed in your environment.
  • The Application Launch History displays four separate reports showing the total usage time for the selected applications, the launch count, the average session length and the maximum concurrent usage.

How to Find Zero Use Applications

Zero-usage is not the application with the least logins, but the one with zero logins. If an application has zero logins, it could mean that faculty, staff or students can’t find it, or that they don’t want to use it.

To find zero-usage applications, you’ll need both LabStats and a spreadsheet editor like Excel.

Tutorial Video: Finding Zero-Use Computers and Applications
Related: Finding Zero-Use Applications Video Tutorial

If you’d like any assistance finding zero use or underutilized software applications, reach out to our Support Team at [email protected].


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