If you have written an item procedure before registering a program, you can include it during the registration as an embedded item procedure; however, most customized procedures are defined as added item procedures.

Added item procedures are created and registered in the Software Package Library after registration of the program they concern. They can be created from scratch or they can be copied from existing item procedures.

Added item procedures are not automatically delivered from the enterprise manager to the domain managers along with the software product. However, when you are adding a registration order for a software item containing added item procedures to a distribution container, you can use software delivery functionality to try to automatically add registration orders for associated item procedures to the distribution container. You can also determine that registration orders are created only for selected procedures. If a failure occurs during automatic generation of a registration order for one of the added item procedures, you can decide to continue with automatic generation of registration orders for the remaining procedures.

Added procedures can only be registered to the enterprise and domain manager libraries. They cannot be registered to scalability server libraries. This is important as when added procedures with new files are scheduled to be installed on agents connecting through remote scalability servers the entire original software item and the added files will be delivered from the domain manager's library rather than reusing any files registered to the scalability server. Take this into account before deciding on using added procedures.

The alternative to added procedures is creation of new independent software items that can be stored in the scalability server libraries.

You can copy existing item procedures to create a new item procedure, if the new item procedure is the same type (such as CMD or EXE files) as an existing item procedure. In this case, the existing item procedure is used as a model, and you can change everything except the type of procedure and the program.

Item procedures can be linked or unlinked, and new procedures added, into Procedure Groups. When a procedure is dragged to a procedure group, the resulting shortcut menu lets you link the procedure to the targeted procedure group.

Procedures can also be unlinked from the procedure group of which they are a part. When a procedure is unlinked from a procedure group, it disappears from that group.

The order in the procedure group is of importance (see the order number column in the GUI) and can be changed afterwards, using a context menu.

Procedure dependencies allow for prerequisite procedures to be defined for library items. This can be useful when a procedure requires one or more other procedures to have already been successfully executed before the current procedure can be executed.

If you select a procedure with dependencies from the Software Package Library, the dependencies are listed in the Procedure Dependencies folder in the right pane. Only installation procedures can be dependent procedures. When a job is to be executed using the parent procedure in the folder, a software delivery function checks whether the dependent prerequisite procedures have been executed. If they have not, then those procedures are executed first, in the order they are listed in the Procedure Dependencies folder.

In addition to the installation procedures used to install various types of software, the software delivery agents also contain a number of specialized procedures. These include:

For Windows NT Technology agents, the Microsoft Installer (MSI)-related procedure, Scan MSI, scans the software installed by the Microsoft Installer.

The Scan SWD procedure scans for software using software detection scripts for software delivery agents on Windows NT Technology, Linux, and UNIX.

The following Software Management-related procedures are available for Windows and Linux/UNIX agents, unless otherwise noted.

The Software Catalog is available through the CA DSM Agent + Software Delivery Plugin installation package.

The installation package contains the following installation procedures:

The scalability server procedures include configure and activate procedures.

The following are scalability server configure procedures:

The following are scalability server activate procedures: