Support Tip: Inconsistencies in reporting of Discovered apps

[Intune_Support_Team]

Updated 6/29/21: We are actively testing and baking a solution to improve the accuracy and timeliness of discovered apps. Though we don’t have any dates to currently share, stay tuned to this post and our In development docs for future updates.

Intune provides a host of application management features, such as app availability, App Protection Policies, and app inventory, among others. The Intune discovered apps pane displays a list of detected apps on your Intune managed devices. To learn more about discovered apps in Intune, see Intune discovered apps.

We were recently alerted to an issue whereby not all versions of applications are being reported, inconsistencies of information between Discovered apps report and Discovered apps per devices, and Discovered apps reported under devices blade differs from the actual device. Upon investigation, we discovered an issue with our data aggregation service not collecting all application information. In addition, since the data collection occurs every 7 days, feedback from admins was that they wanted to see applications from newly added devices or updated application versions.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Endpoint Manager admin center
2. Select Apps > Monitor > Discovered apps
3. View the # of devices with a specific app, then newly add that app to an Intune enrolled device
4. Confirm that # Devices does not increase after Step 3

Note: The pane will update # Device after 7 days

Another way to verify:

1. Select Apps > Monitor > Discovered apps report
2. Compare the information displayed with the Device > iOS > Discovered apps

Please note that Android Enterprise Fully Managed and Dedicated devices do not report discovered apps so unfortunately, Intune cannot discover apps on these device types.

Upcoming improvements

Intune has been working on a solution to improve the accuracy and timeliness of discovered apps. We are currently architecting a new data pipeline that will create a more efficient data flow and expect to complete the work by early next calendar year. This work will directly result in the following:

• Increased efficiency of the data pipeline which will drive improvements in reporting/data warehouse
• Improved timeliness of discovered apps by reducing the data collection from every 7 days to every 24 hours
• Improvements to the aggregation workflow in reporting
• Addition of discovered apps from Android enterprise devices
• Discovered apps data will be added to the Azure Log Analytics (Specialist) pipeline

Resources

• Intune discovered apps
• Intune Data Warehouse
• Intune reports - Log Analytics

Let us know if you have any additional questions on this by replying back to this post or tagging @IntuneSuppTeam out on Twitter.

Post Updates:

6/29/21 - We are actively testing and baking a solution to improve the accuracy and timeliness of discovered apps. Future updates can be found in the update text at the beginning of this post.

[Peter Klapwijk]

@Intune_Support_Team The discovered apps from Windows devices also do not show up under Apps, Monitor, Discovered apps. Will that be changed in the future?

[Intune_Support_Team]

Hi @Peter Klapwijk, thanks for the comment! We're looking into this, and will get back to you on this.

[AleksandrBP]

Hi @Intune_Support_Team ,

Reading through Microsoft Intune documentation on discovered apps it is noticeable that the functionality is different between iOS and Android

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/apps/app-discovered-apps

Are there any plans to bring Android Work Profile in line with iOS, where all apps on a users corporate mobile can be viewed? 
You wrote Android Enterprise Fully Managed and Dedicated devices do not report discovered apps, is it corporate-owned platform limitation? Will it be improved in future by you or Google?

[Tuukka Tiainen]

Hi @Intune_Support_Team ,

We have been struggling with Win32 Discovered Apps feature quite a while now. Patch management and application life cycle management is very important for us and therefore we would like to have an access to relevant Win32 app inventory. The base feature for this seems to be valid but Discovered Apps for Win32 is inaccurate for all the tenants we manage. The biggest problem in my opinion is that the Discovered Apps view multiple version of the same application. It seems that for example Google Chrome will list all the previous versions as well even though it has been updated to the latest one.

Are there any updates on this matter? We have opened multiple support tickets on this topic in the past.

[Intune_Support_Team]

@Peter Klapwijk, the Apps list and "Monitor" reports are separate reports from Discovered Apps. Currently, the Discovered Apps aggregate list and the per-device list are inconsistent due to infra challenges. In the future, we plan to bring consistency to these 2 reports.

[Intune_Support_Team]

Hi @AleksandrBP, @Tuukka Tiainen, thank you both for the questions! We're looking into this and will get back to you on this. Thanks for the feedback!

[Dimitry Izotov]

@Intune_Support_Team 

1. Select Apps > Monitor > Discovered apps report <<<< is no longer available

Your message is a bit confusing. You say :

"Please note that Android Enterprise Fully Managed and Dedicated devices do not report discovered apps so unfortunately, Intune cannot discover apps on these device types."

Wheres, this documentation (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/intune/apps/app-discovered-apps#details-of-discovered-apps) clearly states that: 

" On corporate devices, any app whether it is a managed app or not is collected for this report. "  it also states that "Only apps installed in the Android Enterprise fully managed work profile". 

Please clarify which Android Enterprise enrolment method is capable of recording information about personal Discovered apps.

Regards

[Intune_Support_Team]

Hi @AleksandrBP, @Tuukka Tiainen, the feature team is continuing to work and improve the Discovered Apps report where it should fix a lot of the inconsistent behaviors you are experiencing. Stay tuned to this post for any future updates as well as our In development and What's new docs for new features coming to Intune. Thanks!

[AleksandrBP]

Hi @Intune_Support_Team  are there any updates on this matter?

[matthewobrien8]

Hi @Intune_Support_Team is there any update on this? We need to be able to report on what application versions we have out there, so we can track down any vulnerabilities we might have. At current we only have 60 devices showing a reasonable number of discovered apps, even then the app versions don't correspond with what is installed on the device. The other 800 plus devices just show the built in Microsoft apps, as discovered apps and nothing else. It's going to be unlikely we can move to a fully intune managed environment until this is fixed.

[Tuukka Tiainen]

Would Defender for Endpoint work for u? It will list third party apps all right.

[matthewobrien8]

@Tuukka Tiainen thanks for the tip, we intend to move over to Defender for Endpoint shortly so I will look into it that way. 

[Douglas Moody]

Hi,

In the above you mention the following updates coming:

Upcoming improvements

Intune has been working on a solution to improve the accuracy and timeliness of discovered apps. We are currently architecting a new data pipeline that will create a more efficient data flow and expect to complete the work by early next calendar year. This work will directly result in the following:

• Increased efficiency of the data pipeline which will drive improvements in reporting/data warehouse
• Improved timeliness of discovered apps by reducing the data collection from every 7 days to every 24 hours
• Improvements to the aggregation workflow in reporting

What is the status of these improvements? which have been implemented and which are still in work?

I am trying to use the Apps>Monitor>Discovered apps to determine which IOS application versions exist and the reporting seems highly delayed.

It is impractical to open 1500 devices and determine the version of the app discovered, to assess the state of application versioning deployed in my tenant. Is there a different method that will allow for reporting on IOS applications discovered within a reasonable amount of time?

[Intune_Support_Team]

Hi @AleksandrBP, @matthewobrien8, @Douglas Moody, we are currently testing and baking a solution to improve the accuracy and timeliness of discovered apps and appreciate your patience and feedback! Though we don’t have any dates to currently share, stay tuned to this post and our In development docs for future updates.

[Kelvintan23]

Hi Intune Support Team, our company requires an accurate inventory of the software install on the computers for compliance purposes. Is there a workaround to retrieve these information?

[PeteMitchell]

@Kelvintan23 I use a modified version of this - Enhance Intune Inventory data with Proactive Remediations and Log Analytics - MSEndpointMgr  I added the collection of Microsoft Store / APPX packages as well.  The only downside is that the data is stored in Azure Log Analytics, which isn't the easiest thing to pull data from for front ends.  The PowerShell collection script is run via Proactive Remediation in Intune, so it's relatively simple to implement and runs every 24 hours.

[Sebastian Cerazy]

Azure Monitor, an extra chargeable product, quite expensive, but maybe worth a try?

[AleksandrBP]

Hi @Intune_Support_Team  any updates so far?

[Tim_Chen]

@Intune_Support_Team The article mentions that your team is building a new data pipeline that will create a more efficient data flow, and expects to complete this work early next year. How is the progress? When will it be completed? Will there be an official announcement?

[stevenadreamer]

Hi @IntuneSuppTeam, thanks for sharing this post.

As a certified Android Enterprise Expert, I use more than one EMM with many customers and I have to say that every other EMM have the functionality to collect data of Installed apps for Android Enterprise Fully Managed (COBO), Dedicated (COSU), and Corporate-Owned Work Profile devices (WPCOD).

So what I'm asking here is: when will you introduce this fundamental feature in order to make customers more likely to choose or migrate to Microsoft Endpoint Manager as a definitive solution for their mobile devices? This is a huge lack of functionality that every IT Admin needs to have in order to manage its devices.

Thanks for your attention, Stefano

[Varsha_Adhangale]

Hello @IntuneSuppTeam, 

Thanks for sharing information.

is it possible to see when system has sent last time inventory from Intune portal like we have in SCCM? how to identify when inventory data start reporting under discovered apps?

as Microsoft has pushed new Teams version last week as per discovered app the count is not increasing since last 5 days so in this case how we would be able to know when data under discovered apps update? 

[bjornjackers]

@Intune_Support_Team any news on the progress of the new pipeline for discovered apps?
Also it is stated that company owned devices with a work profile should NOT report the personal apps, but we see a different behavior.

Is there a possibility to block the view on the discovered apps (in general, based on a tag or a group)?

[husein_moh]

@Intune_Support_Team is this still under development? Any new update?

[EckieTheTeckie]

@Intune_Support_Team Is there any further news on this? I have an issue where we are seeing that running "wmic product get name" produces 344 installed applications, however Intune only shows 102, which includes Log4j, which does not appear in the 344 from the machine itself! It would be great if we could have an accurate method of extracting a definitive list of installed applications and versions on a device for patching and security compliance. Why does Intune pick up Log4j as being installed when, it is actually not installed, but part of an Android SDK or SQL SDK? Any response would be greatly accepted.

[JakaBean]

Anybody else seeing Google Chrome listed like 30 times with different versions under Devices>Discovered apps??  I have a full page of Google chrome listed for multiple devices. I see version 68.83.xxxx - 109.0.5414.75.

[shahulsk]

@Intune_Support_Team For discovered apps iOS devices showing in the Intune portal but the apps are not showing in the Microsoft defender Endpoint portal in software inventory for the same device in the Intune and defender portal. 

Can I get any information regarding this?

[gokulansubramani]

@Intune_Support_Team any possible/indicative ETA on this.

Have the same issue as outlined by @shahulsk , any response to this?

[Lyntau McFarland]

We're facing the same issue as the people on thread and it appears the inconsistencies with discovered apps reporting have been a problem for many years.  Are there any updates?