Are Life Cycle Stage and Life Cycle Stage status ready to be used primarily?

[Jens Tanneberge]

Some time ago we have activated life cycle mappings. This works somehow, but not perfectly, and also does not well consider some of the other status fields like hardware status.

Did anyone succeed to switch "completely" to the new Life Cycle Stage / Life Cycle Stage status fields, completely disregarding the other fields?
I. e. using the new fields instead of any of the legacy fields? Are they ready for "prime time"?

Thanks

Jens

[Marshall Parker]

I am currently working through the same line of questioning regarding the Life Cycle status and primary use. Best I can tell from ServiceNow sources, it is recommended to evaluate but no current push to mandate use of Life Cycle yet.

Some products definitely still use either Operational Status or Install Status fields extensively in their internal logic, and then as you are bumping up against the hardware status [which is a holdover from a time before the Asset tables existed..] it gets complicated.

One step I ran across the other day is this SN HI KB article that identifies how to move away from the hardware status dictating the mapping synchronization .. I am still evaluating the impact of this for my instance, but I think this will help in unwinding some of the complexities of multiple fields being used across the tool.

Ideal state is to standardize on 1 field type being used for population - and then letting the synchronizations move data to the other fields. With the current maturity of the environment, it appears the easiest method right now is something like:

- Primary field for edits via scripts, transforms, imports, workflows == Install Status

- Auto synchronizations in place:

• Install Status -> Asset State
• Install Status -> Operational Status [so far as Retired vs. Non-Retired]
• Install Status -> Life Cycle

- Primary field for VIEW on all forms == Life Cycle

- ignored for all practical purposes == Hardware Status

still working through all of this and unwinding both the OOB code and several customizations in my current environment, but also keen to hear how others are working through these types of issues.

[Jens Tanneberge]

Thanks for the insights and recommendations. I will continue to review and share results as well.
In our case, the "old" primary field is Operational Status rather than Install Status which makes it slightly different but not better.