Handling Locations at granular level

[Vipin Verma3]

I want to know the best practice for defining the location in ServiceNow (cmn_location). I want to create unique location for rooms in the building. the building has multiple floors, each floor has multiple divisions and each division has multiple rooms. The room numbers can repeat (e.g. Division A can have Room 01 and Division B also can have Room 01). 

cmn_location has base columns Name, Parent, Location type (others are not useful in my case). It is missing a dedicated column for building, floor, division and room.

The first approach I took is to define the Building as parent first and then define all the floors as its child. Later on I define the division as children under floor. In the end define the rooms for each of the division. It creates a hierarchy of Building to Floor, Floor to Division, Division to Room.

This approach has some drawbacks and some benefits. 

benefits - while selecting a location I can view multiple buildings. when I select a building, I can view all the floors in that building. When I select the floor, I can see all the divisions of that particular floor and in the end I can view rooms in the extract division.

drawbacks - in list view I see all the values in same field. It is difficult to see the values as a structured data. e.g. if I want to filter the data based on building first and then based on floor and division and room - it is not possible. And it shows me the parent locations without rooms too which I do not want people to select.

My question is - (quest 1) if the approach I took is the best approach or there are other ways through which I can create the locations. Keep in mind my requirement that my rooms are structured and linked to the division, and floor and building. If this is the best approach then (quest 2) how I can fix the reporting issue and (quest 3) how I can ensure the parent locations are hidden and not allowed to be selected?

[Robin John]

Hi,

I think the hierarchy you mentioned is great. I would also recommend to make use of the Address type field to make it even more granular. Sharing the documentation link. Hope it helps