ServiceNow SAM Pro - N-1 Report

[chkkishore]

I have enabled SAM Pro and I am currently ingesting the entitlements and installation data into the instance.

I am looking for the best practices as we are trying to generate a software N-1 compliance report out of ServiceNow. Is there any OOTB options available or do we need to create a custom table/ fields to the SAM Product or Model tables to extract the necessary information.

[sanjaygupta]

I would make one important distinction here: SAM Pro does provide out-of-the-box software compliance and lifecycle reporting, but it does not provide a direct N-1 version-compliance report.

There are two relevant out-of-the-box capabilities:

For your requirement, I would use the existing SAM Pro data model and introduce a small custom policy table rather than modifying the out-of-the-box Software Product or Software Model tables.

One important consideration is how you define N. It could mean the latest version released by the vendor or the latest version approved internally by your organization. I would recommend using the internally approved version as the baseline because organizations often have their own upgrade and testing cycles.

Also, be careful with financial reporting if you extend this solution. Joining software installations with entitlement records can produce multiple rows for the same entitlement, particularly when one entitlement covers several installations. If you aggregate software costs directly from such a joined report, you may double-count costs. Keep installation counts and entitlement costs as separate measures, or aggregate each dataset independently before combining the results.

A few official ServiceNow documentation references that will help:

I would avoid adding custom fields directly to OOTB tables unless there is a strong reason. Keep the policy logic separate, use supported references to existing SAM records, and test the reporting logic in a sub-production instance before deployment.

To make the recommendation more precise, it would help to know whether your N-1 baseline should follow the vendor's latest release or your organization's internally approved release.

Lifecycle Management Dashboard

Product life cycles

Software model relationship to software installation

Software Asset Management overview

If historical compliance trends are required, consider Performance Analytics to capture periodic compliance results.

Classify installations as compliant, N-1 compliant or non-compliant.

Build a report that compares normalized installation versions against the approved version policy.

Populate the policy table for selected publishers and products first.

Create a custom table in a scoped application, for example u_sam_version_policy, to maintain the approved N version and the permitted N-1 version for each in-scope product.

Review the Software Model table (cmdb_software_product_model) and check that publisher, product and version information is populated consistently.

Open the Software Installation table (cmdb_sam_sw_install) and verify that installations are associated with the correct software models.

Navigate to Software Asset > Overview and review your normalization status.

Software lifecycle management: SAM Pro provides the Software Lifecycle Report and, in supported releases, the Lifecycle Management Dashboard. These help identify software approaching or reaching End of Support (EOS), End of Extended Support (EOES) and End of Life (EOL). They do not automatically enforce an N-1 version policy.

ServiceNow+2

License compliance: SAM Pro reconciliation compares software installations with purchased entitlements and identifies licensing compliance, under-licensing and over-licensing. This is different from checking whether installed software is within one major version of the latest release.