Discovery Network Audio/Video equipment

[Dead Blade]

Has anyone attempted to Discovery Network Audio/Video equipment to create CI/Assets?

[Matthew Fearnle]

William,

Happy to help. As context, I entered an environment where "some" of the AV equipment was in the CMDB. I deleted all of it and strted from step one. Depending on your situation I can go deeper but here's what I did.

1. Take any data you have (current CMDB, spreadsheets, asbuilts, vendor docs, etc)   and post them to a central SharePoint site, at some point you'll have conflicting info.

2. Etabllish a seperate Service Now (SN) catagory for ("Audio Visual") as you would for ("Printers") or ("Servers"), this is important because the Service Desk is used to seeing Cisco and Polycom as assets for the network and telephony teams respectively. You can establish subcatagories (switchers, converters, monitors, ete) later.

3. Use current "Building" and "Room" designations make sure that different teams aren't using different designations such as desktop team uses "Frank Lloyd Wright" room and facilities uses "Room1102"

4. Establish Audio Visual roster: ie SN team can add all AV member names to a drop down menu for SN ticket asignment

5. Use Fusion/Crestron toolbox as a search tool but verify with the network team using HP Discovery or similar network search tool to verify the Crestron environment

This is step one, sound fun (it actually is but I'm a geek).

Quick tips:

The service desk isn't always hip to the AV nomenclature so Knowledgebase (KB) articles can be very helpful (we can touch on that later)

Make sure you assign youself (or a team member) as the contact for Disaster Recovery(DR)

You'll have to eventually assign the networked (see:Crestron/ and videoconferencing) assets to a switch and have a discussion with the network team. They will love you for this!

Hope this is enough to get you started, I am about to start a similar project for Northeastern University in Boston.

I too often wondered if there was a working group for this.

I guess we're it!, I hope to keeep the discusion going.

Regards,

Matthew Fearnley

Boston, MA

[Dead Blade]

Hi Matthew, it sounds like we have similar ideas.   So I have access to the Crestron sql DB that the global AV guys has all his information.   My thought is:

Overall idea.

1.   Import the AV devices from the Crestron DB to the ServiceNow newly created AV Asset Table.

2.   Create Probes to Discover the AV devices globally and populate and update the AV Asset Table that I have created.  

3.   Allow automation to created an Associated CI table for the   AV devices.

So question, have you created the probes to discover your AV devices?   And if so, would you be willing to share what you have done?

[Matthew Fearnle]

I have cross-referenced vendor data with a serch (by MAC Prefix) using HP Discovery. If you are in a multi conference room environment, I had the SN Developer team give me an option of GREEN/YELLOW/RED. Green=good, Yellow=has issues but usable, Red=Not funtional, I rolled this into an automated report   so the whole team got a snapshot first thing in the Morning.

I also kept track of software versions, EOL (End of Life) and EOS (End of Service.

Once I got to the point where an AV asset outlived its depreciation schedule I created a formula.

How long can this run before we can expext issues?

ex: If the vendor/AV Team says 18monthe take 100% divided by 18 =5.6% so insert a formula that adds 5.6% per month and that gives you the risk profile of something failing. JBL speakers will go for years, Crestron touch panels ....not so much.

What this crates is a budget based on need, CIOs hate to be blindsided by new requests. If you build the risk profile and deliver it then management is aware of the risk and this puts it all on the table.

For the CI I worked with the Network team and attached it to not only Network asset but the appropriate data center or IDF closet. This gives you a hint if something mysterious goes down and someone was working in that closet.

For a CI search I believe you can program asset/attachment by mac address. Search all the switches by attachec MAC ( you'll have to do it by manufacturer) so search Cicso switches IP range xxxxxxxxxxxx to xxxxxxxxxxxx attchec (Crestron MAC) =IP

What is your serch tool?

MF

[Dead Blade]

Hi Matthew, would you be willing to collaborate over webex?   If so, what day and time (with time zone) works best for you next week? or today?

It Sounds like you are doing exactly what I would like to accomplish.

Great job!

[Dead Blade]

Hi Matthew,

I was speaking with a ServiceNow Dev today about the future of Video/Audio equipment in servicenow.   I think this might be something that interest you.   Contact me directly if you like,

william.brazier@jeppesen.com