Retiring Assets via Active Directory

[kathymorris]

Hi All,

We have ITSM Asset Management (not HAM). Currently our Service Desk goes into AD and manually retires each asset individually. The agents want to be able to retire a list of assets.

To retire the Asset, below are the two options being considered. 

Option A. Create a new task for ABC team in existing Discovery RITM to manually retire one CI at a time in Active Directory.

                        Pro: A1. Less work, No new Catalog Item needs to be created.

                             A2. In future when ServiceNow is integrated with AD, this task can be automated.

                         Con: A3 Fulfiller is manually actioning in AD one CI at a time

Option B. Create a new Catalog Item, Schedule task will run and pick all retired in past one week and create a task using new Catalog Item listing these retired computers.

                        Pro: B1: Fulfiller is manually actioning in AD all CI retired in past week in one sitting.

                        Con: B2: More coding, a new Catalog Item is created

                                   B3: Whenever in the future ServiceNow is integrated with AD, this code would be disabled, and we will have to implement Solution A along with automation.

How should this Asset Retire process work? Would it be wiser for us to integrate with AD to automate this process? With decommissioning an asset, are there certain steps we should be following? (i.e. removing software also?) Are there any pros/cons that you recommend?

Thanks,

Kathy

[Mark Manders]

Your first question should be: why do you need 2 systems at all? Why are you using asset management in ServiceNow when you have it in AD? And why do you have asset management in AD when you have it in ServiceNow. Is it needed in both? What functionality makes that you need it in both systems?

If the answer to that is that you indeed need it in both systems (not just because it once was in AD and you started using ServiceNow and needed the assets there to), you should automate it. If you are using tasks that an agent/engineer needs to pick up, you always run the risk of something going wrong, resulting in a difference between the systems. 

Your comment 'in the future when they are integrated', scares me a bit. Because that suggests that creation is also done in both systems? I think you should make a hard case to management that "the future is now" and that you shouldn't be focusing on how to make the manual process easier for the time being, but create that automation yesterday.