Tracking record history from imports

[Mike D1]

Hi

I have been asked to create a scheduled import for our mobile and laptop fleet. I will be using the serial number of each device for coalescence. 

The problem is when a user leaves and their old device gets reprovisioned to another user the import will update that record, but we still need to be able to see who had that device previously.

I am wanting to know the best way to create this and have the information easily available. I initially thought I would just enable auditing on the table, however I am hoping someone knows a far better way? 

Thanks

Mike

[Ethan Davies · Accepted solution]

Hi Mike,

I have a few suggestions based on a couple of scenarios below, let me know if you want me to expand on any of them. Spoiler, I think Scenario 3 might be what you're looking for.

Scenario 1: You only want to see who owned it last

This one is probably the easiest one to do. This could be done by having a field on target table called 'Previous Owner' that you could update with the incumbent owner before they are re-provisioned. The only downside to this approach is that you would only ever see who owned it before the incumbent and that information would change each time a device is re-provisioned.

Scenario 2: You just want the owners to be audited

This scenario works when you just want the peace of mind that the system is recording the previous owners and you could pull a report or find out (with some work) if you needed to. This approach is similar to something like viewing data in an activity steam for a ticket i.e you can see the system is keeping track over what the previous value(s) of field X was and is.

This scenario would require the table and applicable fields to be audited: https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0723730

To be honest, I'd recommend doing that anyway for peace of mind.

Scenario 3: You want a full record of previous owners

This one is a little techy so bear with. To get a full list of User X owned Device Y at Date/Time Z we would need to create a new Table (or it could be done with a relationship, but thats for the implementer to decide) that tracks the relationship between a user and a device, think of this as a many to many table. Many users can have been assigned this device.

The table would include records that maybe look like the following:

Device	User	Assigned	Status	Re-provisioned
XPS 13	Joe Bloggs	23rd May 2020	Currently Assigned	N/A
XPS 13	Jane Doe	23rd May 2018	Re-provisioned	23rd May 2020

Obviously the fields above are just a flavour of how a record could look in this table. Having records in this table would make them quite easy to report on and would also allow you to bring this table in as Related List on the form for the assets that you are tracking this for.

Hopefully these suggestions helps. I think Scenario 3 might fit the bill with some tweaks that make it useful for your org and use cases.

Let me know if you have any questions on any of the scenarios.

Please mark this answer as correct or helpful if it aided in solving your issue, thanks!

[Mark Manders]

What are your objections to turning on auditing on the table? It's the easiest way to do this and you are sure to always have the data available.

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Mark

[Mike D1]

Thanks Mark. My only objection is the user experience. It seems a time consuming task to go to the audit history. If there was a simple way to bring that data on to the form then it would be great i.e. adding some new fields to pull this info in.