Tracking Contract/Asset relationship changes

Alfonso Perez R · ‎02-13-2023

Hello Team,

I have a couple of questions regarding the relationships between Contract/Asset and Contract/CI relationships.

We have found there are two way to relate infrastructure/apps with contracts:

The relationship «Lease Instance» [ast_contract_instance] which relates a CIs with Contracts.
The relationship «Asset Covered» [clm_m2m_contract_asset] which relates Assets with Contracts.

Question 1. ¿Why there are two ways to relate the infrastructure with a contract?

Our understanding is that clm_m2m_contract_asset is focused with financial purposes. We have found the Cost Management application uses actively this table. However we have not found any application using ast_contract_instance, so next questions is: What is the purpose of table ast_contract_instance?

Question 2. ¿Why table ast_contract_instance does not have dates attributes to show when the relationship starts/ends with the contract?

We have found that table clm_m2m_contract_asset have attributes «Date added» [added] and «Date removed» [removed] which are applied to explain when the relationship starts and ends with the contract. Why this kind of attributes are not present in this table ast_contract_instance?

Question 3. ¿What could be the impact in current applications if we decide to allow multiple records of the form [Asset, Contract] in the table clm_m2m_contract_asset?

We have found operational examples where the same asset is linked multiple times to the same contract in different periods of time. We have a compliance need to track all periods where the asset has been linked with a contract because it determines the billing periods for this Asset within the contract scope. One of the solutions which I guess has less impact on the platform (without using a custom table) is to allow multiple records in the table clm_m2m_contract_asset each one reflects the applicability of the contract for this asset, based on start/end dates.

So the question is, Which is the impact on other applications if we decide to alter this behavior in terms of functionalities affected by the platform? We are also open to other creative solutions for this issue.

Question 4. ¿ What could be the impact in current applications if we decide to allow multiple records of the form [CI, Contract] in the table ast_contract_instance and to record also added and removed dates as it works with clm_m2m_contract_asset?

We are using the relationship ast_contract_instance to make an operational (not financial) link between CIs and Contracts, and we plan to record equivalent information on both tables clm_m2m_contract_asset and ast_contract_instance, including multiple records with the structure [CI, Contract] in this table, and also including added/removed dates fields.

So the question again is, Which is the impact on other applications if we decide to add additional fields and alter this behavior in terms of functionalities affected by the platform?

Thanks for your help!

Brad26 · ‎02-28-2023

Alfonso, my sincere apologies for the delayed reply.

I believe many of the above questions pertain to the Contract Management application.

May you please review the documentation links and advise if they answer your questions in part or full?

If not, I can contact contract management SMEs for further feedback. Thanks again for patience 🙂

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/utah-it-asset-management/page/product/contract-management/referen...