What's New in Yokohama Release for Hardware Asset Management

[Faith-Chia]

ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management is essential for minimizing stockroom inventories and resource wastage at the outset of the lifecycle. The value of this service spans from the initial stages to the end of the lifecycle, where asset managers leverage insights from end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-service (EOS) data to assist with hardware refresh planning. This proactive approach helps mitigate risks associated with aging assets, lost or stolen devices, and regulatory requisites while optimizing costs through strategic purchasing methods.

Additionally, Hardware Asset Management simplifies the technology lifecycle by utilizing predefined workflows that align with industry best practices. These streamlined workflows minimize manual tasks, boost operational efficiency, and enhance experiences for both employees and customers, all without the need for multiple tools.

In the ServiceNow Platform® Yokohama release, the core capability for ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management is asset attestation.

Asset Attestation

With the new norm of remote and hybrid workspaces, it’s become difficult to keep track of assets that are located outside of corporate office spaces, such as company laptops and monitors. It can be complicated for companies to keep track of these assets and confirm if they’re still in use, especially when leaving employees may fail to return old assets back to the company.

Companies can keep track of these assets by performing attestation requests, which allow IT users to validate that serialized assets are still in use by the assigned user. Asset attestation enables asset managers to create, assign, and monitor the completion of asset attestations. Asset managers can validate serialized asset usage for hardware not contained in corporate offices. This helps organizations mitigate security risks and inflated asset costs that are incurred from incorrect asset data. Asset managers and end users are the target audience for this feature.

Check out the Yokohama release notes for additional information about Hardware Asset Management in this release.

[Paulo Andrielli]

Hi there, will this be available in the core HAM or in HAM PRO?

[deepakkarun]

This will require HAM Pro. 

[abhijeetsahay7]

Hi there, Was Asset Attestation not available in Xanadu or prior versions? If it was available in the prior versions already then what exactly new feature got introduced in Yokohama with respect to Asset Attestation? TIA

[felixmiske]

@abhijeetsahay7 Asset Attestation is already available in Xanadu. New with Yokohama, Attestation Tasks can be scheduled.

For example: each user has to attest his assigned assets once a year

[Paulo Andrielli]

Hi @felixmiske , how the attestation task works?

I see the attestation fields on each CMDB table, but once user attest the asset, I believe that those fields are filled with proper values (Attested, date and who attested), but how it behaves after one year? Task relies on the attestation date?

Also, what is that "attestation score" for?

[felixmiske]

Hi @Paulo Andrielli,

the attestation recurrence is controlled by the Attestation Policy, rather than the previous attestation date/status.

For example, if the policy runs annually, a new attestation task is created the following year and the included CIs need to be reviewed again. CIs initially appear as Not Yet Reviewed in the new task. Processing the attestation updates Attestation Status, Attested By, and Attested Date on the CI.
⁠ServiceNow Docs – Review attestation tasks

The potentially confusing fields are Attested (attested) and Attestation Score (attestation_score). These are older fields that predate the current Data Attestation functionality and are effectively redundant. A ServiceNow Community explanation provides some background: the boolean was found insufficient for representing the attestation state, while no suitable calculation was defined for Attestation Score.
⁠ServiceNow Community – Data Certification vs. CI Attestation

Therefore, you don’t need to reset Attested to false after one year. The current Data Attestation process uses:

• attestation_status
• attested_by
• attested_date

The next scheduled policy execution creates the new attestation requirement, and processing it updates these fields again.

BR

[Paulo Andrielli]

Hi @felixmiske , thanks for the explanation and the links!

So, those old fields should be deprecated one day, right? Since they are now redundant.... 

Also, once task is completed and assets attested, is there any log file that shows the previous attest from the asset? Or it simply change it back to "not yet reviewed", overwriting existing value?

[Paulo Andrielli]

Hi @felixmiske , one more thing.....

Besides the CIs, I see that table sn_itam_common_attestation_asset_m2m is used for attestation. On this table, I can have many values for the same asset attestation (like a history), so I do not need to rely on each CI's asset (specially assets that does not have a CI, like a monitor or docking station).

So, the attestation is using this table for this purpose, right?

[felixmiske]

Hi @Paulo Andrielli,

Regarding `So, those old fields should be deprecated one day, right? Since they are now redundant.... `: let's just say that ServiceNow is very reluctant in actually removing fieds. There are always customers still using an old approach...
And I'm not even sure if they have a mechanism in place to mark fields as deprecated? 

Regarding `sn_itam_common_attestation_asset_m2m` I think your guess is right - but I did not check that one.

Happy to hear from you if the table is utilized as expected.

BR