HAM Mobile App Asset Serial Number Scan Leading 'S'

[ChadO]

Hello everyone.  We are in the process of implementing HAM processes around receiving assets into our stockrooms and then keeping them updated throughout the lifecycle, including using stockroom audits.  One issue we're running into is around scanning bar codes with the ServiceNow mobile app.  For at least some manufacturers, possibly all, when we scan the serial number bar code on the box it gets an 'S' character prepended to the actual serial number.  For example, if the serial number is "ABC123" it shows up as "SABC123" when we scan the serial number bar code.  The problem is, that's not the actual serial number of the device and so our MDM tools will not return "SABC123" but rather the actual serial number of "ABC123".  This will result in a mismatch of assets and so the MDM tool, via Service Graph connectors, will create a new asset instead of matching to the existing one.  Has anyone else run into this and is there any solution to this such that our techs don't have to manually edit the serial number every time they scan a bar code before submitting it into the instance?  That sort of seems like it defeats the point of any efficiencies gained by using the mobile app to scan the serial numbers in the first place.

Note: We don't use asset tags in our environments so that is why we are scanning the serial numbers instead.  We do already have logic in the instance to copy the serial numbers to the asset tag field so that when we scan the "asset tag" in the mobile app it's actually matching to the device serial number.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Chad

[WPurvis]

We're dealing with this issue as well and it's incredibly irritating. Along with having to customize the scan feature to compare the serial number of assets, and not the asset tag. I'm really surprised that is not OOB functionality. We do utilize asset tags in specific instances for our infrastructure, so we can't just blanket copy the serial number over to the asset tag.

[Robert _ysakows]

I did not come across that issue in my instance but I use the default scanning to the asset tag field.

How did you manage to scan to the serial number field? I would prefer that as we do exactly as you described - serial numbers are copied via business rule to the asset tag field.

[WPurvis]

We're working to implement it, but are struggling to. I know another contact that has done it successfully so I'm hoping he'll be able to help me out, but here is a link to another thread that goes more into detail.

https://www.servicenow.com/community/sam-blog/how-to-perform-asset-audits-by-asset-tag-and-or-serial...

[ChadO]

We aren't actually scanning to the SN field directly.  We copy the SNs to the Asset Tag field via a business rule.  The app is still matching the barcode scan against the Asset Tag field but since the Asset Tags are the SNs it finds a match, except with the barcodes that prefix the 'S' to the SN.  We have tried putting some logic in where when we get advance feeds of asset data from our suppliers we add our own prefix 'S' to the SN of certain assets from certain manufacturers prior to creating the in transit asset.  Then when we scan it to receive it, the SNs match, even with the 'S' prefix.  However, we ran into other issues with this approach even if we wait to remove the prefix until after the asset moves to the In Use state and so we haven't really been able to use the mobile app's asset functionality with respect to receiving and stockrooms and whatnot like we hoped.