Physical Asset Tags to Service Now Asset Profile

DillynITPDC
Tera Contributor

Hello SNow Enthusiasts,

 

Backstory: We will be implementing a Zebra ZD621 Printer on an independent VM on an Azure Server to print out two Physical Asset Tags to put on our hardware. One will be for the Unique Asset Tag that will correlate with the Asset Tag in Service Now's Asset Profile. The other will be the Purchasers information relating it to our readability as a hardware across our footprint and who it belongs to.

 

Problem: We should not use Service Now's auto-generated asset tags as those only cover new assets coming onto the network. This would not allow us the ability to add new asset tags to old asset profiles.

 

Questions:

- Is it possible to have ServiceNow communicate directly with the printer to print asset tags? 

- Is it more feasible to print tags off the Zebra, then correlate them after in ServiceNow?

- Can ServiceNow save a log of what Asset Tags are changing?

3 REPLIES 3

Community Alums
Not applicable

Hey @DillynITPDC 

 

What I have seen is that most folks if they are printing their own asset tags will come up with a process that adheres to the organization's naming standards. From there, you can then use the ServiceNow mobile app to scan the serial number and your asset tags to create assets as your receive/inventory the asset. Here is a great video that walks through in detail exactly how to build this functionality: https://youtu.be/kTF6_6DRS2M?si=0ovkwEFl5TlO-nmY

 

You can see at about 1 hour 4 minutes they show how they create an asset using the barcode scanner.

 

Hopefully this helps!
~Nick

Today Sana Ali, Senior Product Manager, walks us through the how to leverage QR barcode scanning within your mobile apps. We'll begin with a quick overview, then dive into the step-by-step exercise, answering audience questions along the way. Timestamps: Intro & Overview - 0:00 Exercise - 6:10 We

ben_hollifield
Tera Guru

Hey @DillynITPDC - I can speak to the generation and printing of asset tags within ServiceNow. When printing pages of labels, limitations between the browser and the printer can make it difficult to print with the needed level of detail & placement when printing directly from browser. While you can accomplish this with some trial and error, you're generally better off generating pages of asset tags in PDF format within ServiceNow, and then sending those to your printer - that will give you the most precise results. However, with your Zebra printer, you may be printing a single label at a time, which does make it easier to do without the PDF step.

 

You can build this yourself in ServiceNow, but it's a big lift. Presumably, you'll need barcodes or QR codes on those tags, so you need to generate those in ServiceNow. You then need to grab any other needed data to display alongside the QR/barcode and format the asset tag to the appropriate dimensions. And, finally, you need to format and generate a PDF document aligned to the sizing of your labels to send to print.

 

Yansa Labs has built out an app on the ServiceNow Store that does this for you. It may be worth taking a look, whether you're looking to buy a solution or just to get ideas. Here are a couple of links - you can read about the apps and link to the docs to see how they're put together:

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. If building from scratch, it's too big of a project to walk through on the Community, but I'm happy to answer any questions or discuss more about the apps above. In any case, it's a great idea to consolidate the functionality into ServiceNow (where the assets live) instead of maintaining an entirely separate system for tagging.

 

DillynITPDC
Tera Contributor

Nick and Ben,

 

Thank you so much for your insight into this project. We are still struggling getting the Zebra printer on our network, but local access is where its looking to go. I can keep this thread updated to see if anyone else has this issue, btu your input has been a huge help!