What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
-Juliet, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
This is part 3 in a series of posts on Model Management. If you have not read them, be sure check out the earlier posts on why Model Management is important and how Models and Model Categories relate.
There are a few things about Models that I like to make sure people understand when they take the ServiceNow Asset Management class:
- The Manufacturer's name does not belong in the Model name
- Each Model and default configuration should have its own record
- Model numbers should be unique
Why not put the Manufacturer in the Model name? You might call a car a Ford Fusion, but if you were to fill it out on a form, the Make (Manufacturer) would be Ford, and the Model would be Fusion. The same applies to your Models in ServiceNow. To make it easier to find and manage, though, Models have a Display name that joins these items to give you the more familiar Ford Fusion. If you put Ford in the Model Name, you would then end up with a Ford Ford Fusion, which would just leave people in a state of con-Fusion.
Each default configuration of a Model has its own Model number from the Manufacturer. This includes different default configurations of the same Model. To help distinguish, each configuration has its own Model Number and Short description.
With the same Name for each of these Models, the Model number acts as the unique identifier for the various configurations. You can use Short description to identify the details about each of the Model's default configurations. Here is an example of three different default configurations of a single Model and how to configure them:
Each of these is a Hewlett-Packard EliteBook 850 G1, but they have different default configurations, as described in their Short descriptions.
Why would you do this? I make this recommendation because it allows you to easily report on the model as a whole regardless of default configuration:
But, if necessary, you can also report on the default configurations separately:
These charts contain a subtle grouping setting that is important. The first report is grouped by Model Name, not by Model. If you group by Model, the report looks similar to the grouping by Model number, but it does not show the distinctions between the Models in the chart's key:
The ability to make this distinction in your reports allows you to more effectively:
- Match up compatible add-ons, such as docking stations
- Identify replacement parts
- Find systems affected by a recall
This is not an exhaustive list, and there may be other opportunities for these reports to provide value to your organization.
There you have it: some recommendations for your Model Names, which is an important aspect of Model Management. There is one drawback to this approach, though. When you add a new asset, it becomes more difficult to select the Model for your asset because all the default configurations display with the same name:
In part 4, I cover some steps to make it easier to identify the different Models in the interface.
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