Managing "Assigned To" for Asset and Discovery

[pgd]

Good morning Community,

We currently utilize Discovery, CMDB and Asset Management within SNOW.   We also supplement our discovered data with a feed from our Microsoft SCCM installation.   Recently, we've been having discussions about the quality of "Assigned To" data.   Currently, this field is populated with the user to last log into a machine.   We also notice is some cases there is no value populated (either from discovery or SCCM).   It seems unlikely that a user has never logged into the machine, so there must be something else occurring.   A further issue is that Technicians or Service Desk colleagues will be assigned to multiple devices at any given time, since they log into workstations other than their own.

Our goal is to have this Assigned To field populated for all workstations, with the accurate user that is assigned the device.   However, we also want to cross check that user against the most recently logged-in user.   My solution is to create a new field, Last Log-in User, and alter the discovery code to populate this field instead of Assigned To.   Then, we create a process to manually populate Assigned To at time of device deployment.

Before we develop this change, I wanted to see if anyone else in the community has experienced similar issues, and what their solution was to the problem.   Thank you in advance for any feedback!

Respectfully,

Patrick Dietzel

[Ivano B]

Hi Patrick

I think your solution is more than reasonable.

Usually the 'assigned to' field in the CMDB is used where the user is physically assigned to the CI OR has a strong connection with the machine similar to ownership.

A possible explanation for using the 'assigned to' field to store the last logged user can be the fact that the field wasn't used.

Usually the best practice suggest to re-use an existing unused field so everything makes sense.

Just one last consideration.

if you want to move on with your solution remember about the impact caused in using the new field.

I mean you need also to clean the 'assigned to' field for all the existing CIs where the field has been previously populated through the discovery, because from now on the field is dedicated to a completely different information.

Cheers

Robo

[mikec3]

We have the same issue with SCCM and to solve it we are considering mapping the "Top Console User" field from SCCM to the "Assigned" to user field in Service Now. That way if a help desk or desktop tech logs into the machine, the system doesn't try and assign it to them. We have not yet implemented this, but I thoguht I'd put it out there for you.

Thanks

[pgd]

Thanks Mike.   I'll look into that field.   I'm not familiar with it.

[guillaumeh]

Hi,

Did you found the right field for top console user in SCCM table ?

Is the table/column below top console user or last login ?

Table Name - dbo.system_Console_User_DATA

Column Name — SystemConsoleUser00

Guillaume