Best practices for naming configuration items in hardware assets

[booher04]

We are somewhat new to the asset management modules in ServiceNow and I'm just wondering what a best practice would be for naming(Name field on cmdb_ci_computer) the configuration item that displays on the Hardware Asset form.   I have setup the Display name to pull the Model data but I was wondering what most people use as the "Name" for their configuration items.   On our configuration item form we have:   Manufacturer and Model ID that we use, but Name is blank right now(which is what hardware assets seem to pull the "configuration item" field from).   Would a best practice be to use the Manufacturer and Model ID for that configuration item field?

[Community Alums]

Jeffrey,

The default in the system just puts the model name there, but that can be problematic because it makes it difficult to tell the CIs apart from one another. I know a number of customers and partners who change this to use the serial number by default instead.

That being said, the Name field on the CI when found by your discovery source, should be updated to the hostname of the device. This can make the default value pretty much moot if your process does a discovery pretty early in the operational portion of the lifecycle. This should not be a value you need to maintain manually.

Ben

[booher04]

Ben - thanks for the response.

The problem is we do not use discovery.   The way it's being done currently(we are working to make this better, which is partly why I posed the question) is we manually will add in a computer here and there, but usually it's done through a data source import(excel) and a transform map ran.    

[Community Alums]

Jeffrey, you do not need discovery. Do you have any kind of discovery source you can use? This could be a deployment tool like Microsoft SCCM or something similar.

If you have absolutely nothing, you will find some other areas of asset management (like software asset management) very difficult or impossible. If you don't have anything, I would look to change the default so that it puts in the Serial number instead of the Model for the CI name.

Ben

[michaeldeutsch]

How can I change the default behavior to set the CI Name to Asset Tag?