Does CI identification rules apply when creating an CI manually from an Asset?

Morten Steenbac · ‎08-21-2017

When creating an Asset manually and a related CI is automatically created, is the identification/reconciliation process involved to check for duplicates.

Or is it only during Discovery?

Community Alums · ‎08-25-2017

Morten,

No. CI Identification rules are not used for the automated creation of a CI with an Asset record. It is designed to just create a new CI record.

Asset management processes should be creating the CI first. In a proactive manner. Then discovery sources should be updating that CI record (preferably using the Identification and Reconciliation engine).

When items are brought into ServiceNow from your discovery source, then one of two things happens:

A matching CI is found and updated. This happens when the Asset created the CI first or if the CI was discovered previously.
No match is found and a new CI is created. Based on the Model Category, a corresponding Asset record is also created. If you are adding asset details later, you should update this automatically created Asset record (coalesce if you are importing Asset data).
1. If you do not want to automatically create an Asset (because the Asset record should exist first), you can enable the Enforce CI verification option on the Model Category. This prevents the Asset creation until you either verify that you want an Asset or Merge the CI with an existing CI (perhaps something was off and it did not properly merge). This gives you more control about how Assets and CIs are coordinated.
2. If you do not want to automatically create an Asset (because you do not purchase a specific Model or the Model is virtual), you can set the Asset tracking strategy on the Model record to not create Assets.

Sorry, this is probably a lot more detail than you were looking for here, but Assets are meant to be created first, so there is not identification done when the corresponding CI is created. If the CI is already there, you should be updating an existing Asset instead of creating a new Asset, so you really should be identifying that on the Asset side.

Ben

View solution in original post

rodeliodoria · ‎09-15-2017

Ben,

I found my issue to the asset record not creating a corresponding dummy CI upon creation.

The "Create CI on insert" was broken and did not build the CI upon asset creation. The process we are taking will add the serial number to the asset record from the procurement module and the serial number will transpose to the CI being created. When Discovery scans the network for that device, it update the asset and CI attributes after the device is probed using the Serial number as the unique identifier.

Business Rule on Asset - "Create CI on insert"

Condition to fix it - current.sys_class_name != 'alm_consumable' && current.sys_class_name != 'alm_license' && current.ci.nil() && current.substatus != 'pre_allocated' && current.model_category.cmdb_ci_class != ''

1.. Asset record created with serial number, model category and model

2. The asset will build a "dummy CI record" with "model" as the CI name and when discovery scans, it will use serial number to transform the data on both records.

3. They will transform since they share the same sys ID.

4. The CI is only created when the "State" of the asset is switch to "received" , this will trigger a business rule to create the CI.

Community Alums · ‎09-15-2017

Yes, if the Business Rule was changed, then that could cause an issue. Good find.

Your number 2. above is not quite right. When discovery scans, it is only going to update the CI record. Discoverable information is stored on the CI. Because the name of the CI gets updated, this is reflected in the Configuration Item field that displays on the Asset record.

Also, unless you updated something in the BR, the CI creation is not dependent upon the state of the Asset (i.e. being received).

Ben

rodeliodoria · ‎09-18-2017

Ben,

Do you know if the asset record is manually managed? This means the assigned to field must be handled by the asset team. I just want to make sure so ican set expectations to our process owners.

Community Alums · ‎09-18-2017

Assigned to can be managed from the Asset or CI perspective and is synchronized between them.

rodeliodoria · ‎09-19-2017

I am having some issues where CI sync is not syncing any information that changes on the asset or CI record. Do you know the best way to troubleshoot this?