Hardware asset management - identifying computers by use and/or characteristics...

[Craig Rogers]

I am a new ServiceNow customer and my company is in the early stages of planning and implementing Hardware Asset Management in the platform. I have a question about identifying computers by use and/or characteristics. For example in our company we have some devices that are "normal" PC devices that belong to a single user and are used as their primary device.  We also have some devices that are considered "shared" devices that are in an area but have no single primary user.  We need to be able to identify these devices as shared devices for many reasons including licensing..  We also have devices that are connected to lab equipment and have special handling needs as well as we would like to identify devices that are in conference rooms, devices that are secondary or test devices, devices that are used for Distributed Control Systems (DCS), etc.

Actually this information sounds like CMDB information more than asset information but since we will likely have a ci for every computer asset I dont know that it matters whether the field is on the ci or the asset.

I realize that it is important that our processes, workflows, and tasks are set up to ensure that this data is populated and maintained but my question now is more about where to keep this information that makes sense and I will not be sorry for later...

What is the best field(s) to use to store this information?  Is the "Used for" field intended for this purpose?

Is there maybe a better way to handle this?

[Mark Stanger · Accepted solution]

You're right that the CI table is probably a better place for this type of information.  The 'Used for' field on the CI tables is a decent candidate but you'll want to make sure you don't have items that might be classified by more than one 'Used for' criteria.  For example, the out-of-box choices include the following...

• Demonstration
• Development
• Disaster recovery
• Production
• QA
• Staging
• Test
• Training

As you can see, those choices tend to reflect the type of environment the device is used for.  Based on what you've mentioned, it sounds like you could probably have things that are both 'Development' and 'Shared' for example.  I don't think there's another out-of-box field that really meets what you're looking for.  I would recommend creating a new field on the 'cmdb_ci' table to store all of your custom attributes.  That way, you can have all the flexibility you want without worrying about conflicts with the 'Used for' values.

[Mark Stanger]

Just checking on on this one.  Has this question been answered or is there more information I can help you with?  If it's been answered, please mark the answer above as the correct one so people know this has been taken care of.  Thanks!

[Craig Rogers]

Yes I believe you answered my question and I have now marked it as correct.  Thanks. 

I will probably create a couple of new custom fields on the Computer ci.  One being an "Is Shared" field which defaults to false but can be set to true for any shared devices.  Then another field that might be named "Designation" that will be a selection field defaulting to "Standard" but could be "Lab", "DCS", "Conference Room", or other special designations.  While I am really wanting to stay oob as much as possible, I believe that we will need to extend some tables and add fields to meet some of our asset management needs.

Thanks again for your help and your quick reply.  

[Mark Stanger]

Sounds like a good plan. Trying to stay out of box is a good goal and guideline but in the end you want to get the value out of the tool that your business needs. This type of configuration shouldn't cause you any issues.