How do you handle mobile devices in asset management?

[HugoFirst]

My Service Desk manager needs to track mobile devices in the asset management app.   So I need to add a new category of "mobile device".

So far so good.   There is an issue however, because the category needs to be associated with a CMDB table, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the choices available.

And while I could create a new table to extend an existing table, I still need to decide which table to extend.

I have seen the article at this link: Re: CMDB, Mobile, Plotter, Monitor, Scanner

It recommends the use of the cmdb_ci_comm table.   While this table will certainly fill my immediate needs, I'm nor sure it's the best fit for my situation in the longer term.

I'm looking at the cmdb_ci_computer table because it tracks more information about the device than cmdb_ci_comm.

So I'd like to hear how other people are doing this and what worked well.

[Erik Stolberg]

I use the "cmdb_ci_comm" table and the existing "Communication Device" model category. I did end up adding a few fields on the tables to track device details, such as Phone Number, Carrier, IMEI, and SIM/ICCID. I created UI Policies to only show the fields when the category was Communication Device or Tablet (model category I created using new CI class table extended from cmdb_ci_computer).

The nice thing with Helsinki is the addition of the "Asset-CI Field Mappings" that allow you to easily map fields between your cmdb tables and your asset tables (which makes mapping customized fields really easy).

[eferringtonFP]

Good call Erik!   Helsinki is helping up sync is.   May as well call it Hel-Sync-y

If you are managing contracts as well, you will have 2 asset records to manage: Device & Number/DataService.

[bill_blaney]

Sorry to reply on such an old post, but I'm going through the same effort now (i.e. mobile device asset management) and have a roadblock. I'd love to get your thoughts. I want my end user's main interface to be the Asset (not the CI) because our main purpose is asset management. I want to use the alm_hardware table. I also want to create/sync a related CI as well (in the cmdb_ci_comm table).

My roadblock is that I can find no way to sync fields from extended tables (e.g. alm_hardware, cmdb_ci_comm). The ServiceNow "Asset-CI Field Mapping" features only support fields on the base tables (alm_asset, cmdb_ci). The base ServiceNow instance has Phone Number defined on the cmdb_ci_comm table and my inclination is to use that. Now, I could go through an effort to (re)define the necessary fields (e.g. phone number, IMEI) on the base classes and show/hide them selectively via UI Policy, but that seems wrong to me. I'd just be doing it to be able to map the fields, not because that's where those fields really belong.  It would also render useless the Phone Number field that comes OOTB on cmdb_ci_comm.

Alternately, I could create my own Business Rules to sync these fields between alm_hardware and cmdb_ci_comm, but that also seems wrong.

Thoughts?

[Community Alums]

Just a note with the field mappings: Just because this capability is there does not mean you should create duplicate fields in multiple tables and set them up to synchronize.

A better practice is to determine where this information should live. As Erik Stolberg describes, this type of information (phone number, carrier, etc.) is operational data that should live on the CI record. Rather than creating multiple fields to store the same data, you can instead display these values on the Asset record if you want to see them there, too.

[bjmcdonald]

So you use cmdb_ci_comm for smartphones and for tablets?   Or are you using cmdb_ci_computer for tablets?