ServiceNow License Management Help

[Vance1]

Hello,

I have been looking through the Wiki and ServiceNow Community for the best way to view and manage ServiceNow License utilization but have not come across a "Best Practice" for how to do so.

• I found some very helpful threads that explain how to configure some report settings (Thread-1, Thread-2) but essentially they direct you to paste "javascript:gs.getRoledUsers()" into the sys id filter on the sys_user table tweak from there. Thread-1 had a nice speedometer built from the "sys_user_has_role" table, but neither of these options provide details about where the licenses are used internally like by department without additional data analysis.
• I found a thread that suggested the use of "System Usage" but the number of licensed users displayed here was different that what I get using the report method above.
• Finally, I came across something called "Subscription Management Application" that seems to be the most promising, except... Subscription data arrives on production instances only and the application will not be made available until Helsinki. How am I supposed to test this as a solution in my development instance if I am only able to access data in my production instance? It would be nice to know exactly how this application will be generating an accurate license count. A dedicated video about the intended usage of this application and demonstration would also be helpful. Will automation be built in? Can I have the system reclaim licenses based on specified criteria like no login within 6 months?

What I am looking for:

• The best, most accurate way to monitor ServiceNow License usage with visibility down to department and user at this point in time.
• I would like to know how license reporting works between ServiceNow and Us (company). It seems that ServiceNow must be monitoring our instance and bills us periodically based on this reporting mechanism. I would like to know how often ServiceNow counts our licenses used and what criteria is being used to generate that report so we can duplicate it for accurate planning.

Thanks to anyone who is able to help. I feel like something as important as License Management shouldn't be this difficult.

[Vance1]

Hi Diego,

So glad this thread helped so many people. 

There isnt one OOTB configured that way as far as I know. As per this thread, SN has not provided much transparency regarding license management. IMO, this is one of the most important solutions to provide to its users as many of us are charged for the tool by the seat. 

You can do 1 of 3 things to get the data you seek.

1st) Use the Subscription Management module. You will need to configure a user set which is basically the same as using a report filter to identify the criteria a user needs to meet before counting them as a licensed user. My suggestion would for you to use groups or roles specific to that module. You can see the roles installed with the Security Incident Response module here. Read my response to saiteja.474 above for a bit more explanation. NOTE: the system updates the license counts based on users meeting the specified criteria, so if a user doesnt meet your criteria to be counted anymore, it will appear in Subscription Management that they are unlicensed but they could still have a license from a manually assigned or inherited role. Subscription Management does not remove any roles from users, its really just a glorified counter. 

2nd) Create a report as noted in my solution above and filter for the roles you use in the Security Incident Response module. 

3rd) Build a report with another tool like Tableau

Ultimately, your contract will specify how you need to monitor for user licenses and while many are similar, no 2 are the same lol.

Personally, I built a tableau dashboard that runs daily in the morning so I can have a snapshot in time for that day (lets me see license activity over time and know when to beef up operations), a record of truth, and custom breakdowns. Access to the Tableau dashboard is granted by me adding/removing users from a group to keep security simple. 

One additional thing that I implemented was automated license reclamation. Automatically reclaiming licenses is an industry standard in Software Asset Management and it isnt done OOTB in SN. We began using 90days of inactivity as the threshold, we established clear communication regarding the implementation, created a templated response to send the user as a warning 1 week prior to reclaiming their license so they have an opportunity to login and reset their last login time. 

Good Luck! reply if you need additional help, just be sure to read the above OP and responses as they might answer some of your questions.

Regards,

Vance

[Diego A_]

Thanks for your reply Vance, much appreciated.

It seems like the value of the Subscriptions Management module is more for User-based licensing metrics.

However, for modules like Sec Ops (device-based) or Orchestration (transaction-based), I would really like to see an OOB feature to extract the consumption in a single dashboard, rather than reaching out to multiple internal ServiceNow teams to access such data from different sources.

That would also help to realise the value of the ServiceNow SAM module (I mean, it would be great to know how ServiceNow tracks its own license metrics and consumption).

Cheers,

Diego.