question Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models in HAM forum

Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

JanG35815328307 — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 13:59:27 GMT

Hi All,

I'm facing the following scenario:

we have assets (laptops) and consumables (keyboards) that are ordered based on approved models (multiple models of laptops, keyboards and keyboard+mouse combos).

In most countries we have the same keyboards layout, however some countries (i.e. Germany) have different keyboard layout on both - laptops as well as external keyboards. We have more than 20 laptop models + number of consumable models in place. We don't have hardware model normalization module enabled.

I need to ensure that:

1. We use/order only approved models (both consumables and hardware assets)

2. The keyboards are matching the local requirements (hardware is ordered globally)

I've tried to search on a web what's the standard way to handle such situation - are we able to break down the model into some sort 'sub-models' or do we need to create a separate model for each country (which would make it unmanageable as we would have hundreds models to manage).. or is there any other solution that would work?

Any suggestions?

Kind regards,

Jan

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Ed Laar — Wed, 22 Feb 2023 21:16:41 GMT

Hi Jan,

I recognize your use case where you have to deal with country specific models because keyboards or other elements are different or better country specific.

I always look to the way the manufacturers of the involved items deal with this and in most of the cases at the end they are using specific models or more generic models with a specifc option what is in fact also a specic model.

I am very afraid that there is no other way than to follow this method as it also aligns with the models as defined by the manufacturers and so aligns to the models used in procurement.

A suggestion can be in order to simplify the Asset Request for users is to make only the basic model requestable (ie a lenovo model xyz laptop) and in the fulfillment process choose and deliver the right country specic laptop model xyz.

In daily practice: The Asset Request will be send to the involved country where only country specifc laptops are available.

For global procurement purposes: They have to deal with all these specic models.

Last but not least an other point of attention: Remember that each Asset is registered in the AMDB and CMDB. You want to know the country specific characteristics or not? Perhaps (thinking out loud) you can add a couple of fields that can contain the type of keyboard (ASCII or ....). In that case you can have one Model and the ' type of keyboard' field indicates the keyboard.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to know your idea's and final solution.

Cheers,

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Fred Jean — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 17:11:27 GMT

Hello, this is interesting matter and it seems ServiceNow is not well tailored for that even though it does look like a basic requirement.

We have the case were all laptops (Dell) are ordered from the same vendor (Dell) and the purchase order (outside ServiceNow) can specify the wanted keyboard. The Dell models have the same model numbers whatever the keyboard layout.

Requirements I guess one would have around that :

When a users request a laptop he can select the wanted keyboard laptop, then agents should be able to use the sourcing feature to either
- create a purchase order indicated the wanted model and the keyboard layout
- or create a transfer order allowing to select the relevant asset matching the wanted keyboard
When looking at assets or trying to select an asset on a form, I should be able to select the right asset with the right keyboard (that probably means having the keyboard indication on the asset display name)
And regarding stock rules I guess it would also be wanted to specify threshold per model and keyboard

And even with the paid HAM plugin, there seem to be no support for that.

Then having end-to-end integration between service request using the sourcing feature seems impossible as Procurement or Transfer orders rely on selecting just a model with no way to specify options (on the sourcing GUI).

So for this kind of need one could think it would be better to have one model record per keyboard, even if they have the same model number, but that would not work with Normalization nor with Discovery.

How do people deal with that ? (Without doing too much custom dev such as customization the sourcing UI page and related scripts)

I posted an Idea related to that matter but I'd be happy to hear about existing solutions : https://support.servicenow.com/now?id=view_idea&sysparm_idea_id=19d6721647cc0a50b6a52545d36d43ee&sysparm_idea_table=x_snc_com_ideation_idea&sysparm_module_id=enhancement_requests

Regards,

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Premankit — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 03:39:07 GMT

You can try playing with published catalog availability. You can publish two models but make them available based on country the model work. I think available for and not available for are not by default displayed, you will need to add them.

let me know if that didn't help.

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Fred Jean — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:24:12 GMT

So you are talking about 2 models (for the same number) then. That wouldn't work with Discovery (I guess a random model would be attached not taking the keyboard into again), and normalization would create the same display name for both models.

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Premankit — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 02:22:48 GMT

I believe i was talking about one model with two separate model code based on country. I believe few of hp laptop has one product model code in one country but different in latin america. In that case we ended up creating two catalog for them and visibility was control from catalog as they would be two separate models. Discovery do take account of product code. I believe it does

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Fred Jean — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:10:54 GMT

Yes but then you have different model numbers there is no issue.

I'm in the case of Dell laptops that have the same model number whatever the country/keyboard layout

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Ed Laar — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 08:07:01 GMT

Hi. In my opinion there are 2 options to cover the scenario where Assets are slightly different like a different, country specific keyboard:
1) Create a Product Model for each specific laptop model (ie each laptop<>keyboard configuration has it's own Product Model

2) Use only one Product Model but use an Asset attribute to determine the difference (ie each laptop has the same Product Model but a different country or keyboard attribute)

I suggest to follow the manufacturer in this: If different Product Models are used follow this. If Manufacturer Product Models only differ regarding to the configuration specifics (like Dell Lattitude xyz_Germany) I suggest to follow option 2.

In both options it is needed to tune the operational processes in a way that country specific laptops arrive at the requesters. Using option 1 this can be done on Service Request level, using option 2 this can or better should be done on Service Request_Task level.

Grtz,

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Fred Jean — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 10:20:35 GMT

Hello,

Option 1 wouldn't work with Discovery and Normalization

Option 2 would work to adress the need to know the keyboard layout of a given asset, but then it would not not help for Stock rules, Transfer Orders and Procurement

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Darkl1ght — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 21:56:44 GMT

Hi Guys,

I have the same predicament. Went through all the posts on this thread, however, we have talked about Ordering and Procurement. That was sorted via creating a Catalog item for each keyboard layout mapped to one Model say, Latitude 5540.

Where I am stuck at is this - the customer do their billing by pulling data from ALM Hardware, i.e Model is referenced from the Product Catalog.

So before creating the Catalog entries, we chose @Ed Laar Pt 1 route. Now, I have 30 different Product Model entries of Latitude 5540 cluttering the ProdCat. This approach was chosen almost 2 years ago.

Would like to de-clutter the ProdCat.

So, is there a workaround within the ProdCat for this ?

Re: Local types of assets (Assets and Consumables) - managing the Hardware Models

Fred Jean — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:39:29 GMT

As usual the orginal idea I posted was closed without even being reviewed. So I posted this new one : https://support.servicenow.com/ideas?id=view_idea&sysparm_idea_id=57410ed583371a50cdbbc430feaad315&sysparm_idea_table=x_snc_com_ideation_idea&sysparm_module_id=enhancement_requests