SAM Office Hours Q&A January 2026 | EMEA/APAC Session

Kieron Dean · 2 hours ago

About This Document

SAM Office Hours is a monthly live Q&A session where ServiceNow customers can ask questions about Software Asset Management directly to product experts.

Session date: January 06, 2026
Questions: 14 total (9 written, 4 extracted from recording, 1 unanswered)
Answers marked as "Extracted from Recording" were processed using AI transcription and extraction
While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, extracted answers may contain inaccuracies or miss nuances from the original spoken response

Questions & Answers:

#	Question	Answer	Source
1	How does reconciliation work for Oracle options for purely cloud hosted instances? We have raised a support case and the response we were given suggests a requirement to have a relationship to an on-prem host that will never exist in this scenario.	For Oracle databases hosted on cloud, what we capture as part of our discovery is whether a particular instance is "license included" within the cloud instance itself, or if it's a BYOL (Bring Your Own License) case where you can use your on-prem licenses. Once we have that attribute - whether it is BYOL or license included - we consider that from a licensing perspective. If the attribute value says BYOL, then we would consider it as part of reconciliation and consume rights from your entitlements. If it is "license included", we assume it is part of your cloud instance itself and we do not need to account for it separately - it is then excluded from the licensing standpoint.	Extracted from Recording
2	How do we manage the Open Source installations? Do we manage it through Entitlements on how many Open Source installations and how long they are entitled to use (basically do not want to use an obsolete version)	Typically customers would create a software model and manage these as entitlements. Through this you can view the different version and start to blacklist particular versions to avoid obsolete versions.	Written
3	Not sure if it is more discovery related, but when should the application fingerprints suggestions be used? What is the best practice for this?	Hi Christian, this is indeed more a Discovery related topic and needed to automatically link Applications to the correct class. Note that this data is not (directly) used in SAM and requires installations in the Software Installation (cmdb_sam_sw_install) table. Normalization should happen automatically, but you can create Software (pattern) normalization rules to define rules if needed (like niche products).	Written
4	we are using SAM and we have different users spread across globe. We usually term it as 'Member firms' (which is custom attribute on user table). The common concern Member firm users have is, they do not want to showcase their data to other member firm users. Is there a way to achieve this in SAM workspaces ? We use ACL in backend tables, however this is not reflecting in workspaces. The expectation is When a specific member firm user sees SAM workspace, the currency, numbers shown in SAM workspace reflects only associated Member firm specific data.	Hi manoj , please refer to the link —> https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-it-asset-management/page/product/software-asset-manage... \| Hi Manoj , please refer to the link —> https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/zurich-it-asset-management/page/product/software-asset-manage...	Written
5	Hi, Shahjahan here from Saudi Arabia. Apart from Discovery what are the other ways to identify the software assets in stand alone environment. Installing agents is against the security aspect and getting an approval is a challenge at the end of the day.	SAM has Service Graph connectors if that is an option. SCCM, Intune...JamF, Workspace One. Is this also a challenge?	Written
6	SAM Pro has not allocated licenses to three users for Photoshop however we can see that in Adobe Admin Console that these three among two others are registered there with the same emails as are shown for User Principal Name in ServiceNow. What can be the reason for this? I have raised a case for ServiceNow but maybe you have something? I have a theori that it has automatically allocated licenses to the wrong users in SAM Pro but I cannot elaborate on that	Your Theory could be a lead, maybe have a look at the allocation or assignment of the licenses. It could also be a reconciliation acception. \| And also, double check if the ‘User’ field is populated ,with the same user details for the same UPN, in the User Subscription table.	Written
7	In our SAM operations, we encountered a case wherein we would like to create a Pattern Normalization Rule that is also based on the Version aside from the Name, Publisher and Product. However, there is no field for Discovery model Version. Is there any particular reason why we cannot create a Pattern Normalization Rule using the Discovery model Version?	This is one of the enhancements we have been actively looking at - giving users more options to create pattern normalization rules, including for versions. We are aware of this limitation and it is on the roadmap for enhancement.	Extracted from Recording
8	Can you help understand how the SaaS Consumption summary table data that is received from any Direct Integrations like Salesforce CRM or Marketing Cloud is used from reconciliation / compliance perspective. Also what kind of Entitlements license metric are required to track the compliance for such cases ?	Hi Sathish, this is the table where we keep the repository consumptions for products such as Salesformce marketing cloud —> sam_saas_consumption_summary. The licensing metric will depend upon the metric defined for as per the contracts.	Written
9	They are populated and they the same in ServiceNow as in the Adobe Admin Console	Ok, it can be related to multiple things but are there enough entitlements available, subscription conditions set on the Software Model? Another option might be more related to the level of subscriptions (all apps versus single apps for example)	Written
10	Client had some data in 'User entitlement'(alm_license) table before enabling SAM. Should we re-do exercise on entitlements once we enable SAM for the client ?	Yes, you should review those entitlements. Before activating SAM Pro, customers can track software licenses in ServiceNow using SAM Foundation, which is a lightweight version included with ITSM. However, SAM Foundation doesn't store many of the attributes we expect to see against entitlements, like metric groups. So when you activate SAM Pro, those existing records will be missing key data. I would recommend treating this as re-onboarding those entitlements - go through each one and make sure all mandatory fields are populated, including the right associated metrics, quantities, packs per license, etc.	Extracted from Recording
11	Can you help understand how the SaaS Consumption summary table data that is received from any Direct Integrations like Salesforce CRM or Marketing Cloud is used from reconciliation / compliance perspective. Also what kind of Entitlements license metric are required to track the compliance for such cases ?		Unanswered
12	How are software installations being processed in the IRE when discovered? Are there other components handling the identification and reconciliation of records?	They are not going through the IRE but there is a Scheduled Job (part of SAM Pro) to work on duplicates	Written
13	We have 6 active rights however 3 of them are allocated 3 other users than those shown in our Adobe Admin Console. Hence my theory	If you allocate users yourself to the entitlements, they will always consume the entitlement. If you don't have sufficient rights anymore, no other users can consume that entitlement. So if you have allocated 3 users that are not in the Adobe portal, they will consume 3 rights. The allocations you see may have been created by your license manager using automatic allocation. You should review which users are actually active in the Adobe Admin Console versus what is allocated in ServiceNow.	Extracted from Recording
14	Thanks Jatiin - Aware of the table where the data is pushed from the SaaS Integration for Consumption, however would like to know how this info is used for reconciliation/compliance perspective.	We take the consumption value for a particular software model and consider that for consuming entitlements associated to that particular software model to create complianceview.	Written

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