ServiceNow SAM Pro supports many optimizations use cases for Microsoft 365 subscription to understand more details about SAM Pro support, please check the blog here.
The aim of the blog is to determine how last activity is determined for subscription assigned on M365 admin center. Based on the last activity and the reclamation rules, ServiceNow SAM Pro automatically creates reclamation candidate workflow for SAM Managers to act.
High Level Solution
The High-level solution for determining last activity is depicted below:
Figure 1: High Level solution to determine last activity (usage) for M365 Products
- ServiceNow SAM Pro automatically determines the last activity of Products such as Exchange Online, Teams, One Drive, Power BI, Share Point Online, Viva Engage (formerly Yammer)
- ServiceNow SAM Pro automatically determines the last activity across all Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise products comprising Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point etc. (The last activity is gathered across Desktop, Web and Mobile without use of Discovery solutions)
The last activity is gathered for individual subscription (Point 1) and for Microsoft 365 Apps products (2) and thereby the max last activity is found. This max last activity across individual products is recorded for the M365 Subscription. Please note that reclamation workflow for optimization use cases are created based on low usage considering the subscription assignment date on M365.
Last Activity for individual products
The last activity is gathered automatically for few individual products directly without any discovery solution. These include Exchange Online, Teams, One Drive, Power BI, Share Point Online, Viva Engage (formerly Yammer)
Figure 2: Last activity determination for individual products such as Exchange Online, Teams, One Drive, Power BI, Share Point Online, Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) on software usage table
Last activity for Microsoft 365 App Products
Last activity is determined automatically for most* Microsoft 365 Apps products including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, One Note, Outlook without any discovery solution such as SCCM.
Figure 2: Last activity determination for M365 Products on M365 usage table
Overall Last activity of M365 subscriptions
The overall last activity of M365 subscription products is determined by determining the max last activity across individual products and M365 App products. This last activity on the subscription record, helps in determining the overall last activity across the subscription. ServiceNow SAM Pro uses this last activity to provide optimization recommendation on low usage, such as the one discussed on the blog here
Figure 3: Overall Last activity determination for M365 Subscription
*Note:
Customers can also use SCCM or ServiceNow ACC-V to gather the usage of products such as Microsoft Access and Microsoft Publisher (this requires a small configuration on the reclamation rule which is to “Include usage from additional discovery sources”. Please note that ServiceNow SAM pro provides reclamation rules for M365 OOB which can be configured as per the customer requirenment.
Figure 4: Reclamation Rule configuration
