disadvantages of not allocating licenses on the entitlements in servicenow

[PatthiBharathi]

Hello SAM Family,

Good Day to all!

I am here again with a problem statement and looking for a solution.

The complete problem statement is :

1.For one of our customers, we are only creating entitlements. But not allocating/ assigning any licenses to the end users. So, what are the disadvantages of this? How can we track?

2. what kind of reports we can generate based on this?

3. We have recently integrated Microsoft and Adobe. But not allocating any subscription licenses to the end user. 

4. If we want to enable/ allocate assigning license to the end user what are the prerequisites/parameters that we need to consider?

5, What data is required/ need to ask with customer?

Please suggest based on your experience at the earliest.

[SumanthDosapati]

1. Reconciliation and cost caluclations and savings calculations will not be correct.
2. You can check the OOB dashboards provides lot of SAM reports and also Software asset workspace has lot of inbuilt reports
3. Allocations need not require any prerequisite. Just need proper subscription data.

Accept the solution and mark as helpful if it does, to benefit future readers.
Regards,
Sumanth

[PatthiBharathi]

Hello Sumantha,

Thank you so much for your time and response. Sure, I'll look into the reports which suits our requirement. Thank you for your inputs.

Thank You,

Bharathi Patthi

[dreinhardt]

Hi @PatthiBharathi,

Allocations are used to:

• confirm the usage of a software license from a process point of view (e.g., Result of a approved software request)
• track license consumption for user/devices which can't be discovered by ServiceNow or 3rd party tools
• adjust the calculated consumption and prioritize a user/device to consume a specific license

1. You're not able to track license consumption for all non discoverable user/devices. Tracking is more of a process carried out by the SAM team or product owner to ensure that all unrecognizable consumption, i.e., allocations, are recorded.

2. The tables [alm_entitlement_user] & [alm_entitlement_asset] will show all user/device allocations. Another helpful insight could be View calculations for your licenses in workspace, Section 6, Details about "Allocated not in use" & "Not allocated in use"

3. Experience shows that subscriptions accurately reflect consumption and no additional allocation is necessary, unless you want the allocation to be understood as confirmation of a request. However, this does not result in any disadvantages.

4. You should think about the implementation of the allocation process as part of the software request process. Early allocation ensures that the license is already “blocked” for the user, even if the software is installed later.

5. The following details are required to do a allocation: User/Device; Software Entitlement; Quantity 

Please check the following SAM blog content

- Allocation Management on ServiceNow SAM Pro - ServiceNow Community

- Optimization vs Allocation on ServiceNow SAM Pro - ServiceNow Community

Best, Dennis

[PatthiBharathi]

Hello @dreinhardt 

Thank you so much for your time and response. It helps me a lot to understand. Could you please provide any reference to create workflow for allocation of license on entitlements in workflow studio.

Thank you in advance.