How Does SAM Pro Determine Which Installations Are Marked as Unlicensed?

[RahulY00040]

Hello Community,

I'm trying to better understand how ServiceNow SAM Pro determines whether a software installation is marked as Licensed or Unlicensed during reconciliation.

In my scenario:

• The software model uses the Per User - Common license metric.
• There are 3 software installations, each on a different device.
• Each installation is associated with a different user (3 unique users in total).
• I have only 1 purchased right available.

When reconciliation runs, I would like to understand:

1. How does SAM Pro decide which installation/user consumes the available entitlement?
2. In what order are the remaining installations marked as unlicensed?
3. Is the determination based on installation date, discovery source, reconciliation logic, user matching, or some other criteria?

If anyone has experience with this licensing metric or can point me to relevant documentation, I would greatly appreciate your insights.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Rahul 

[dreinhardt]

Hi @RahulY00040 , 

I’m not aware of any logic and would say it’s “first in first out” based on the filtered query they use to determine the installs to process. If you want to ensure a specific user should consume the license, please use the allocation feature.

hope this helps.

best, Dennis

[RahulY00040]

Yeah i got your point, but i am curious to know the internals of logic used to mark the installations as licensed vs unlicensed.  Somewhere I read that its totally internal/random and uses the sys_ids as well.

Thanks for your response.

[ajmalmuhamm · Accepted solution]

Hi @RahulY00040 ,

For Per User - Common, SAM reconciliation is based on the unique users consuming the software, rather than simply the number of software installation records. ServiceNow's documentation confirms that Per User licenses a user, and reconciliation calculates rights used against the active rights available.

In your example:

• 3 installations
• 3 different users
• 1 active/purchased right

The result should therefore be 1 licensed user and 2 unlicensed users.

The important point is that I would not assume that the first installation based on installation date, discovery date, or device order automatically gets the entitlement. The reconciliation engine determines consumption based on its license-allocation/reconciliation logic. If you need a particular user to consistently consume the available entitlement, you can use User Allocations. ServiceNow provides user allocations specifically for user-based metrics, where rights can be assigned to a particular user.

There is also an important SAM feature called Create Allocations. It can lock the assignments for entities so that future reconciliation runs consume licenses in the same way as the previous allocation.

I would recommend checking:

Software Model → Software Model Results → License Metric Results → Licensed Installs / Unlicensed Installs

The License Metric Result provides the rights owned, rights used, and allocation breakdown, while the Licensed/Unlicensed Install lists show exactly which installations were classified each way.

So, rather than relying on installation order, use the License Metric Result and allocation records to determine why a particular user received the available right.

In short: for Per User licensing, think user consumption, not installation priority. If you need deterministic control over which user gets the entitlement, use user allocations rather than depending on the order in which installations were discovered.