SAM Basic Process Flow and what need to be done in each stage?

[Sam Lee2]

Hi There, before we go to the question, here is a few quick fact to get ourselves in the situation.

1. Discovery completed with Devices and respected installed software record created (including Microsoft, Adobe, VMware...etc), some software model are mostly normalised (some are partially normalised)

2. Software licence Purchase history is provided by customer in excel sheet. (note, no allocation data is provided)

3. Only a few items in SaaS Licence > Software Model. (there are Microsoft SQL but no Office 365 at all).

Questions : 

1. For those partially normalised item, do we need to fix it and change it to manually normalised before reconciliation?

2. For the software licence excel sheet, we will do some data clean up and move it to the import template we got from the ServiceNow entitlement module, we understand that we need to ensure the labels for "Publisher" and "Product" and "Edition" to be an exact match to the normalised software model, but I believe we don't need to care too much on the small version right?

3. Do we have something wrong with the Office 365 integration if we don't see the Office 365 in the SaaS Licence > Software Model table? but we do see it in the software install, software discovery model and software model table.

4. Since we already have discovery found out about the installation record, do we still need to upload the licence allocation record? Or can SAM figure it out and pair up the licence during the reconciliation?

I know it is a long question(s)....but really appreciated for your time and answer (in advance)

[mikewhalley1 · Accepted solution]

1. Understand ServiceNow SAM use the combination of Publisher, Product, version, edition, language to identify software model. Does the Software Model auto generated by the Software Discovery Models after the scan? I have seen many AutoCAD software models with different small versions number, can I create a new Software Model of "AutoCAD" and link all the small versions to be the child of this generic Software Model? if not, what is the right way to do it?

Software Models can be auto-created following reconciliation (if a software model that corresponds to the normalized values on the Discovery Model doesn't exist) but this is a setting that can be disabled if the auto-creation causes confusion. I always recommend to customers to disable this setting and manually create software models (if necessary) following the analysis of the reconciliation results. Regarding your AutoCAD use case, are the "small versions" licensable? If so, you'll probably need to create a version agnostic AutoCAD software model so that all installed versions of AutoCAD consume against a "big version"

2. For office 365, although it is missing from the SaaS licence module, but it does appear in the Software Asset > Software Model table. Does that mean my office 365 integration plugin is not correctly configured? Also, I believe SAM should automatically get the user allocation from the Office 365 cloud and automatically reconciliation with the discovery result right? Does that mean I don't need to upload any entitlement and allocation for the reconciliation? Similar apply to Adobe cloud product I suppose?

Office 365 and Adobe CC software models are located at SaaS License->Software Models. You will need to upload your entitlements/purchases of O365 so that they can be reconciled against discovered inventory. My understanding is that the O365 integration will pull the user subscription data (allocations) and auto-create O365 software models if they don't exist.

3. For those typical per device/per core licence, since we have both the Hardware and Software discovery completed. I only need to upload the purchased licence and the respective licence type to SAM right? and SAM will automatically reconcile according to the imported licence number and type and pair with the scan result correct?

That's about right. It's really important that you have the SKU/publisher part number associated with the license/entitlement when you load the procurement information.

[Sam134]

Thanks Mikewhalley! It is really helpful!

Just a few quick followup questions if you don't mind.

2. For the Office365, if we have the Office 365 integration, do we still need to upload our entitlement? I thought the integration will also pull the entitlement from the office cloud automatically?

3. Is the PPN (Publisher part number) necessary if we can have the Publisher + Product name + edition...etc to be exact match between the software model + software entitlement? 

[Sam Lee2]

Thanks Mikewhalley! It is really helpful!

Just a few quick followup questions if you don't mind.

2. For the Office365, if we have the Office 365 integration, do we still need to upload our entitlement? I thought the integration will also pull the entitlement from the office cloud automatically?

3. Is the PPN (Publisher part number) necessary if we can have the Publisher + Product name + edition...etc to be exact match between the software model + software entitlement? 

[mikewhalley1]

For O365, you need to create the entitlement records. From a compliance perspective, you will true up your Office 365 subscriptions on an annual basis. Therefore the quantity you need to true up is the number of subscriptions/allocations imported from Asure minus the quantity of entitlement rights represented in SAM Pro.

Having the PPN precludes the need to enter the publisher, product, version/edition in the import template. Using the PPN enables the automatic assignment of the appropriate Discovery Map to the software model which is linked to the PPN on the entitlement record. If you are adding entitlement records through the UI, entering the PPN will automatically create/assign a software model and the DMAP.