Software Management with ServiceNow OOTB (customer and IT-view)

[Toni Br_ggemann]

Dear community,

my name is Toni and I am Head of IT Service Desk and soon responsible as IT-Architect. My first big challenge is to re-design our Software Management/ Software Process.

Currently we are “mis-using” ServiceNow to setup the tooling things. So we are typing each information related to a software with a lot of custom fields in cmdb_ci_spkg.do and sometime manually connection to other list (e.g. Discovery). Also we use a custom field to show approved software articles as a dropdown in ONE article/item (article name is SOFTWARE and here you can select all as visible marked software entries in cmdc_ci_spgk).

My focus is now to come closure to the OOTB-functions. But honestly: With a lot of time I tried to understand the database model behind the OOTB functions and how it works in practice. Now I need your help and hopefully you find the time to support me here.

Before we start: We are only using “SAM-Light” (not the Pro).

Example:

We will show Adobe Acrobat Pro as orderable item in Software Catalog. OOTB I add manually a new entry in cmdb_software_product_model.do. When I want have it orderable, then I click on Publish to Software Catalog and a new entry is added to list pc_software_cat_item.do and published in our ServicePortal under category Software. That’s fine. But now the technical software team need to provide more information, e.g. versions, kind of installations (e.g. manual or as a package), the allowed platforms (e.g. W10, W11, server or network-share etc.). All these technical things I prefer to leave in the cmdb_ci_spkg.do. And now my questions marks:   

• How I can connect the Adobe Acrobat Pro article/catalog_item with the technical information, that our tool/ our support group is able to assign the correct software package/ installation files? Perfectly it will be automatically.
• How you go forward with different platforms, e.g. Adobe Acrobat Pro as Desktop App (install via software distribution tool) or mobile app (pushed by Intune company store)? Do you make two entries in do, e.g. Adobe Acrobat Pro – Desktop App and Adobe Acrobat Pro – Mobile App (In case, that adobe Acrobat has a mobile App as Pro-Version)
• How you setup this, if you have more companies, like the holding-group and some smaller, but owned, companies?
• How you connect it with discovery items, like a lot of item related to versions by using software in evergreen-mode (office products, Adobe Reader etc.)?
• Which software categories you are using (e.g. office programs, owned developed programs, graphic programs etc.) and in which ServiceNow table you add these categories?
• In which list the discovery entries should “normally” add and how the normalization will be? And is the normalization against the item in cmdb_software_product_model.do or it is another table?

Sorry for the big-topic and thank in advance for your answers and supports.

Greeting from Germany, near to Berlin!

[Joe Ryder]

Hi Toni. Wow, you have your work cut out for you. Please accept that not as condescending but a true statement of concern. The questions you are asking about the architecture and integrations harken back to when I tried (somewhat successfully albeit) to build a custom SAM app on Salesforce's platform which doesn't even have the base functionality of software asset management. Each of these questions I asked myself at one point or another and had to solve with custom-developed solutions.

Small disclaimer: I use SAM Pro, so if this is helpful, please toss me an upvote. If it is not, I totally understand.

First, I would strongly recommend comparing what you are looking to do with the functionality of SAM Pro and deciding if the added cost is better than the hours upon hours of personnel time to code-wire all this together. The simple fact is that, while ServiceNow out of the box will support what you are asking it to do, it won't do it without customizations, large in some areas and small in others. Even with the setup time, SAM Pro would likely be cheaper, but I leave that up to you to decide.

Generally, I am reading:

1. You want automated software distribution based on a robust catalog of approved software.
2. You want to validate compliance through discovery matching to the catalog to verify the asset is in use.
3. I'm assuming you eventually want visibility into utilization.
4. You are dealing with multiple environments, potentially with their own standards, rules, and tech stacks.

You will need access to the following to do what you are wanting to do:

1. Integration Hub (recommended); some spokes are included in SAM Pro
   1. Service Graph connector for Microsoft Intune (Intune Spoke)
   2. Microsoft SCCM spoke or whatever your software distribution tool is

If you don't expect to have this access, then you'll have to build an integration similar to them.

I'm going on the assumption that you are using the ITSM Software Asset Management Foundation plugin.

Catalog Items: The Product Catalog will be the most important aspect of your work. In SAM Pro, this is much more robust and, IMHO, architected more logically. For SAM Foundation, categories are managed in Model Catagories, which can be a bit limiting depending on how your organizations each want the employee experience to be.

In terms of validation of license consumption, this is less straightforward in SAM Foundation. That product was meant for groups who didn't really implement a SAM program but wanted some of the install control benefits. You'll have to do custom reporting, sometimes outside of ServiceNow, to really get a license position. Most of the consumption is based on the "Has Software License" related list so that you can assign a software asset to a product. However, it doesn't "consume" the license. It just makes it eligible to do so. Consumption and optimization is a SAM Pro feature and a function of a full SAM program.

Unfortunately, the technical architecture of the tables is more of a question for someone deep into the table structures, which is not me. But I highly recommend re-thinking trying to make what you want to do work in SAM Foundation. Hope this helps. I'm sure you will have someone respond that has much more customization experience that could recommend options if you don't move to SAM Pro.

[Scott Halverso1]

Hi Toni,

I echo what Joe Ryder says about SAM Pro.  Without I wouldn't step too far into the waters trying to calculate effective license position or put much energy into putting software entitlements into ServiceNow (as there is not a straight forward migration process for entitlements from SAM Light to SAM Pro. 

Concerning the hook up to the software packaging details, we frequently add additional fields onto the software model to denote the SCCM package name, Who approved the software model from Enterprise Architecture, etc. (If you ever migrate to using the Client Software Distribution app, it's easy to abanden the custom fields for SCCM package names)

We frequently find end users don't want to have to pick from different "cards" for each unique software version, but if you want to align to out-of-the-box where there is a 1:1 relationship between a software catalog item and a software model you will have the version denoted that way.  When using that model we frequently add a few tweaks for the asset manager to denote which one is the "current" version so users can easily determine which catalog item to select.  

An underused feature of ServiceNow catalog is to set the related Catalog Items and display them in the portal. Relate the different versions of the same software product together to make it easier for your end users to find the right software catalog time.

A very cool customization I have worked with was a record producer for Asset Managers to be able to create catalog items that was way more robost than the publish to software catalog link on a model.  The record producer would allow asset managers to pick software products from the content library(SAMP) and allow them to select multiple versions.  The record producer would then create one catalog item for the software product, with checkboxes for the different versions. Once published it updated each software model to point back to the one catalog item.  When a user selected from that single catalog item and picked the version, the system was smart enough to know which version and thus which model to tie it to.  Backing all of this was an automated workflow that would automatically add a user to an AD group that would grant automated provisioning of the software as well as the workflow would automatically create a user entitlement with logic smart enough to determine which companies/department/cost center entitlement to apply against.  The customer didn't want to check if there was additional licenses available prior to auto installing, but that would be easily done too.  Keep in mind you need to move towards SAMP to get this sophisticated.

Agree the database model is complex backing all this.  Plus keeping eye towards staying within the data model enables further maturity if you ever want to start connecting a procurement tool into ServiceNow for automatically receiving and creating SW entitlements.