HAM Fundamentals - K19 Pre-Con May 5 & 6 - Kailey Oppenheim

[jarodcarey]

Welcome to the ServiceNow Knowledge 19 Pre-Conference - HAM Fundamentals Class!

This is a dedicated Community Article for class communication, collaboration, and fun!!

[Joyce Arlt]

Hi I'm Joyce Arlt and I work for Scott County located in Minnesota.  I am the IT Business Services Manager responsible for end user support and procurement.  We are planning to implement HAM at the end of 2019.  I have not looked at the module.  I am here to understand what is possible and how the tool will work so we can create our requirements and implementation plan.

[C_t_lin Bechere]

Name: Cătălin Becherescu

Company: AIRBUS

Role: Asset and Configuration Management Process Owner

Experience HAM: None

Reason: Undergoing a deployment of ServiceNow

Most recent adventure: the 11 hours flight from London to Las Vegas 😞

[Christopher Swa]

Chris Swam, HollyFrontier Corp

Director, IT Service Management

No experience with HAM

To gain HAM experience and assist with implementation

RAT1000 - Bicycle across Texas self-supported on gravel roads. 1000 miles from Arkansas to New Mexico

[renniescott]

Rennie Scott

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Servicenow Developer / Solution Architect / Configuration and Capacity Manager

3 years on SN Platform - 30 years in Computing

 Quite a bit of experience with Configuration Management, but we don't use the Asset management application we don't and won't have discover because it is cost prohibitive because we current have over 180,000 CIs in t the CMDB.

 Realign the CMDB and Asset management to move it from it's initial configuration of a more of an general asset management function to its more functional design.

Create the new strategic roadmap for Hardware, Software, and SACM.

[notaguru]

Angela Lane

Company:  Enbridge Pipelines

Reason:  improve our current HAM process and learn more in depth knowledge about HAM

[Jordan16]

Jordan Blakley - PayPal

White Space Engineering

New to HAM

To gather a deeper understanding of the asset management tool

[Victoria McHenr]

Victoria 

USAA

IT Systems Analyst

Some experience with HAM but not full life cycle

Implementing asset management into service now process flow

[Josh Hess]

Josh Hess NFL

IT Asset Manager, keeping track of IT hardware, developing ITAM processes, work with SN team on enhancing and fixing defects within our SN instance. I will also involved in building SAM side down the road.

Ive been doing Asset management for the last 13 years, CHAMP, CSAM, certified IAITAM. I've only been using SN for about 8 months now though.

I want to become more familiar with SN so I can maximize its potential 

Got some tattoos

[wesleyfonseca]

Name: Wesley Fonseca

Company: Serta Simmons

Role: IT Config Analyst

Experience with HAM: 3

Reason for Attending: Knowledge Acquisition

Most Recent Adventure: Came to Vegas

[Kristina Noreik]

Instance Reservation URL: http://clabs.link/hamf-a

[Kristina Noreik]

Twitter hashtags #Know365 #HAMK19

[Jen Ramdath]

Jen Bartley Team Lead at an IT service desk. We have started using asset management in service now but I want to improve on how we use it.

[Victoria McHenr]

Victoria McHenry

USAA

IT Systems Analyst

Some expierence in HAM but not the full life cycle. I create process flows for our request forms that involve asset management.

Experience: Implement HAM

Adventure: Getting to the conference

[chrishansen]

https://developer.servicenow.com/app.do#!/home

[chrishansen]

https://hamf-a-001-instructor.lab.service-now.com/instance_reservation.do

[chrishansen]

Lots of interesting questions (and answers in last year's Community thread:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_article&sys_id=e517a87edb5d5b00fac7f4621f96195e

[chrishansen]

https://www.webassessor.com/SERVICE_NOW

[chrishansen]

https://www.servicenow.com/services/training-and-certification.html

[Christopher Swa]

Is the recommendation to use ServiceNow request records (ITSM) for the "request" on the asset life cycle slide. Or do you commonly see these request in other systems?

[Jay Landry]

Are the slides available electronically?

[chrishansen]

It's basically exactly what you have in your book, so no, we don't typically provide the slides electronically.

[C_t_lin Bechere]

Is it possible in ServiceNo to reuse an asset for another CI than the initially linked - redeploy it as a new CI?

[chrishansen]

That is possible. We actually have a scenario that covers reusing CIs and Asset records - but, ha! surprise! Not really a best practice. 🙂 ... It's really best to create fresh records.

[C_t_lin Bechere]

I'm not talking about reusing CI record, but creating A neW CI's based on the same asset which gets reused/recycled ...

for example, I can use a machine for 2 years for a project, deployed with Windows, then put it in stock and reuse it after a month with Linux for another project... it will be a different CI ... but same asset 🙂 how's this not best practice?

[chrishansen]

I misunderstood. Yep, perfect scenario. You will see examples of how to do this.

[Jay Landry]

But wouldn't the CI for the hardware stay the same, but you would link to a new OS CI in the CMDB once it is re-configured?  That way change and incident records associated with the hardware, bad card, add new memory, etc. stays with the original CI?

[Jay Landry]

But wouldn't the CI for the hardware stay the same, but you would link to a new OS CI once it is re-configured so that change and incident records associated with the hardware stays with it for the life of the hardware?

[chrishansen]

Yes, especially if your CI records are generated by say - Discovery processes. But CIs can also be created by hand too - so it provides flexibility for both scenarios. - There is a lab exercise where we actually retire an asset - which will show you about 80% of this scenario you are talking about.

[John Goldstein]

Talking about Model Management, what fields do you recommend for the reconciliation keys or coalesce fields?

[Scott Baker4]

What are the best practices for creating a solid Asset database when the current CMDB is full of erroneous data that is old or duplicated?

[chrishansen]

That is a great question, and approaches vary widely depending on which fields tend to be most "reliable" when a company is reconciling. We have a lab that goes through this and I believe we coalesced on model name, etc. - but once again, what works best for each company varies.

[chrishansen]

Sounds like the first step would be to clean up the CMDB. Is the CMDB full of manually entered data? If so, I'd suggest services like Discovery, etc. to make sure you are gathering "real" data rather than bad data.

[kylejj]

We are working around the junk, but are also in the process of restarting the CMDB and redoing discovery to filter more than current

[Scott Baker4]

The SIM process uses the Agile methodology for development. Agile expects that the resources are fully dedicated to the sprints and won't be available for other tasks.  What is the average number of SN resources needed for a typical SIM?

[C_t_lin Bechere]

I could be, but also it will not necessarily stay unchanged as, while in stock, I might upgrade or update and even change relevant components of the machine, which are actually identifying it as a CI (CI attributes but not asset attributes). I believe It makes sense to keep the information about a retired CI (relevant for later analysis even through P&A) and create a brand new unrelated CI... to support the projects or programs TCO, or at least the different departments charge-back... but it's just my experience :)...    

[Kristina Noreik]

The short answer - it depends on the scope of the project and the size of the organization. There are roles and responsibilities in ITAM and in the smaller organizations someone may "wear" multiple hats, in larger organizations - multiple people may be assigned to one role. 

[Kristina Noreik]

The best practices would be to clean up the CMDB. Asset and CI share a relationship and if there are some invalid CIs it may manifest as invalid assets. There are ways to control the CI and Asset creation, however, to take the full advantage of the SN ITAM automation and capabilities, the starting point should be a clean and healthy CMBD. 

[Kristina Noreik]

Catalin, your scenario is very unique and would require some analysis and potentially custom solution, as out of the box solution has a 1:1 relationship between an asset and CI. Things to consider are: what happens to the ITSM tickets associated with the "old" CI? Is the asset information changes, such as support contracts?

[Kristina Noreik]

Unfortunately, the slides or books are not available electronically. However, all the slides are in your books with additional information about for each slide. 

[Scott Baker4]

Hi Lisa,

Be sure to work with your Active Directory engineer if you decide to go with Discovery.  I am in the middle of a Discovery deployment with a global company and finding that my team needs to work with local AD team members to provide the access to the Discovery WMI to access all of our PCs.   We are only working on finding the PCs and servers at this time and the lack of a complete inventory is slowing us down.

[kylejj]

my question is, why wouldn't the books be electronic only?  

sure taking notes is easier in a paper book, but there are easy ways to notate in electronic versions also. These paper books are a wasted cost and waste of paper/trees.    

[kevin_cole]

Is the Hardware Asset table different from the CI table?  If they are, then how are they connected so you do not end up with duplicate data?

[Kristina Noreik]

I would say the minimal key fields for reconciliation are: Manufacturer; Name; Model Number; Model Category

[Jay Landry]

Does the ServiceNow discovery tool do a good job of normalizing the model data or is this more of a manual function?

[Kristina Noreik]

Yes, hardware assets are stored in alm_hardware table and CIs are in cmdb_ci_xxxxx tables. Asset tags and Serial Numbers are good fields to consider to ensure your data quality. 

[John Goldstein]

Speaking about normalizing the Model data, how do you suggest handling name changes or acquisitions? Using the song library example, how do you classify John Cougar, John Cougar Melencamp and John Melencamp songs? At different points in his career each version was valid.

[kylejj]

I was wondering this.... my add to this question is.  If I normalize Dell TO Dell/EMC LLC does discovery use that going forward or do I have to continue to normalize Dell to Dell/EMC LLC?

[Mike139]

Is there a table that tells us what each sub-state mean and when to use them?

[Kristina Noreik]

Yes, here is a link: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-it-service-management/page/product/asset-management/task/t...

[chrishansen]

There are a couple of ways to address normalization (and services/products). Specific info about that is beyond the breadth of this course. However, that being said, there is the ability to identify records that have been normalized:

"The system displays the normalization icon  on fields with an associated normalization or transformation record. Users with the normalizer role can click the icon to access the associated normalization or transformation record."

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/madrid-platform-administration/page/administer/field-administration/concept/c_FieldNormalization.html