Hardware Asset Management release notes

The ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management application provides advanced workflow, automation, and mobile capabilities to track and manage your technology asset environment. Hardware Asset Management was enhanced and updated in the Australia release.

Hardware Asset Management highlights for the Australia release

Australia Patch 5- ServiceNow Otto is the new AI experience brand. This change is reflected in the name of ServiceNow products, including ServiceNow Otto for Hardware Asset Management (HAM). Your product entitlements remain unchanged. Check your entitlements to determine your access to specific features.

Australia Patch 4- Prepare for Now LLM Service to be deprecated in a future release.

Australia Patch 1- Gain real-time visibility into critical asset data through generative AI-driven asset analysis summaries.

Australia Patch 0

• Gain insight into the approximated life-cycle dates for hardware and consumable products.
• Streamline inventory asset management with the expanded and efficient inventory auditing process.
• Streamline and improve the asset management process for retired assets with the expanded asset disposal workflow.
• Streamlined Advanced Shipment (ASN) import process with support for users with specific functional roles.
• Save time and effort by copying a model from the Content lookup portal to create a record in your ServiceNow instance.

See Hardware Asset Management for more information.

Important:

Hardware Asset Management is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

Important information for upgrading Hardware Asset Management to Australia

• To enhance security and manage admin access precisely, the granular admin roles are now installed. These roles replace broad admin checks by assigning specific privileges based on user tasks, rather than granting full admin access:
  • sn_hamp.ham_system_admin: Provides access to HAM licensing, HAM Guided Setup, HAM application properties and system properties, and a few tables.
  • sn_hamp.ham_asn_admin: Provides access to the Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN) feature.
  • asset_integration_admin: Provides access to Standard hardware Zero touch request and carrier integration features, and shipment tables.
  • asset_system_admin: Provides access to asset job log, content audit, transfer order, expense management, and model management.
  • asset_task_admin: Provides access to asset tasks.
  • procurement_system_admin: Provides access to procurement module, tables, and tasks.
  • contract_system_admin: Provides access to contract module, tables, and tasks.
  • asset_licensing_admin: Provides access to the ITAM licensing module.
  • asset_recommendation_admin: Provides access to recommendation actions.
• The Australia release introduces enhanced protections for read‑only fields across the ServiceNow AI Platform®. These changes include a new “read_only_option” field with granular control levels, including “strict_read_only” and “client_script_modifiable". The changes occur in the back end and maintain backward‑compatible behavior. This update helps strengthen your instance security while preserving the flexibility you need. Refer to KB2718122 for additional technical details on how to identify affected fields and adjust their settings. For more information about granular read-only security options, see Configuring read-only security options.
• A new system property, sn_itam_restrict_asset_read, introduced in Australia Patch 5, controls read access to the Asset [alm_asset] table and its child tables for users with only the snc_internal role. When set to true, these users can only read asset records assigned to them or where they are referenced in fields such as Reserved for, Managed by, or Owned by. Users with any additional role retain full read access. By default, this property is set to false.

New in the Australia release

Australia Patch 1

ServiceNow product tiers

The ServiceNow AI Platform now brings you a new AI experience with three licensing tiers available:

• Foundation: AI basics to deliver insights
• Advanced: AI to boost productivity across relevant use cases
• Prime: Act autonomously with all AI assets, and create your own

Depending on your license, you will have access to certain application features, generative AI skills, agentic workflows, and AI agents.

Manage your assets with comprehensive and real-time data

View consolidated asset information through AI-generated analysis summary on the asset record. The AI-generated summary dynamically updates based on the asset state and includes context from any active incidents or tasks. The summary displays the asset life cycle, current assignment and location, audit status, financial metrics, and identifies missing data to support asset management activities.

Australia Patch 0

Gain visibility into approximated life cycle dates for hardware and consumable model

Enhance the operational efficiency by gaining visibility into the estimated and approximate life- cycle dates for models when manufacturers haven’t explicitly published key dates, such as End of Life (EoL) and End of Service (EoS). This insight enables you to manage your asset portfolio strategically, reducing unexpected downtime and improve budgeting.

Enhanced and unified hardware asset inventory auditing experience

Streamline and improve your inventory auditing experience with the enhanced and unified hardware asset inventory process:

• Initiate a single audit that covers both hardware and enterprise assets assigned to a specific location or stockroom, eliminating the need to switch between multiple workspaces.
• Include consumable assets in the inventory audit to avoid asset shrinkage and verify that inventory data remains accurate.
• The ServiceNow Agent app features selectable audit results, enabling you to view a real-time list of all scanned assets.
• When new assets are identified during the single scan audit, essential information is collected in real time through the ServiceNow Agent app to initiate asset creation.
• Scanned asset locations are automatically updated to reflect their precise aisle, space, or sub location during the audit, supporting the accuracy and quality of inventory records.

Enhanced asset disposal workflow to streamline the management of retired assets

Resell the retired assets that are no longer in use to reduce waste and receive credit. The extended asset disposal flow in the Documentation stage enables you to resell planned assets instead of disposing of them, enabling you to receive credit.

Enable your key functional roles or personas to directly manage Advanced Shipment Notification (ASN) imports

Upload ASN files and trigger the import process from the Procurement view within the Hardware Asset Workspace without requiring admin privileges. Users with the ham_admin, ham_user, procurement_admin, or asset role can now initiate the ASN workflow themselves, creating asset records seamlessly.

Streamline model creation by copying a model directly from the Content lookup portal

Reduce manual effort by copying a model from the Content lookup portal to create a record in the Product Model [cmdb_model] table. The copied model is automatically normalized, where applicable, and relevant fields are pre-populated with information from the content record.

Gain visibility into the hardware asset life cycle with improved CMDB data quality

Improve the accuracy and completeness of hardware CI data by identifying and prioritizing remediation for missing, duplicate, and inconsistent hardware CIs using CMDB success advisor for HAM.

UI changes

Australia Patch 0

Unified audit record storage

Starting with Hardware Asset Management version 15.0.0, the audit inventory has been enhanced to store audit records in the common Asset Audits [sn_itam_common_asset_audit] table. If you have enabled the audit enhancements and switched to the common Asset Audits [sn_itam_common_asset_audit] table, the following user interface changes have been made:

• The asset audit records are stored in the Asset Audits [sn_itam_common_asset_audit] table. After switching to the common audit table, deprecated audit records (created before the switch) are no longer visible in the Asset audits tab from the Inventory view. These records can be accessed from the Asset Operations view, when the migrate_hamaudit system property is set to true.
• The Asset Audits [sn_itam_common_asset_audit] table can’t be accessed by navigating to All > Asset Audits > Asset Audits. You can access the legacy Asset Audits [sn_hamp_asset_audit] table instead.
• If your ServiceNow® instance is licensed for both Hardware Asset Management and Enterprise Asset Management, the Stockroom Details tab displays a single Asset Audits tile. This unified Asset Audits tile shows the open audit records for both hardware and enterprise inventory, instead of displaying separate tiles for Hardware Asset Audits and Enterprise Asset Audits.
  Note:

  Note: If your ServiceNow instance isn't licensed for Enterprise Asset Management, the Hardware Asset Audits tile shows the number of open asset audit records for the hardware inventory audit.

Changed in this release

Australia Patch 5

Now Assist > ServiceNow Otto announcement

Now Assist introduced AI on the platform. As that experience has evolved, there's a new name for the experience. ServiceNow Otto® is the conversational AI platform integrated into ServiceNow workflows. It provides agentic capabilities, supports multimodal interactions across web, mobile, and messaging channels, and enables autonomous orchestration for cross-system workflows.

Australia Patch 4

Now LLM Service deprecation

The Now LLM Service is no longer the default model provider for new or inactive AI assets. A third-party LLM is now selected by default, while existing configurations using the Now LLM Service continue unchanged. The Now LLM Service is still available for manual selection.

Activation information

Install Hardware Asset Management by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store to view all the available apps, and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

Related ServiceNow applications and features

Software Asset Management

The ServiceNow® Software Asset Management application enables you to track, evaluate, and manage the software licenses, software compliance, and software optimization. You can reclaim unused software rights, purchase new software rights, and manage allocations for entitlements.

Enterprise Asset Management

The ServiceNow® Enterprise Asset Management application enables you to manage the entire life cycle of your connected and non-connected enterprise assets. It provides a comprehensive end-to-end solution for maintaining enterprise assets, minimizing costly downtime, and maximizing enterprise asset usability.

Contract Management

The ServiceNow® Contract Management application enables you to track and manage your contracts.

Procurement

The ServiceNow® Procurement application enables you to create purchase orders and obtain items for fulfilling service catalog requests.