Every digital business runs on IT assets, foundational for protecting revenue and business resilience. The business needs to know what assets are owned, where they are located, who is using them, how often they are used when they are being configured, what they cost, and the value they deliver. When day-to-day business operations shift, ITAM is foundational to making the pivot possible.
As the workplace continuously evolves, an asset estate poses significant challenges from an operation, cost, and risk perspective. Asset managers may be working with multiple tools or stockrooms in different locations. When assets are managed separately, asset data is scattered, and asset teams are working in data siloes.
ServiceNow® Hardware Asset Management provides increased visibility of the asset estate and automates the IT lifecycle on a single platform.
Hardware Asset Management provides prescriptive workflows to:
· Automate the IT lifecycle on a single platform
· Gain end-to-end asset visibility
· Reduce asset costs and risk
· Centralize asset data for accurate inventory and reporting
· Automate request, receive, deploy, swap, and dispose workflows
· Plan for asset refreshes with actionable insight and minimize wasted resources
· Make smarter decisions about asset utilization and new investments
· Comply with established security policies and regulatory requirements
Hardware Asset Management Features
Hardware Normalization
Hardware Normalization drives the standardizing of asset data in the customer environment by manufacturer name, model name, and model number. In addition, the Content Library will automatically populate the inventory with asset metadata that can’t be discovered such as: end of support, end of extended support, and end-of-life dates. Hardware Asset Management customers leverage the ServiceNow Content Library and Content Service with verified manufacturer attributes resulting in perpetually clean and reliable asset data for the CMDB.
Asset Lifecycle Automation
Asset Lifecycle Automation leverages Flow Designer to deliver prescriptive workflows. Take the guesswork away with ready to go standard industry practices. Customers are empowered to configure low code workflows that suit their business needs.
Asset Tasks help customers eliminate the risk of data inaccuracy caused by manual processes. Hardware Asset Management automates the updates to assets and CIs. Asset managers can assign asset tasks to incident, change, and work orders, reducing effort on ticket resolution and delivering faster services. Updates are applied when deploying, swapping, or retiring hardware. With Asset Tasks, you can automate manual processes with ready to go workflows for:
- Asset order
- Bulk stock order
- Deploy, swap, and retire assets
- Hardware asset disposal order
- Hardware asset refresh
- Loaner asset request
- Asset return merchandise authorization (RMA)
- Asset lease expiration
- Asset reclamation
- Asset donation
- Zero touch asset refresh
- Zero touch request
- Indoor mapping
- Asset picking with indoor maps
- Asset repair flow
Hardware Asset Dashboard
The Hardware Asset Dashboard serves as the command center for Hardware Asset Management, with tabs dedicated to key asset lifecycle milestones. Act quickly with intuitive, automated workflows available out of the box. Facilitate hardware and consumables requested for procurement. Easily identify normalization status. Stabilize the business by removing equipment that is approaching end of support and end of life. Comply with established security policies and regulatory requirements. Uncover the unknown portion the IT estate so it can be secured and managed properly.
Mobile Asset Inventory Audit
Asset Inventory Audit provides the capability to capture asset inventory located in a specific stockroom or location using the ServiceNow Mobile Agent and Mobile Scanning capabilities. Customers can compare the scanned results to what is stored in ServiceNow, driving improved data quality and inventory process compliance.
This feature provides a streamlined, governed input approach to validate the database records against what physically exists in the store or stockroom. Customers can create a scheduled audit with set time parameters (for example, 30/60/90 days). Quickly find and correct database errors to grow executive confidence with proven data accuracy.
Boost the value of your existing platform products already in place like Discovery, CMDB, Asset Management, and Service Catalog and get to value faster.
ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management brings advanced features beyond ServiceNow ITSM Asset Management foundational capabilities.
Key features include:
- Automated asset tasks—deploy, swap, and retire
- Contract renewal workflow
- Asset inventory audit
- Asset pallets
- Remote asset receiving
- Hardware asset dashboard
- Asset integration - Shipping carrier
- Service locations, Distribution channels support for Stockroom
- Indoor mapping capability for Hardware Asset
- Asset warranty integration with Lenovo
- Asset total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Hardware Asset Management maturity
- Hardware Asset Management for Zero Touch Mobility
- Licensing support for new resource categories
- Asset attestation
- Stockroom Receiving
- Receiving - my assets
- Asset putaway
- Asset performance reports
- Inventory reports
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 Zurich release.
Hardware Asset Management highlights for the Zurich release
- Benefit from enhanced Asset Attestation features, including a guided attestation creation process, a mobile-friendly interface for confirming assets, and automated remediation tasks to address non-compliant assets.
- Achieve real-time tracking of assets that are in transit and maintain asset data accuracy by enabling employees to confirm receipt of assets through the Employee Center portal.
- Receive shipment assets at a stockroom from any workflow through the streamlined and unified receiving process.
- Track asset movement from the receiving bay to an aisle and space in the stockroom using the Asset put way task.
- Evaluate how effectively your assets are functioning and being used through reports based on asset key performance indicators in the Asset analytics view. Also, manage supply and demand in your stockrooms effectively with inventory demand reports.
See Hardware Asset Management for more information.
Important information for upgrading Hardware Asset Management to Zurich
- Starting from the Zurich release, a few workflows have been migrated to Workflow Studio as flows.
Note: The migration of workflows to Workflow Studio applies to Asset Management, Procurement, and Contract Management applications.
- The following workflows have been migrated to Workflow Studio as flows:
- Procurement Process Flow – Hardware
- Transfer Order
- Transfer Order Line
- Source Request
- Contract Approval
- When upgrading to the Zurich release, a fix script identifies whether the workflows were customized and takes necessary action.
- If the workflows weren’t customized before the upgrade, the legacy workflows are deactivated from the instance, and Workflow Studio flows are installed and executed post-upgrade.
- If the impacted workflows were customized before the upgrade, the Workflow Studio flows are installed but aren’t executed for any of the impacted flows post-upgrade. You can view and access the impacted workflows in the instance after the upgrade. However, the deprecated workflows are considered custom code and aren’t supported for maintenance.
- The following workflows have been migrated to Workflow Studio as flows:
- After upgrading to the Zurich release, if an approval history record exists for a contract that is no longer required, reject the record instead of deleting it. If the approval history record is deleted, Workflow Studio doesn’t support updating the contract’s Substate field value to display the correct state.
- Starting with Zurich release, a new menu, Asset put away, has been added to the ServiceNow Agent app navigation bar. When upgrading to the Zurich release, a fix script identifies whether the ServiceNow Agent app navigation bar was customized and takes the necessary action.
- If the navigation bar wasn’t customized before the upgrade, a new Asset put away icon (
) is included in the navigation bar - If the navigation bar was customized before the upgrade, two navigation bars appear: Customized old IT Asset Management and IT Asset Management. The new icon appears in the IT Asset Management navigation bar.
- If the navigation bar wasn’t customized before the upgrade, a new Asset put away icon (
- A new role, sn_itam_recomm.recommendations_read, helps ensure that only valid users can execute APIs related to the Important Actions menu in the Asset Workspace. The following roles, which have access to the Asset Workspace, now include the sn_itam_recomm.recommendations_read role:
- procurement_user
- inventory_admin
- inventory_user
- model_manager
- contract_manager
- itil
- catalog_manager
- catalog_admin
- sam
- ham_user
- asset
- Control sensitive data leakage from range queries accessed by unauthenticated users through the following access control lists (ACLs):
- Contract [ast_contract] table: Only users with the contract_manager role can perform the query_range operation on the Start date, Contract number, PO number, and Vendor columns.
- Contract user M2M [clm_m2m_contract_user] table: Only users with the contract_manager and asset roles can perform the query_range operation on the Contract and User columns.
- HAMP Success Activity [sn_hamp_success_activity] table: Only users with the ham_admin and asset roles can perform the query_range operation on the Description, Short description, and Success goals columns.
- Only users with the admin role can update the following system properties:
- glide.sg.voice_search.enabled
- glide.ui.sn_hamp_asset_reclaim_task_activity.fields
- glide.ui.sn_hamp_loaner_asset_order_activity.fields
- glide.ui.sn_hamp_ztr_task_activity.fields
- sn_hamp.enable_shipping_carrier_validation_asn
- sn_hamp.model_lifecycle_phase_order
- sn_hamp.update_assets_norm_model_name
New in the Zurich release
- Track asset movement from the receiving bay to an aisle-space in the stockroom
- Move assets from the receiving bay to their designated aisle and space and improve asset tracking and inventory management by using the Asset put away feature. This task can be performed via the Hardware Asset Workspace or ServiceNow Agent application.
- Improve asset data accuracy and usage by tracking and managing unassigned assets through asset attestation
- Validate whether assets are in use and confirm asset assignments by initiating the attestation using the Asset Attestation playbook in the Hardware Asset Workspace. Employees can then confirm whether they’re using the assigned serialized hardware assets on the go by using the intuitive Now Mobile app. Reports on open remediation tasks in the Hardware Asset Workspace, generated when employees confirm they don’t have assets, provide actionable insights for asset managers.
- Confirm receipt of hardware and consumable assets through the Employee Center portal
- Enable your employees to acknowledge the receipt of assets that are in transit and reserved for them through the Employee Center portal. When employees confirm that they have received the assets, the State and the Assigned to fields are updated in real time, minimizing the risk of data errors.
- Receive shipment assets at a stockroom in the Hardware Asset Workspace
- Complete the receive tasks for hardware and consumable assets that you received from any workflow at the stockroom using the unified receiving functionality in the Hardware Asset Workspace. This standardized receiving process reduces the time spent on receiving assets. By requiring each asset to be assigned a unique identifier when received at the stockroom, the quality of asset data also improves.
You can receive assets in bulk by using a template. Additionally, you can view the results and validation comments in the staging table. During this process, the system handles existing assets, creates new ones as needed, and performs comprehensive validations.
- Optimize your operations with asset performance reports
- Improve asset availability according to ISO standards by tracking the past performance of assets and getting notified about trends, threshold breaches, or anomalies based on their location, model category, model, or classification.
- Monitor supply and demand of assets in a stockroom with detailed inventory reports
- Track and manage stockrooms efficiently by evaluating the inventory reports in the Inventory view of the Hardware Asset Workspace. These reports provide the following benefits:
- Find replacement options for assets that are in use, being repaired, or in maintenance
- Quickly identify shortages and align current demand in your stockroom with both current and incoming supply
- Analyze the supply to meet open demand across all stockrooms or locations
- Gain expanded insight into the content library information through content dashboard analytics
- Gain in-depth information related to various content tables and trends in content change from the enhanced Content Library portal. The introduction of numeric widgets, line graphs, bar charts, and content-specific tabs provides complete visibility to content shipped and analyze content coverage. The expanded search feature with additional filter options enables you to view the records for a particular period or release.
UI changes
- Coral theme
- Coral is now the default theme for new portal, web, and mobile experiences with Next Experience or Core UI enabled. This theme provides a fresh look and feel, featuring brand-neutral illustrations to enhance your user experience. A dark theme option is available for web and mobile experiences.
- Renamed the Pick task required field in the Stockroom details form
- The Pick task required field in the Stockroom details form has been renamed Warehouse tasks required. This field supports enabling both the Asset put away task and the Asset pick task for the stockroom in the Hardware Asset Workspace.
- Stage status for the Transfer Order and Transfer Order Line flow
-
The stage status text in the Stage column for the Transfer Order and Transfer Order Line in the Hardware Asset Workspace Core UI has been updated. When a stage is completed and the next stage hasn’t yet begun in the asset transfer process, the revised status is displayed as Completed-next stage initiated instead of In progress. When a stage isn’t yet begun in the asset transfer process, the revised status is displayed as Pending not started instead of Pending-has not started. These changes accurately reflect the current action in the asset transfer process and enhances the user experience.
- Asset attestation playbook
- The New button on the Asset attestation tab opens a playbook instead of the attestation form to create an asset attestation.
- Receive asset button on the Employee Center portal
- On the Employee Center portal, assets assigned to you that are in transit display a Receive asset button to confirm you have received them.
- Stock orders and Transfer orders tabs for stock rules
- The Stock Orders tab on a stock rule shows all the stock orders that were created using that specific stock rule. The Transfer Orders tab on a stock rule lists all the transfer orders that were generated using that particular stock rule.
- Inventory availability tab on the asset form
- The Inventory availability tab on the asset form lists all available replacement assets or their substitutes in local and remote stockrooms. The Purchase lead time column displays the average number of days that it would take to procure a new asset through a new purchase order.
- Asset performance dashboard in the Asset analytics view
- The Asset performance dashboard in the Asset analytics view of the Hardware Asset Workspace includes scorecards for Availability, Mean time to repair device (MTTR), and Mean time between failures (MTBF).
The Asset availability and related KPIs report and the Asset task time summary report are displayed in the contextual sidebar of the asset form.
Deprecations
- Procurement Process Flow – Hardware
- Procurement Process Flow – Mobile
- Procurement Process Flow - Default
- Transfer Order
- Transfer Order Line
- Source Request
- Contract Approval
Activation information
Install Hardware Asset Management by requesting it from the ServiceNow Store. Visit the ServiceNow Store website 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.
Accessibility information
- Dark theme
- The new Coral theme includes a dark theme option for web and mobile experiences. This option is commonly used to alleviate eye strain and improve readability.
Plugin dependencies:
- Hardware model normalization (com.sn_hwnorm)
- Procurement (com.snc.procurement)
- Performance analytics (com.snc.pa)
- Cost Management (com.snc.cost_management)
App dependencies:
- CMDB CI class models (com.sn_cmdb_ci_class - Version 1.77.1)
- Expanded Model and Asset Classes (com.sn_ent- Version 2.12.0)
- Geo Map component (com.sn_geo_map. - Version 1.1.0)
- Asset management common (com.sn_itam_common - Version 13.1.0)
- Physical assets (com.sn_phy_assets - Version 2.1.0)