Inactive users should not have any license assigned - Product Knowledge

Inactive users should not have any license assigned  Product Success Playbook

Inactive users should not have any license assigned

A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate license entitlements to inactive users

Table of Contents

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

Audience

Problem Overview

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

How this playbook is structured

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Downstream Consequences

Impact on Your Business

Engagement Questions

Remediation Plays

Summary

Play 1: Analyze data

Play 2: Fix Play

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

The goal of this playbook is to help you identify and manage licenses assigned to inactive users

Details about this playbook

Author Bibu Elias Punnachalil Date 12/21/2021 Addresses HSD # HSD0010589 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Time Required Approximately 1 to 8 hours (depending on your environment) Audience

Asset Manager and Asset Management Team Configuration Manager or Configuration Management team ServiceNow Administrator or Discovery Administrator

Problem Overview

Software entitlements define purchased software license assignment to people or machines. Assigning licences to inactive users may result in license management inefficiency resulting in operational issues arising out of lack of license availability for new users, license compliance issues and also financial budgeting

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

This playbook helps in identifying and fixing license assignment to inactive users and helping in,

Reduced Operational Cost Improved User Experience Better operational visibility Audit Compliance

How this playbook is structured

This playbook guides you through three plays.

Play 1 (an analysis play) helps you find the license entitlements for inactive users

Play 2 (a fix play) explains how to remove the appropriate user license entitlements

Play 3 (a Data Governance play) lists the guidelines and processes for maintaining user license entitlements

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

License deallocation is not part of off-boarding process License inventory is not effectively maintained hence inactive user entitlement removal is not enforced

Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

License utilization reports will not show the accurate usage Operation Consequence

New users requiring the license may have to wait since the licence is not reclaimed App Consequence

Automations requiring the removal of installed software based on the user off-boarding will fail Procurement may request for additional licenses

Impact on Your Business

Removing license entitlements to inactive users can result in,

Reduced Cost Unutilized licences

Increased Operational Visibility License lifecycle management Audit/Compliance Unauthorized license allocations License over utilization Process Automation Software uninstall based on user off-boarding Better User Experience Faster availability of required license for new users Engagement Questions:

Consider the answers to these questions:

Is ServiceNow Software Asset Management the primary tool for managing license entitlement? Is there an established user off-boarding process exist? Is there any license compliance & audit process exist How is the requirement for license procurement identified in the current process?

Remediation Plays

Summary

The table below lists and summarizes each of the remediation plays in the playbook. Details are included later.

Play Name

Analyze Play

What this play is about

Query and analyze the licence entitlements for inactive users Required tasks

Deploy and run the report provided. Analyze data in the report Fix Play

What this play is about

Instructions on how to to remove license entitlements for inactive users Required tasks

Follow the step by step instructions provided Data Governance

What this play is about

Helps you establish standard operating procedures, as well as periodic data validation Required tasks

Follow the instructions provided in the play

Play 1 - Analyze the inactive users with license entitlements

What this Play is about

Identify inactive users with license entitlements

Required tasks

Upload this xml file, which will create a new report “License Entitlements for Inactive Users”

Navigate to Reports > View/Run, click All, and then search for “License Entitlements for Inactive Users”

Report will list the inactive users with license entitlements

Play 2 - Fix Play : Remove user entitlements

What this Play is about

This play provides steps to remove the license entitlements for inactive users

Required tasks

Open the user entitlement list by typing User License Entitlements available under Assets --> Software Expand Filter and then set assigned_to=>inactive as 'false' Select the required records to deleted and then delete from Action on selected rows Confirm by clicking Delete

Data Governance

What this Play is about

This play lists the best practices and processes for removing the license entitlements for inactive users

Required tasks

Review the current off-boarding process and check the possibility to have an automation for removing the user license entitlements as part of off-boarding activities Run the report in Play 1 on regular frequency and monitor the

Congratulations You have completed this Product Success Playbook.