Address Missing Serial Numbers in Hardware Asset Records

Product Success Playbook

A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate Missing Hardware Asset Serial Numbers

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: Analysis Play - Identify Hardware Assets with Missing Serial Numbers

Play 2: Fix Play - Remediate Unpopulated Serial Numbers in Existing Hardware Asset Records

Play 3: Fix Play - Remediate External Sources of Hardware Asset Records

Play 4: Fix Play - Enforce Mandatory Serial Numbers During New Hardware Asset Record Creation

Play 5: Fix Play - Remediate Hardware Asset-CI Synchronization

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

To help identify, remediate, and prevent missing serial numbers in hardware asset records

Details about this playbook

Author Peter Laudat Date 12/23/2021 Addresses HSD # HSD0004680, HSD0010412 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Time Required Approximately 1 to 4 hours (depending on your environment) Audience

Asset Management team

Configuration Management team

ServiceNow Administrator

Discovery team

Problem Overview

A missing serial number in a hardware asset record obscures the linkage between the asset and its configuration item (CI). Hardware serial numbers are typically assigned by manufacturers to uniquely identify specific instances of otherwise identical hardware devices (e.g., computers, network devices). This asset-CI linkage helps organizations accurately manage, track, and account for separate but mutually interacting financial (asset) and operational (configuration item – CI) views of their hardware investments throughout their life cycles. Hence, it is vitally important to identify the hardware asset records which are missing serial numbers and update them.

Executive Summary

How this playbook can help you achieve business goals

This playbook provides guidance on how to find, remediate, and prevent hardware asset records which are missing serial numbers. Serial numbers can:

improve the asset management process by ensuring accurate counts of physical devices because not having a serial number may result in duplicate records.

assist you in getting help and support from the manufacturer since the serial number is the unique identifier used for that purpose.

How this playbook is structured

This playbook guides you through 5 plays to remediate missing Hardware Asset serial numbers:

Play 1 (an analysis play) is aimed at identification of Hardware Assets with missing serial numbers.

Play 2 (a fix play) is aimed at remediation of existing hardware asset records with missing serial numbers.

Play 3 (a fix play) is aimed at remediation of external sources of hardware asset records with missing serial numbers.

Play 4 (a fix play) is aimed at remediation of customizations that affect creation of linked CI when new Assets are created.

Play 5 (a fix play) is aimed at remediation of customizations that affect Asset-CI synchronization.

Data governance is aimed at prevention of missing serial numbers in Hardware Assets.

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Incomplete data imported from external sources (integrations, import sets, discovery, manual entry).

Transform Maps that do not include the serial number or improperly map it.

Customizations that result in optional serial numbers at asset creation time.

Customizations that result in failure to synchronize CI serial number to hardware asset record.

Someone might have accidentally deleted the serial number.

Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

Broken linkage between the asset record and its corresponding CI record.

Duplicate asset records.

Operation Consequence

Additional data maintenance burden (e.g., manual asset/CI reconciliation, ETL imports/exports, table cleanup, etc.).

Difficulty identifying the asset with vendors delays or misses opportunities to realize full warranty, support, renewal, and contractual benefits.

IT service actors’ trust is eroded by confusing asset information.

IT service actors are burdened and delayed while seeking alternate sources of accurate data on the fly.

Use of alternate sources of asset information reduces recording and usage of data in the system and in the audit function, resulting in lost audit trails.

Degraded asset management processes due misleading hardware device counts, statuses, locations, users, and historical impact of other ITSM processes on them.

App Consequence

After Paris release version, Discovery and IRE will in some cases create additional CI and asset records for deployed hardware already represented by asset records with missing serial numbers.

Impact on Your Business

The broken or obscured linkage to the actual hardware caused by unpopulated asset serial numbers degrades:

MTTR speed of break/fix, planned maintenance, inspections if serial number is unknown.

Incident Reduction data accuracy and uniqueness because of confusion caused by multiple CI records for the same CI. Operational Visibility convergence of asset records and “corresponding” CI records, causing gaps in information that result in incorrect life cycle management decisions.

parts management for serialized assets.

stock rules and auto replenishments. Audit/Compliance compliance with regulatory and contractual responsibilities.

management ability to maintain internal controls and audit trails.

Process Automation process automation reliant upon on existing asset record serial number. Operational Cost investment visibility, enablement of better operational and financial management decisions, and room in the budget to drive innovation and growth.

ability to properly manage warranties, contracts, vendor agreements, and software license.

Service Level Awareness operational performance data that could be used as a feedback loop with vendors (e.g., in negotiations).

the visibility of physical devices throughout their asset life cycles (Request, Procure, Receive, Stock, Deploy, Monitor, Support, MAC, Dispose); organizations won’t always know what is in stock, which assets belong to them, where they’re located, their users, etc.

Engagement Questions:

Consider the answers to these questions:

How are assets populated? Manually? Via Discovery? Integration with external sources?

Are you currently using Hardware Asset Management?

Are you currently using the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) ?

What process or criteria are you using to match the asset records to the physical devices?

Is there a documented process in place to address missing or incorrect serial numbers?

Do you have issues with your ITSM process for link to asset records where needed? If there are duplicate asset records, it might be hard to know which asset record to use. For example, one asset record might be out of date.

Are you aware of any duplicate asset records and cause(s)?

Remediation Plays

Summary

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

Play Name

Analysis Play 1:

Identify Hardware Assets with Missing Serial Numbers

What this play is about

Identify hardware asset records with missing serial numbers and triangulate on the cause(s)

Required tasks

Display a list of hardware asset records with missing serial numbers

Fix Play 2:

Remediate Unpopulated Serial Numbers in Existing Hardware Asset Records

What this play is about

Remediate unpopulated serial numbers in existing hardware asset records

Required tasks

Use Hardware Asset State to identify actions to begin remediating hardware asset records with missing serial numbers

Fix Play 3:

Remediate External Sources of Hardware Asset Records

What this play is about

Ensure that external data sources of hardware asset records include serial numbers

Required tasks

Ensure that external data sources of hardware asset records include serial numbers and transform maps map serial numbers properly

Fix Play 4:

Enforce Mandatory Serial Numbers During New Hardware Asset Record Creation

What this play is about

As of release version Paris, enforce serial number population at Hardware Asset creation time

Required tasks

Set a system property and chosen model categories to trigger the Identification and Reconciliation Engine (IRE) to create corresponding CI when new asset records are created in those model categories Fix Play 5:

Remediate Hardware Asset-Ci Synchronization

What this play is about

Ensure that bidirectional Hardware Asset-CI synchronization is active so that changes to either the asset or CI record are updated to the logically mapped record

Required tasks

Remediate customized field mapping, business rules, and script include

Data Governance

What this play is about

Take steps to prevent missing serial numbers in Hardware asset records

Required tasks

Employ the following Now platform features and related procedures to help ensure that the correct serial number is documented as early as possible in asset management life cycle

Play 1 - Identify Hardware Assets with Missing Serial Numbers

What this Play is about

Identify Hardware Assets with missing serial numbers and triangulate on the cause(s)

Required tasks

Download update set Report Hardware Assets Missing Serial Numbers.xml for a dashboard to help you analyze your assets.

Navigate to System Update Sets > Retrieved Update Sets

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the UI Action "Import Update Set from XML"

Choose the downloaded XML file and click "Upload". This action will take you to List View for Retrieved Update Sets where you should open the new record titled "Retrieved Update Set Report Assets Missing Serial Numbers".

Click the "Preview Update Set" button. After the system completes the preview, click the "Commit Update Set" button.

Navigate to Self-Service > Dashboards, find, and open Hardware Assets Missing Serial Numbers dashboard.

Your system should present you a dashboard of drillable report widgets grouped by various attributes to correlate with missing serial numbers similar to the depiction below:

Example:

You can also navigate to the Hardware Asset list. Type alm_hardware.list in the Filter Navigator, hit Enter, then filter the resultant list for records with missing serial numbers (serial_numberISEMPTY), and try additional filters and grouping.

Example:

If the resulting list is blank you can stop here, else continue to the next task.

Note: The following steps assume that your list is not empty.

Group the list by the Model Category column. (add that column if it is missing in your view) Next, either expand each grouping to view them or make a note of the Model Categories. You can navigate to Product Catalog > Product Models > Model Categories to review them.

Review each Model Category. If a Model Category’s CI or Asset class field are both populated, the serial number is mandatory at asset creation time and you should continue to investigate and remediate unpopulated Hardware Asset Serial Numbers. You can skip the Hardware Assets with unpopulated asset or CI classes, since serial numbers would have been optional at asset creation time.

Filter, group, or sort the list of records by model category, state, created, created by, assigned to, or any other relevant attributes to help you identify, prioritize, and group assets that might have similar causes that will allow deeper en masse analysis and remediation.

Analyze the list to identify the cause(s) or source(s) of missing asset record serial numbers. Relatively small numbers of asset records with missing serial numbers might indicate issues with manual entry or imports of asset or CI records or both. Large numbers of missing serial numbers might suggest an issue with 3 rd party integrations, import set schedules, or discovery.

Continue to the next Play to remediate unpopulated serial numbers in existing hardware asset records. Otherwise, skip to Play 3 to review external data sources.

Play 2 - Remediate Unpopulated Serial Numbers in Existing Hardware Asset Records

What this Play is about

Correlate existing Hardware Assets with their corresponding devices and document the correct serial number in the Hardware Asset record. If accurate, the Hardware Asset State can help you identify actions to track down the serial number as indicated in the provided table below.

Required tasks

Starting from the Hardware Assets list view, group your records on the State column. (Add that column if it is missing from your view) Example:

For each of the groups of records in a particular state, consider the table below to choose suggested action(s) for locating the missing serial numbers.

If Hardware Asset State is

Description

Suggested Actions

On order

Asset is ordered but not received

Locate the Advance Shipment Notice (ASN) or contact your vendor to resend it to you. The ASN should contain the serial number

In stock

Asset is stored in a stockroom. Substate indicates if it is possible or if you should put the asset into use

Use the location field to identify the stockroom contact information. Contact the stockroom manager or admin asking them to validate the presence of the asset(s) and provide you the serial number(s)

In transit

Asset is being transported

If the vendor is transporting the asset, locate the Advance Shipment Notice (ASN) or contact your vendor to have it sent to you again. The ASN should contain the serial number(s)

If the asset is being transported internally within the organization, contact the sender and/or receiver to have them validate the presence of the asset and provide you its serial number

In use

Asset is in use. Used only with consumables

Contact the Support group, Assigned to, Owned by designee(s) and request the serial number. Note that at baseline the Now platform will synchronize the serial number between any Hardware Asset and its related CI. Unpopulated Hardware Asset serial numbers can thus result from unpopulated CI serial numbers. Issues with imports, third party integrations, and Discovery can sometimes cause missing CI serial numbers. Please refer to playbook KB0829077 to address these causes.

Consumed

When the entire quantity of this Consumable Asset has been consumed

Not applicable. This is a Consumables state and Consumables are not individually tracked with serial numbers. Consumables typically should not be in the alm_hardware table. This is what the alm_asset table is intended for.

In maintenance

Asset being repaired or undergoing maintenance

Contact the stockroom, Support group, Assigned to and/or Owned by designee(s) to request the serial number(s). If the device is with the manufacturer for repair it is likely that the serial number was required for that service. Check with your vendor manager to see if there is another system where this information resides.

Retired

When the asset has reached the end of life

Consult with your data retention and audit policies to confirm if there is need to complete these records. Consider Data Archive for records no longer needed in operational views. Contact the stockroom or Support group from the last known location to have them provide you the serial number(s) if needed.

Missing

An asset that is missing or lost

Contact the last known location stockroom, Support group, Assigned to and/or Owned by designee(s) to confirm the State and request the serial number(s). It may be quite difficult to track a missing device if the unique identifier is missing. Purchase records such as shipping notices or service requests with the manufacturer might contain the missing data. Consult your data retention policies to determine how long a hardware asset record which is missing should be retained before Data Archive might be a better place to locate them.

Continue to the next Play if you have external sources of hardware asset records, otherwise skip to Play 4 to work on enforcing serial numbers on newly created hardware assets.

Play 3 - Fix Play - Remediate External Sources of Hardware Asset Records

What this Play is about

Ensure that external data sources of hardware asset records include serial numbers. We will review any external source(s) of hardware asset data that and ensure that they include serial numbers by taking a look at their associated transform maps.

Transform Maps provide several means to take external data into the platform. Because of that, we will need to check several locations for these mappings.

Required tasks

Navigate to System Import Sets > Transform Maps

Filter the list for where the Target Table field is alm_hardware and run the filter.

If you know which Transform Maps to check, review each map for Field mappings where the target field is set to serial number and transform scripts where the script contains the serial number.

(Optional) For help to navigate to the Field maps list view and locate the correct transform map(s), type “sys_transform.list” in the Filter Navigator followed by Enter, then filter the list view such that Target field is serial_number OR Source script contains serial_number.

Example:

(Optional) The list here contains a Map column which is a reference to the Transform Maps associated with these field mappings. Once you have located the field mappings, ensure that the correct value is written to the serial_number field.

If there is no field updating the serial number, it may be that you need to add a field mapping to the transform to handle the data correctly. Note: When adding a new field mapping, you should confirm the presence of the serial number in the recent data imports (These are located in System Import Sets > Advanced > Import Sets ) If the serial number is not present in the imported data, you must consult with the owner or admin of the external system to get it added to either the exported data (for imports of type CSV, XLSX or XML) or added to the SQL syntax for the JDBC data sources .

If you still don’t see which Transform Map(s) are updating serial_number, check these other scripted transform locations:

Type sys_transform_script.list in the Filter Navigator and hit Enter to navigate to the transform scripts list.

Filter for Script CONTAINS serial_number and run the filter. Example:

These are Transformation Event Scripts which take place at various points within the transformation process. The list here contains references to transform maps in the Map column.

(Optional) Correct any scripting here that may be mishandling the serial number field on target records. If you do not see any transform maps with a mapping to the serial number field, it may be that you need to add a field mapping to the transform to handle the data correctly. You probably do not need to add a Transformation Event Script unless there is sufficient reason that simple field mapping will not handle the data correctly.

Note: When adding a new field mapping, you should confirm the presence of the serial number in the recent data imports (These are located in System Import Sets > Advanced > Import Sets ) If the serial number is not present in the imported data, you must consult with the owner or admin of the external system to get it added to either the exported data (for imports of type CSV, XLSX or XML) or added to the SQL syntax for the JDBC data sources .

Continue to the next Play to enforce mandatory serial numbers at new Hardware Asset creation time, otherwise skip to Play 5 to remediate Hardware Asset-CI synchronization

Play 4 - Fix Play - Enforce Mandatory Serial Numbers During Creation of New Asset Records

What this Play is about

Remediate a system property and specific model categories so that serial numbers are mandatory for creation of selected new hardware asset records

Notes

As of the Paris release, a system property glide.asset.create_ci_with_ire enables creation of certain CI from assets via the ServiceNow® Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Identification and Reconciliation engine (IRE). The default value of this property is false if you upgraded to Paris from Orlando or earlier.

Before updating this property review:

Asset and CI Management.

any customizations on the Serial number field.

any integrations or flows that use an existing serial number to create an asset. The glide.asset.create_ci_with_ire property affects CI classes:

with identification rules on serial number and no dependent relationships with other CI classes.

extended from hardware CI class cmdb_ci_hardware.

For Configuration Items created with the IRE, the Model Categories decide whether the ServiceNow platform creates an Asset from a CI, and if so, which class of asset. On assets with model categories that correspond to these CI classes, the serial number is mandatory to:

create new Hardware Assets.

receive purchase order line items.

allocate (not pre-allocate) assets.

Required tasks

Enter sys_properties.list in the Filter Navigator and hit Enter to navigate to the System Properties list view

Ensure that glide.asset.create_ci_with_ire is set to the value of true

Example:

Next, we need to ensure that the Model Categories that trigger the IRE to create a corresponding CI at Hardware Asset creation time are set appropriately. Use the output from Play 1 to know which records need review.

Navigate to Product Catalog > Product Models > Model Categories

(Optional) For any Model Category with populated Asset and CI class fields, serial number is already mandatory. You can stop there and move on to the next Model Category.

For any Model Category for which you want to enforce serial number population when new asset records are being created, you must populate both the CI class and Asset class fields. The image below depicts an example list of Model Categories with a few of the default Model Categories from baseline.

This image depicts the new Model Category entry form where you can force creation of a CI at Hardware Asset creation time

Next, we need to ensure that each model's asset tracking strategy does not override its model category.

Navigate to Product Catalog > Product Models > Hardware Models , find the model, and open its form.

In the General tab, set Asset tracking strategy to "Leave to category" and then click save. Example:

Continue to the next Play to remediate Hardware Asset-CI synchronization, otherwise skip to the Data Governance section.

Play 5 - Fix Play - Remediate Hardware Asset-CI Synchronization

What this Play is about

Remediation of customizations that cause the Now platform to fail to synchronize serial number updates from a CI to its corresponding asset record.

Required tasks

Navigate to Asset > Administration > Asset-CI Field Mappings

Find the Asset CI Field Mapping Asset field serial_number to Configuration Item field entry.

Review the attributes in the list or click the Asset field serial_number to open its form.

For this field mapping, ensure that Asset column and Configuration Item column are both "serial_number" and that Active is set to "true" as in the image below.

Example:

If you have reason to believe that default Business Rules Update Asset fields on change and Update CI fields on change might have been modified, follow these steps to view their histories and remediate them as necessary.

Navigate to Administration > Business Rules , search for the "Update Asset fields on change" business rule, and ensure that Active is set to true. (This is the default).

Example:

(Optional) To determine why or when an update was made to this record, open the Update Asset fields on change form, click the Additional Actions context menu (the hamburger in the upper left corner), and select History > List to display the history of changes to the record. It is possible that a change was made within an Update Set which references a Story or Issue tracking record which documents the business need this change was made to address.

Example:

Review the ensuing list for recent modifications made by someone other than System Administrator that might affect the update of Hardware Asset serial numbers on change.

Tip: One method is to sort the modifications by Update time in reverse chronological order.

Example:

For each suspect modification you find, try reverting it in a lower environment and testing it to see if that resolves the issue before promoting it to production. Otherwise, continue to the next required task.

Repeat 1 – 4 for the business rule named "Update CI fields on change", located in the same list view. Note: This work should be tested within a non-production environment where all Asset integrations and Data Sources can be tested. If Assets are missing serial numbers but have a referenced CI (within the Configuration Item field) which do have populated serial numbers, it is possible that the Script Include AssetAndCISynchronizer (used by business rules Update Asset fields on change and Update CI fields on change) may have been customized and should be reverted to baseline.

(Optional) Navigate to Administration > Script Includes , search for " AssetAndCISynchronizer" and ensure that Active is set to true.

Open the AssetAndCISynchronizer to form view and click the Additional Actions context menu (the hamburger in the upper left corner). Select History > List to display the history of changes to the record.

Search for recent modifications made by someone other than System Administrator that might affect the update of Hardware Asset serial numbers on change.

For each suspect modification you find, try reverting to baseline and testing it to see if that resolves the issue before promoting it to production. Remember to always test all sources of Asset data to ensure there are no unexpected results.

Continue to Data Governance to put additional measures in place to help ensure that Hardware Assets always have their serial numbers.

Data Governance

What this Play is about

Take steps to prevent missing serial numbers in hardware asset records

Required tasks

Rerun Play 1 periodically or automate generation and distribution of reports on a scheduled basis.

Execute the plays indicated by your analysis in Play 1.

Review the transform maps as part of any new changes/configurations and make sure to use the new practices.

Consult the Data Governance Section in KB0829077 for how to maintain accurate CI serial numbers.

Congratulations You have completed this Product Success Playbook.