Address Hardware Asset Records with Duplicate Serial Numbers

_  Product Success Playbook

Address Duplicate Serial Numbers in Hardware Asset Records

A step-by-step guide to analyze and remediate Duplicate Serial Numbers in Hardware Asset Records

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 2: Remediate Hardware Asset Records With Duplicate Serial Numbers

Data Governance

Summary

Goal of this Playbook

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

Details about this playbook

Author Peter Laudat Date 01/11/2022 Addresses HSD # HSD0004551, HSD0010416 Applicable ServiceNow Releases All Releases Time Required Approximately 1 to 8 hours (depending on your environment) Audience

Asset Management Team

Configuration Management team

ServiceNow System Administrator

Discovery team

Problem Overview

Hardware asset records with duplicate serial numbers increase the difficulty of tracking and managing accurate asset counts and costs. The likelihood of valid duplicate hardware asset serial numbers is low. Asset managers should identify, investigate, and remediate duplicate Hardware Asset serial numbers as necessary to assure the trustworthiness of the data.

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 with duplicate serial numbers. Unique serial numbers improve the asset management process by ensuring accurate counts of physical devices.

How this playbook is structured

This playbook guides you through two plays to remediate duplicate hardware asset serial numbers.

Play 1 (an analysis play) is aimed at identification of Hardware Asset records with duplicate serial numbers.

Play 2 (a fix play) is aimed at remediation of Hardware Asset records with duplicate serial numbers.

Play 3 (a governance play) provide steps to prevent duplicate serial numbers in hardware asset records

Problem Analysis

Upstream Causes

Duplicate data imported or created via integrations, import sets, discovery, or manual entry.

Transform Maps such that coalesce is disabled for serial number.

Customizations that allow creation of asset records with duplicate serial numbers.

Downstream Consequences

Data Consequence

Potential duplicate data

Data linkages to CI records in the CMDB may be incorrect

Asset and CI Lifecycle status inconsistencies Operation Consequence

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

Difficulty identifying an asset correctly 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 asset information sources reduces recording and usage of data in the system and in the audit function, resulting in lost audit trails.

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

Data bloat resulting from duplicate asset records may adversely affect the performance of a Now Platform instance.

Impact on Your Business

Duplicate serial numbers in asset records degrade:

MTTR speed of break/fix, planned maintenance, inspections if unique serial number must be reconciled

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

accuracy of 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 CI 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 duplicate serial numbers for same class asset records?

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

Play 1: Analysis

What this play is about

Identify duplicate Hardware Asset records

Required tasks

Use a dashboard and reports to identify duplicate Hardware Asset records

Play 2: Fix

What this play is about

Remediate hardware asset records with duplicate serial numbers

Required tasks

Employ tactics to remediate hardware asset records with duplicate serial numbers

Data Governance

What this play is about

Take steps to prevent duplicate serial numbers in hardware asset records Required tasks

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

Play 1 - Analysis

What this Play is about

Import and review a dashboard depicting the top 5 counts of Hardware Assets with duplicate serial numbers.

Required tasks

Download update set Find HW Assets with Duplicate Serial Numbers.xml to your local drive for a dashboard to help you analyze your assets.

To import the update set, navigate to System Update Sets > Retrieved Update Sets and click the Import Update Set from XML UI Action in the Related Links section at the bottom of the list.

Navigate to System Update Sets > Retrieved Update Sets , find, and click Find HW Assets with Duplicate Serial Numbers to open its form. Preview the update set, then commit it.

Navigate to Performance Analytics > Dashboards , find, and click open the Hw Assets With Duplicate Serial Numbers dashboard.

Your system should present you a dashboard of drillable report widgets grouped by duplicate serial numbers similar to the example below.

Example:

In the example above, the numeric report widget (left) represents the sum of the top 5 counts of Hardware Asset records with duplicate serial numbers. The doughnut (middle) and bar chart (right) report widgets depict the top 5 counts grouped by duplicate serial number.

If the report widgets are blank or show zeros, you can stop here. Otherwise, continue to the next task.

Note: The following steps assume that your report widgets display neither blank nor zero.

Select various groupings and stacks to help you identify and prioritize potential causes. You can also click on the numeric report widget and inside any of the groupings in the doughnut and bar chart report widgets to drill down to the representative lists for more detail.

For example, the pictures below depict selection of Stacked by pulldown menu item Configuration Item Discovery attribute. In this case, 16 of 25 Hardware Asset records were created by an unknown configuration item discovery source.

Analyze the data provided by the graphs to determine the cause or to provide a starting point for more detailed analysis.

Click on the charts to drill down to specified subsets.

This example depicts the result of a click on the bar with serial number AEX5635Z0001AC in the Top 5 Counts of Hw Assets with Duplicate Serial Numbers Bar Chart:

Optionally, continue to step 12 for a little more detail for a specific asset with a duplicate serial number; otherwise, continue on to Play 2 for remediation steps.

(Optional) Click on one of the Asset tag links to open the asset's form. In the Related Links section near the bottom of the form, click on UI Action Link Check Referencing Tables to see the asset's references.

Example:

(Optional) In the References section, click on a reference to select it and display the detail in the Record Details list.

Example:

Continue on to Play 2. Play 2 - Remediate Hardware Asset Records with Duplicate Serial Numbers

What this Play is about

Delete the duplicate hardware asset record(s).

Required tasks

Audit hardware asset record(s) with duplicate serial numbers, their class, and CI to determine whether to delete or archive the asset and/or CI records..

To the extent necessary, merge unique information from the duplicate record(s) to the chosen unique records.

To delete identified duplicate asset records, navigate to Asset > Portfolios > All Assets , select the check box left of the asset Name , then select either Delete to delete the asset and its related CI or Delete Asset Only .

Data Governance

What this Play is about

Take steps to prevent duplicate serial numbers in hardware asset records.

Required tasks

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

If Transform Map(s) result in assets with duplicate serial numbers, enable coalesce on serial numbers to update instead of create new asset records. See Updating records using coalesce for more information.

If you use the Agent Mobile app, scan the asset serial number or asset tag and then Search for duplicates before creating or receiving Hardware Assets from a purchase order.

Consider enabling Enforce CI verification in the Model Category form so the system will not auto-create a Hardware Asset when a CI is created or discovered, allowing manual creation of the related Hardware Asset later.

If you, for example, customized baseline probes, sensors, or patterns, verify that they still discover serial numbers. In addition, do not configure sensors or patterns to modify the serial number syntax, such as adding a custom prefix. Non-standard serial numbers can lead to inaccurate asset tracking.

References

KB0829103 Handle Duplicate CIs in your CMDB

Congratulations

You have completed this Get Well Playbook.