ServiceNow SAM Pro licenses are termed as the most robust licenses in terms of software tracking and obtaining the license compilation position. To achieve the expected functionality, the foremost pre-requisite is to install the available Software Asset Management Professional Plugins, once the licenses are purchased. In case the plugins were not identified as available for installation, then there is a need to raise the installation request to the HI Support portal.

Introduction to ServiceNow SAM Professional and Its Features

ServiceNow SAM Professional provides visibility and control of software licenses throughout their lifecycle. With SAM, one can manage software assets efficiently by answering important questions about ownership, purchasing, and usage. The software asset overview available on the Software Asset Workspace consolidates dashboards into a single high-level view to provide visibility into the many different areas of SAM.

To help you manage your software licenses and processes, the ServiceNow SAM workspace shows important information such as publishers and products out of compliance, true-up costs, software spending, and more. Also accessible from the overview is the activity center, which displays alerts like import errors, normalization suggestions, or catalog requests, as well as notifications generated by the system.

It provides quick access to license usage, operations, software asset analytics, the success portal, the renewal calendar, and content lookup

Read: Discover the Power of ServiceNow SAM for Your Organization

Preparing to Request SAM Pro Plugins

As the first step in preparing the request for SAM Pro plugins, the SAM Pro licensing needs to be validated under the Subscription Management Application. Once the licenses are identified as available, we can validate the SAM licenses available for installation by navigating to system definition plugins in ServiceNow Software Asset Management.

Step-by-Step Guide to Requesting Plugins

If the plugins are not available for installation, then to make it available we need to login to the HI Support Portal. There we must raise the install plugin request in ServiceNow Software Asset Management.

The steps for the same are as mentioned below:

  • Login to ServiceNow Hi Support portal through valid credentials.
  • Navigate to the following: System Applications, All Available Applications, All.
  • Search for the relevant plugins.
  • Submit a request.
  • Once the plugin is found, click Request or Install, basis if it requires a subscription or is available for direct installation.
  • Request Completion needs to fill the details before submission. Kindly ensure you should have the necessary licenses or subscriptions.
  • Once the request is submitted, you have to wait until it will be processed before installation.
  • Once it appears for installation in the list of available Plugins, you can log on to the respective instance to install the plugin.

Also read Discover How ServiceNow Support Transforms ITSM Operations

Recommended Installation Order for Plugins
For avoiding conflicts in ServiceNow Software Asset Management, the recommended order of installation is as follows:

a.) Publisher Based Add-on Plugins:

  • Software Asset Management Foundation

It requires ITSM subscription. Software Asset Management feature included with asset management provides basic capabilities to manage software licenses and create custom license metric calculation to determine compliance.

com.snc.sams

  • Software Asset Management Professional

This allows you to normalize your software discovery information, reconcile your entitlements and installs, and reclaim unused software.

com.snc.samp 

  • Software Asset Management Playbook and Guided Setups

It provides step-by-step guidance for completing daily software asset management tasks.

sn_sam_playbook

  • Software Asset Workspace

It enables the SAM capabilities in a Workspace.

com.sn_sam_workspace

  • Normalization Data Services Client

It helps maintain consistency by ensuring that records for a given company refer to that company by the same name.

com.glide.data_services_canonicalization.client

  • Software Asset Management Core

It provides the base tables for software asset management including software installations, usages, suite calculations, and discovery models.

com.snc.sam.core

Also read Discover How ServiceNow SAM Transforms Business with Clarity

b.) Publisher Based Add-on Plugins:

Depending on the list of available publishers in the organization, one can choose the Publisher Process Pack for installation from ServiceNow Software Asset Management.  

  • Software Asset Management – Oracle Process Pack

It provides the capability to manage software that is licensed under Oracle licensing model.

com.snc.sam.oracle.pp

  • Software Asset Management – IBM PVU Process Pack

It provides the capability to manage software that is licensed under the IBM Processor Value Units licensing model.

com.snc.sam.ibmpvu.pp

  • Software Asset Management Professional for Oracle

It provides additional capabilities to reconcile Oracle software.

Com.snc.samp.oracle

  • Software Asset Management Professional for Microsoft

It provides additional capabilities to reconcile Microsoft software.

Com.snc.samp.microsoft

  • The ServiceNow Plugin repository

It contains other Publisher Packs that one can consider for installation depending upon the requirements. 

c.) Optional Plugins:

  • Performance Analytics Premium for Software Asset Management 

Installing the plugin will remove the limitations of out-of-the-box performance analytics.

com.snc.pa.premium.sam 

  • Performance Analytics - Content Pack – Software Asset Management Professional 

It requires subscription and provides out of the cloud reporting content for software asset management.

com.snc.pa.samp

  1. Depending on the publisher, there are few other plugins available for installation that may be required to provide the necessary environment and available functionality to achieve license compliance position.

 

Also read Maximizing ServiceNow SAM Plugin for Your Business Needs 

Verifying the Installation Process

a.) Identify the Installed plugins:

The installation process can be verified by identifying the installed Plugins in the list of available plugins for Software Asset management.

Navigate to the System Definition, Plugins, and search for the plugin ID’s for the installed plugins and check if any update is required. If the plugin is updated to the latest patch, then we can move to the next step to verify the functionality.

b.) Verify the available Modules/ functionalities:

  1. (i) Navigate to the base tables which should be available with the list of installed plugins.

(ii.) Validate the available modules on Software Asset Workspace, validate all the available modules with the expected standards mentioned in ServiceNow docs.

c.) Check and validate the license compliance positions for all the available entitlements

Perform the dry run to ensure and validate if the expected functionalities were in place.

d.) Report a deviation to ServiceNow Hi Support

In case any discrepancy is identified, then report the same to the ServiceNow Hi Support team.

The steps mentioned above will abide you to ensure a smooth setup for the installation of the expected plugins and hence, in succession, allow you to evaluate a license compliance position for all the available software.


Also read The Future of ServiceNow Software Asset Management 

Best Practices for SAM Plugin Management

Best practice for SAM Plugin Management is to reduce the risk of implementation failure and to optimize the expected outcomes basis realisation of the software spends. It provides a high-level approach towards SAM module implementation without a failure. It helps to abide with best methodology towards implementation of leading practices to help ServiceNow SAM implementations. It helps to build the recommendations that allow stakeholders to understand the pre-requisites, associated risks and educate them to get prepared for successful SAM implementation.

It allows the stakeholder to adapt themselves to the type of engagements corresponding to the stages of SAM implementation in phases such as: initiate, plan, execute, deliver, and close.

The ServiceNow SAM supports both SaaS and enterprise software. The ServiceNow Software Asset Management plugins identify as robust mechanism to pull the Software Compliance report based on expected and meaningful integrations from the SaaS vendors via one of the many out-of-the-box integrations or via personalised integrations.

Also read, ServiceNow SAM: Navigating its Implementation Pitfalls

Conclusion

The blog walks you through the optimum process of identifying, requesting, and verifying ServiceNow SAM Professional Plugins. This document can be considered as a guide towards available SKUs for software installation management, the necessary and additional plugins requirement, and provides the order of plugin installation for ensuring a smooth SAM Pro implementation.

ServiceNow Software Asset Management also gives an insight on the features and the modules available for optimizing on the software spends and validating the license consumption positioning.

Once the plugins are installed, it helps you to gain an insight on the following functionalities: 

  • Basic reporting and performance analytics
  • Advanced, automated reconciliation
  • Complete content library for normalization
  • Normalization engine
  • License harvesting
  • Software Usage optimization
  • Actionable reconciliation results
  • Software blacklisting
  • O365 & Adobe Subscription management
  • Publisher Packs

At inMorphis, we ensure that the handholding on ServiceNow Software Asset Management Pro plugins installation must ensure optimum and effective management of building SAM pro-environment.