Buy me a coffee
Eve McGivern

← Tools

Platform guide: Hardware lifecycle check

Download Word (.docx)

Where the fields this tool uses live in ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management (HAM), and in Flexera One. Every module, table, or field named below is confirmed on a source in the Sources list; where no source names one, that is stated as a gap rather than guessed.

ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management: refresh eligibility and disposal

Hardware assets are held on the Hardware [alm_hardware] table, the object ServiceNow's HAM product manages through procurement, deployment, refresh, and disposal. Refresh eligibility is not left to a manual date comparison: a scheduled job, the "SAM - Calculate Asset Refresh Eligibility" job, runs weekly and compares each asset's created on date against a useful_life field carried on the asset's hardware model; an asset outside its useful-life window is flagged true on an Eligible for refresh field, present on the hardware asset form starting with the Orlando release. That is the direct analog of this method's refresh-due check, except ServiceNow derives the due date from the model's useful life rather than storing a per-asset refresh-due date directly. A refresh itself is raised as a Hardware Asset Refresh Order (Service Catalog > Asset Lifecycle), which can replace aged assets with a single model or a mix of models; once approved, a Hardware Asset Refresh Line flow runs each replaced asset through Asset pick, Prepare asset, Schedule refresh, Deploy new asset, and Reclaim aged asset, after which the reclaimed asset moves to In stock state with a Pending disposal substate.

alm_hardware carries a state/substate pair with substates including, under In Stock: Available, Reserved, Defective, Pending Repair, Pending Install, Pending Disposal, Pending Transfer, Pre-Allocated; under In Use: the same set plus In Transit; under Retired: Disposed, Sold, Donated, Vendor Credit, Pending Disposal; and under Missing: Lost, Stolen. No ServiceNow-published source documents the specific conditions that trigger each transition.

Disposal itself runs as a Hardware Disposal Order, progressing through named stages — Draft (Verify Assets task), Scheduling (Schedule Pickup task), Transit (Asset Departure task; cancelable only up to this stage), Confirmation (Vendor Confirmation task), Documentation (Disposal Documentation task), then Completed. For a data-bearing device, ServiceNow's own guidance states a Certificate of Destruction is required — documentation confirming data-bearing media was destroyed in compliance with applicable law and industry standards — attachable to the asset record or to a contract record with the disposal vendor. That is the direct analog of this method's data-wipe confirmation and its retired-device disposal-blocking check; no ServiceNow-published source names the specific field the certificate attachment or the wipe-confirmed flag lives on.

Flexera One: hardware lifecycle, end-of-life detection, and disposal

Flexera One's Hardware Asset Management (part of its IT Asset Lifecycle suite) inventories hardware and integrates with hardware vendors, asset registers, procurement systems, inventory tools, barcoding equipment, and disposal vendors to set and track an asset's disposition automatically as it moves through its lifecycle — request, procurement, deployment, tracking and monitoring, maintenance and support, and retirement and disposal. Flexera frames end-of-life detection through Technopedia, its own database of end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-support (EOS) intelligence, surfaced as lifecycle alerts when new hardware arrives, reaches end of life, its warranty expires, or its lease terminates — the direct analog of this method's refresh-due check, though driven by vendor EOL/EOS data rather than a fixed per-type refresh cycle. On retirement, Flexera automatically reclaims software and subscription licenses tied to the retiring device before disposal proceeds.

Flexera's own disposal-integration language describes coordinating with connected disposal vendors to set asset disposition, but no Flexera-published source names a specific field, table, or status value for a data-wipe or destruction-certificate confirmation; a Certificate of Destruction for a data-bearing device is described industry-wide (including by ITAD vendors Flexera can integrate with) as something the disposal vendor issues, not a native Flexera One record. That gap is stated here rather than guessed — this method's data_wipe_confirmed field maps to that external certificate's existence, tracked as an attribute in the governance record, not to a confirmed Flexera One field name.

Sources checked

Pages that do not return readable content to an automated fetch: ServiceNow's own Hardware Asset Management product page (servicenow.com/products/hardware-asset-management.html, 403). Everything above comes from a page that loaded, or is flagged where it did not.