Enhancement of Additional Discovery feature in Asset Management (1)

Enhancement of Additional Discovery feature in Asset Management

Discovery in Asset Management: Background

An asset can be added to the Asset Management/Asset Inventory in the IT Asset Management module in one of four ways.

1. Manual addition
2. Bulk import
3. Integrations through ServiceNow, Lansweeper
4. Asset import through Discovery

Today, a wide range of tools like Agentless Discovery, Agent-based Discovery, Active Directory-based Discovery, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), Nmap-based Discovery, Lan sweeper, and API-based Discovery are available for Asset Discovery.
The Summit Discovery module uses Integrated Discovery sources and Summit Discovery sources to identify and discover endpoint sources across your network and business. For more information on Summit Discovery practices, refer to Summit Discovery Framework and Best Practices Guide.

Asset- Additional Discovery
The Asset details imported through Discovery are captured under the Additional Discovery tab when the discovery is turned ON. It will detect all the software files based on their size when discovered.
The following data is displayed under the Additional Discovery tab:

1. WMI Report- Under the WMI Report tab, you can view detailed discovery information of the Asset such as System and Computer Information, Operating system, RAM, Processor details etc.
2. Software Files- Under the Software Files tab, you can view a list of Software Files available in the Asset Inventory. You can also view the Original Name, Version, Product Name, File Size, and the Publisher Name of the Software Files.
3. Oracle/IBM - Under the Oracle/IBM tab, you can view the data that is discovered from the Oracle/IBM database.

For more information on Additional Discovery details, refer to Viewing Asset Details page and head to the Additional Discovery segment.

Peripheral Discovery

Overview

A wide variety of hardware resources, such as desktop and laptop computers, servers, routers, scanners, and printers, are generally available in most IT firms.
These peripheral devices allow the user to multitask and host a variety of applications. Considering the increase in computational power and efficiency, the number of peripheral devices increases, and thus becomes a challenge to identify and track them.

The Peripheral Discovery feature acts as an enhancement to the already existing Additional Discovery feature. This enables the Asset Manager to handle both the connected computer peripherals and the parent asset by adding the scanned computer peripherals to the inventory.
This feature discovers the peripheral attributes of Mac and LINUX operating systems devices.

The following illustration depicts the process flow of Peripheral Discovery of a Desktop set up with peripheral devices.


Figure: Peripheral Discovery- Process flow

Benefits

1. Access to information on peripheral devices connected to the Parent asset.
2. Flexibility to select the peripherals to be scanned.
3. Helps in enhancing the tracking and traceability of these peripheral devices.
4. Improves user experience by displaying information on a single screen.

Prerequisites

1. The Asset whose Peripheral details must be discovered should be in the Allocated state.
2. The Asset should be successfully mapped in Endpoint Profile Mapping. Asset > Configuration > Endpoints > Profile Mapping.

Configure Peripheral Discovery

Additional Discovery Enablement

To enable Additional Discovery for IT Asset Management, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Admin > Basic > Infrastructure > Configuration Key Editor.
   
   
2. Select the desired Domain, Server, and Actions from the drop-down.
   
   
3. Select Sync To System Config checkbox to filter the list of keys whose key values are successfully updated in Server Config file. Click SUBMIT.
   
   
4. In SAM_ENDPOINTCOMPLIANCE, set IsEnableAdditionalInfoReading to True. Click SUBMIT.
   
   
5. 
   Figure: Configuration Key Editor

Peripherals Selection

To choose the peripherals to be scanned for additional discovery, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Asset > Configuration > Others > Application Settings. The Application Settings DETAILS page is displayed.
   
   
2. Scroll down to find the DISCOVERY grid. Select the desired option from Additional Hardware drop-down.
   
   

Figure: Application Settings- Discovery grid

      3. Scroll down to find the REPORT grid. Select Display Endpoint Compliance Tab on Asset Details Pop-up page checkbox.

Figure: Application Settings- Report grid

Peripheral Information

To view the peripheral details connected to the asset, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Asset > User > Manage Assets > Asset Inventory.
   
   
2. Select Fixed Asset on the Asset Inventory page.
   
   
3. Select the desired Tenant from the drop-down, which is a mandatory field. The Fixed Asset LIST page is displayed.
   
   
4. Click the desired asset category's count hyperlink under Allocated status.
   
   
5. Click the desired Asset ID count hyperlink. The ASSET DETAILS pop-up is displayed.
   
   
6. Navigate to Asset Information > Peripherals.
   
   Figure: Asset Details- Peripherals tab

Field Description
The following section describes the segments in the Peripherals tab on ASSET DETAILS pop-up page.

Peripherals- Export and Report

The discovered peripheral information can be exported in Excel format and evaluated in report format.
Export to Excel
Click the above icon to extract the data of individual peripheral devices.
Report: By using the DN table, which captures the Peripheral details from additional discovery, the report can be created using an external analytics solution like Power BI.