Getting started with Assets for Jira Service Management Data Center

Objects

Objects are your actual assets/configuration items. These can be linked to your Jira issues so whenever an issue comes in, the issue immediately has more context.

They can also be linked with each other using object references to show how objects depend on each other.

Object Schemas

An object schema is the actual configuration management database (CMDB) that contains your object types (more on those below) and objects. You can create multiple object schemas in Assets which is useful for a number of reasons:

• Breaking data into smaller chunks helps with auditing the data and keeping it accurate.
• If you have sensitive data, e.g. employee information, it may be simpler to keep all that data together in one object schema with restricted access permissions.

When deciding how to put data into Assets, consider the uses of the data and who will update it so the data can be grouped into logical object schemas.

Assets (and by extension Jira Service Management) does not care about which information is contained in which object schema. It just sees one big pool of data. This means you can easily use multiple object schemas for one use case and create links between objects in different object schemas.

Object Types

Object types go within a schema and define the objects that the schema contains. You can define these yourself or you can use an object schema template that will come pre-populated with certain object types that you can customize. Object types act as containers for your actual objects. Object types can be whatever you want them to be as Assets is very open and flexible but common object types include:

• Business services
• Hosts
• Laptops
• Software

But they don’t have to be IT assets. For example many people add other useful information such as:

• Vendors
• Locations
• Employees
• Business Priority

Object Type Attributes

Object attributes are what define an object type. Each object type will have its own set of attributes. For example, the object type “laptops” might have the attributes: model, serial number, user, warranty expiry date etc.

Entering actual values for the attribute will define an object. This can be done manually or automatically (see Step 4).

Object References

An object attribute to call out specifically is the attribute type of “object.” This creates a reference to other objects and it is how you start building a map of dependencies between your objects.

For example, if location is its own object type, then each location object can be one of your business' office locations. This allows you to quickly set the location for every laptop by selecting “Stockholm” for example.

Assets Permissions

Assets has three types of permissions

• Global Permissions - In global settings, you can specify who should have administrative permissions in Assets. People assigned to the “Assets Administrator” role can perform all actions within Assets.
• Object Schema Permissions - In object schema settings, you can define who has administrative permissions for a particular object schema, who can update object schema data, and who can just view the data.
• Object Type Permissions - Sometimes you might want Jira Service Management customers to only see certain information in an object schema but you don’t want to give them access to view all the data within the entire object schema. You can use object type permissions here.

Define your problem

Most tools are implemented to solve a problem, and Assets is no exception. It could be that your incident resolution time is not as fast as you’d like, or perhaps changes to a specific service often cause unexpected outcomes because you can’t easily see service dependencies.

Find your problem and use that to define everything else, from who you involve to what assets and information you include in your database. Look at the problem and understand what extra information staff need to help them overcome it. This information will define your object types.

Adding too much information at once can make it tough to check accuracy so try to focus on one problem at a time. Once your first problem is solved, Assets can grow to solve other problems. 

Start with services

For configuration management uses, we recommend starting with the services related to the problem you're trying to solve. Services are well defined, and it’s relatively simple to start adding the various assets they depend on to run, and in turn, the assets that those assets depend on, and so on. Eventually, you’ll build up a complete picture of each relevant service and its dependencies.

You do need to decide how deep to go. Realistically think how much detail you need to understand your services. Mapping the specific racks and cables will be too much detail for some, but for others, that may be required.

You also don’t need to do all of your services at once. You could start with just your business critical services or those that are having the most downtime.

Starting with services gives a defined set of assets/configuration items to start with. You can then add other assets as needed, when new problems arise. It’s best to build your CMDB bit by bit as it’s easier to confirm the accuracy of small chunks of data than your entire infrastructure and assets all at once.

Use object schema templates

Assets comes with object schema templates for IT asset and configuration management, human resources, and customer relationships management.

These templates can be modified to suit your needs, but they’re a good starting point to the types of objects people often store in Assets. Go down the list of object types and remove any you won’t use.

Think about what you can live without

Think carefully about what you are trying to achieve and what information is needed to do so. Each object and its attributes should be useful.

You should sit down with your team and any stakeholders and ensure each attribute is being consumed by someone or something. If nobody has a specific use for it, then it gets binned. It can always be added later!

Do you really need to know the exact location of your servers? Or the manufacturer of your operating systems? Maybe you do, and that's perfectly valid. But if you’re not going to make a decision or query based on that data, then into the scrap pile it should go!

Adding too much data has its challenges:

• The more objects and attributes you have, the more work is needed to keep them accurate.
• Lots of unused data will obscure the valuable data and could even degrade performance in extreme cases.
• It is easier to add data later than remove it. So if you discover you’re missing something, add it in later rather than starting off with loads of data ‘just in case.' Nobody likes deleting data.

Consider future maintainability

Consider how you will maintain the data when it’s in Assets. How often does an object’s attribute(s) change and how easy will it be to keep it up to date in Assets?

If a particular detail of an object changes often but it's rarely used, it probably makes more sense to keep it out of Assets and just look it up on the few occasions it’s actually needed. If something is used every now and then but is very static, then it may be worth including for ease of access.

Let’s take laptop software as an example. You could, if you wanted, update Assets to include every piece of software installed on the laptop using a scanning agent, software request issues, and automation rules. If you have an open installation policy then this is going to change relatively quickly and scanning patterns may not pick up new pieces of software so the accuracy might be a bit off. Instead, it’s probably better to look at a key set of software that you’re particularly interested in understanding the usage of.

If you have strict installation policies and software only gets installed at laptop setup and through service desk requests, then it may make sense to store it all in Assets as the rate of change is slower and it’s easier to track. 

Think beyond physical items

As Assets let you define the objects you need, you aren’t limited to traditional or even physical assets. Business services, for example, are not physical assets but they’re often critical for people to understand in detail. You can link all of a service’s physical and non-physical dependencies to it so just by looking at a business service object, you can get a full understanding of how it’s running.

You can go as abstract as you’d like. Common examples of Assets users create include objects of business importance, environment types, departments/teams, locations, etc.

Another real-world example is categorizing business services. Let us say all your business services are added to Assets under the object type “Business Services.” You may want to categorize those business services into “Finance,” “Logistics,” “Sales,” “Infrastructure,” etc. You could do this with an attribute in the Business Service object type or you can make these categories their own object type called “Service Category.”

Look ahead and grow gradually

Keep in mind any extensions you may want to do in future. This will both shape what data you choose to include, but also how you structure your data.

While it’s good to keep it in mind, we do recommend building Assets up in a gradual way. Trying to do one huge big release with 100% accurate data for 1000s of objects is very tough. Starting small and adding new attributes, objects, and object schemas as you go is going to be significantly simpler.

Our recommendation is to find a problem, build up Assets to fix it, then move onto the next problem, growing Assets as you go.

Set realistic expectations for accuracy

100% accuracy at all times should be the goal but in reality, that may not be possible and that’s okay. As long as the data is sufficiently accurate enough to offer more business value than not having it in the first place, then you’re in a net positive. Many CMDB projects can be delayed or even fail as they’re waiting to be ‘perfect’ before go-live.

Assets Discovery Network Scanner

Assets Discovery is available for free from the marketplace.

Assets Discovery is an agentless scanner (although there is an agent available to get more detailed information) that picks up network assets. You can choose which assets and attributes you pull into your Assets object schemas as well as create your own scanning patterns to find more niche assets. If you run it on a schedule, it will pick up changes and keep data updated. With automation rules, you can even trigger Jira issues, email notifications, and more based on detected changes.

Importers

You can use Assets imports to bring in data from other sources. These import rules can be synchronized on a schedule so you can update your data when required. For each import type, you need to define where the data is stored and where it needs to go in Assets.

CSV import

If you're using a spreadsheet like Excel or Sheets that contains all your assets, you can use the CSV import to bring your data in Assets. This will ensure that you have an integrated and transparent system where you can link your assets to issues and analyze impact.

Database import

You can import data from an internal or third-party system with the database import. Supported databases include Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL.

Jira Users import

Oftentimes, users of Assets will link Jira users with the assets they own. For this, you need to import your Jira users or specific user groups in Assets which you can do with the Jira Users import.

LDAP import

Maybe you work with a corporate directory that contains your assets or employee-manager relationships used for approval processes? To make things easy, Assets has modules that works with popular LDAP directories, which fetch the structure and the assets from your directory.

JSON import

You can import objects into Assets with a JSON file that holds the data to import.

Integrations

Integrations can be used to connect to other tools such as cloud services, asset managers, and other CMDBs.

While we have all these tools, we don’t recommend you bring in every bit of data you have into Assets unless you plan to depreciate the tool. Bring in what you need to use in Jira Service Management - you can always bring in more later.

All integrations can be installed through the Marketplace for free.

Here is the full list of Assets integrations:

• Assets - AWS Integration
• Assets - Azure Integration
• Assets - Google Cloud Integration
• Assets - SCCM Integration
• Assets - Snow Integration
• Assets - ServiceNow Integration
• Assets - JAMF Integration
• Assets - Device42 Integration
• Assets - National Vulnerabilities Database Integration
• Assets - Jira & BitBucket Integration
• Assets - Tempo Integration

Tips & Tricks

You do need to find a balance on how often you should run Assets Discovery, importers, and integrations. Too infrequently and Assets will be long out of date. Too frequently and it could consume a lot of resources depending how many objects you’re dealing with. Some users run integrations every hour, others may run once a week or even on demand.

We recommend synchronizing as often as you can during quiet times. Take a look at how often you think data will change and the importance of that data to determine how often you need to schedule it to run. You want to stay just ahead of how fast the data is changing.

With Assets Discovery, you can have different scanning patterns run at different frequencies to lower the resources required to keep Assets as up to date as possible.

Split data into logical object schemas

All of your data doesn’t need to go into one huge object schema. We recommend having multiple object schemas based on the use of the data or the owner(s) of the data.

Assets and Jira don’t care which object schemas contain what data. The admin just points an Assets custom field at the data it needs, whatever schema it’s in. And custom fields can pull and push data into multiple object schemas from one Jira issue. Links between objects in one object schema can be made with those in another and queries can be run across different schemas. Object schemas are mainly there to make our lives easier rather than for Assets itself.

Breaking your data down into different object schemas is both user friendly and easier to maintain. Teams such as finance or HR departments who may need some information from Assets, don’t need to be bombarded with information they don’t care about. It’s also easier to ask one team to do a regular check of data quality on one object schema, than it is to ask them to check only certain parts of one large object schema.

Federate your data

If you have a perfectly usable database or source of information somewhere and there are processes already in place to keep it updated, the data doesn’t need to be moved into Assets. Instead, it’s likely better to create a copy of the relevant data using integrations and have those integrations run on a schedule to update the Assets information.

Assets come with a number of importers and integrations (see above). With these importers and integrations, the information you need to make decisions can be made available in a Jira issue/Assets itself, but you’re not maintaining two separate copies.

A really common example we see of this is people using the LDAP importer to sync Assets with the Active Directory. Now you have all of your Windows users easily available and you can run the sync periodically to keep it updated.

Sometimes people will create separate object schemas for this imported data, other times people integrate them into bigger object schemas. If the data is going to be used for different uses (e.g. IT support and HR), then it makes more sense to have it as a separate object schema rather than tying it directly in with your IT object schema and then having to give HR access to that schema too.

With the integrations, we recommend not bringing every bit of data available into Assets. You can decide what does and doesn’t make it into the object schema when setting up the integration. You also shouldn’t update this data within Assets itself unless you also push that change to the original source of data. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with conflicting data.

If there’s not a pre-built integration available then you have some other options. The first is to export the data as a CSV/JSON file periodically and have the Assets CSV/JSON importers bring them in on a schedule. Alternatively, you could create an object and give it a URL attribute that links to the other database where more information can be found. This option is good if you just want agents to be able to view the information and don’t want to search or report based on it.

Avoid reusing the same attributes everywhere

If an attribute is used in many places and has the same repeated values then oftentimes, it makes more sense to make it its own object type. Vendor is a good example of this. For example, you could have an attribute called "Vendor" for the object types laptop and phone and then type (or import) the vendor name for each object.

This is fine, but it’s more efficient to have an object type called “Vendors” and set each vendor as an object for a number of reasons:

1. You may want more than just the vendor name. Maybe you want other information related to the vendor such as support contact number or links to contracts. You don’t want to have to repeat this for every laptop and every phone. Just have it once and link to the vendor object. This also helps if you want to do elements of vendor management within Jira Service Management.
2. The vendor will be standardized this way meaning reports are easier to run. If you wanted to report on the number of support requests per vendor, you can be confident you’re not missing something because someone wrote Micrsoft or Aple somewhere.
3. If the vendor rebrands or needs to be changed in some way, then you only need to update it in one place.

Vendor is just one example but others include business importance levels, deployment environments, departments and locations.

Assets automations

Assets automations are specific to each object schema. Common uses include:

• Sending notifications based on certain triggers or changes with the Assets objects in the schema - e.g. sending an email when a license or warranty is due to expire, or creating a Jira issue if a service goes down.
• Keeping Assets data tidy and standardized for easy reporting and querying.

Automation rules can update object information, create issues, send emails, make HTTP requests, execute Groovy scripts, and more.

You can see how to create automation rules here:

Post functions

Assets also introduces new post functions. Similarly to automation rules, post functions allow you to automate the execution of actions.

The difference is that the actions take place when the status of an issue changes through a Jira workflow (issue transition). These actions include updating an asset, sending a notification, and running a script.

For instance, when an issue is created requesting the onboarding of an employee, tasks can be created to assign the necessary assets to the new user including laptop, cell phone, and cell phone subscription with linked Assets objects for each.

Tips & Tricks

If you are using issue text fields to enter or update data in Assets, or if you enter objects into Assets manually on occasion, there may be times when the data becomes a bit messy. In these cases, use automations.

Server names are a good example of this. Usually these will be standardized and might be easy to mistype. You can create automation rules that trigger when an object is created or updated of the type server to ensure the name meets the naming convention and flag it if it spots an error.

Labels & QR codes

Using labels and QR codes can really streamline the management of tangible assets. For this, Assets lets you print labels and QR Codes for any object.