End of Life (EOL) and End of Support (EOS) life cycles

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of End of Life (EOL) and End of Support (EOS) life cycles

    The End of Life (EOL) and End of Support (EOS) life cycles are essential for managing software products effectively in the absence of vendor-provided life cycles. Customers can create calculated life cycles using industry averages based on General Availability (GA) dates, enabling better risk assessment and management for their software assets.

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    Key Features

    • Custom Life Cycles: Users can set custom values for EOL and EOS life cycles based on specific products or publishers.
    • Scheduled Jobs: The SAM - Generate Data For Software Lifecycle Report job collects data for available products, while the SAM - Create Calculated Software Lifecycles job generates life cycles when none exist.
    • Configuration Requirements: Activation of the Software Asset Management Professional plugin is necessary, and the appropriate system properties must be configured based on domain separation settings.
    • Data Storage: Custom life cycles are stored in the Custom Software Product Lifecycle table, while calculated life cycles are stored separately.
    • Lifecycle Codes: New lifecycle codes and approximation dates enhance coverage for life cycle reports, with specific columns added to the Software Product Lifecycle table for better visibility.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging calculated EOL and EOS life cycles, ServiceNow customers can expect improved management of software assets, better visibility into product life cycles, and the ability to override default values with custom configurations. This ensures that EOL and EOS records are maintained accurately, enhancing software lifecycle reporting and compliance efforts.

    In the absence of vendor-provided life cycles, use calculated life cycles to assess and manage your risks by creating EOL and EOS life cycles for your software products. You can also use approximated dates to improve life cycle coverage.

    Calculated life cycles

    You can create EOL and EOS life cycles based on industry averages, measured in months, from the General Availability (GA) dates.
    Note:
    The life cycles can be created by the sam_user or the sam_admin role.

    You can override the global industry averages by specifying custom values pertaining to a product or a publisher. The life cycles are calculated based on the product or publisher values that you specified. For details on specifying custom values in the Software Asset Workspace, see Create averages for product life cycles in workspace, and for specifying values in the Software Asset Management classic application, see Create averages for product life cycles in Software Asset Management classic.

    When creating EOL or EOS life cycles, keep the following pre-requisites in mind:
    • The Software Asset Management Professional (com.sn_samp_master) plugin must be activated.
    • GA dates available for the product.
    • EOL and EOS life cycles not provided by the Content Service.
    • Product is shipped by the Content Service.

    Software life cycle process

    The scheduled job SAM - Generate Data For Software Lifecycle Report collects data for life cycles for products whose GA dates are available and published by the Content Service. This scheduled job checks if all these GA records have an EOL or EOS life cycle record associated with them. If no EOL or EOS life cycle record is created by you or the Content Service, then calculated EOL or EOS life cycle records are created by another scheduled job, SAM - Create Calculated Software Lifecycles.

    For the scheduled job SAM - Create Calculated Software Lifecycles to generate life cycles, keep the following in mind:
    • If domain separation is disabled, enable the com.snc.samp.generate.calculated.lifecycles system property in the System Property [sys_properties] table.
    • If domain separation is enabled, use the Application Properties [sys_application_properties] table to enable the com.snc.samp.generate.calculated.lifecycles) property. In the Application Properties [sys_application_properties] table, click the com.snc.samp.generate.calculated.lifecycles property to open the Application Properties page. Scroll down to Application Property Values and click New to create a record. The Application Property and Domain fields are pre-filled with values. In the Value field, enter true and click Submit. You also need to enable reconciliation by specifying the value of the column Run asset process [run_asset_process] to be true in the Domain Asset Process Setting [alm_domain_asset_process_setting] table.
      Note:
      Reconciliation can be enabled either for the parent domain or for the child domain; it cannot be enabled for both the parent and the child domains.

    The calculated life cycles and the life cycles created by you are stored in the Custom Software Product Lifecycle [sam_custom_sw_product_lifecycle] table. Life cycles created by the Content Service are stored in the Software Product Lifecycle [sam_sw_product_lifecycle] table.

    The industry averages are stored in the Software Lifecycle Averages [samp_sw_lifecycle_averages] table. The life cycles created using these averages have their source column defined as calculated.
    Note:
    If you create an EOS or EOL record, then an EOL or EOS created by the scheduled job gets deleted in the next Content Service update, as priority is given to the custom records that you create. Similarly, if the scheduled job creates EOL and EOS records and then you create custom records, the records created by the scheduled job are deleted in the next Content Service update, as the custom records take precedence.
    Once created, the EOL and EOS life cycles are visible in the software model page.
    Note:
    If a sam_user or sam_admin deletes an EOL or EOS life cycle on a software model, the life cycles are not reinstated back to the software model.

    Approximate dates for life cycles and life cycle codes

    To improve life cycle report coverage, approximate life cycles dates are assigned to life cycles without a date.

    Select the system property (com.snc.samp.use_lifecycle_approximation), to include the approximate life cycle dates when generating the life cycle report. For details on this property, see Software Asset Management properties.

    The new table, Software Lifecycle Code [software_lifecycle_code], contains all the approximation codes along with a description of each code. For a detailed explanation of life cycle codes, see https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1642485.

    A new column, Lifecycle code, is added to the Software Product Lifecycle [sam_sw_product_lifecycle] table. The Lifecycle code column refers to the Software Lifecycle Code [software_lifecycle_code] table if approximate dates are assigned to a life cycle. The lifecycle code column is empty if the lifecycle has confirmed dates.

    For better visibility of all the life cycle phases, the following columns have been added to the Software Lifecycle Reports [sam_sw_product_lifecycle_report'] table
    • General Availability start date
    • General Availability
    • End of Support start date
    • End of Support lifecycle
    • End of Extended Support start date
    • End of Extended Support lifecycle
    • End of Life start date
    • End of Life lifecycle
    • Software model
    • Owners

    EOL, EOS, and End of Extended Support dates for all build versions are not shipped by the Content Service. The life cycle report inherits such dates from the generic version.