Use cases for grouping and consumption rules
Summarize
Summary of Use cases for grouping and consumption rules
This content explains how grouping and consumption rules affect the software license reconciliation process in ServiceNow. It illustrates the impact of using these rules individually or together by examining scenarios involving multiple entitlements, companies, and installations under the same product and license metric.
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Key Concepts
- Entitlements: Rights owned by different companies for a product under a license metric.
- Grouping: Recognizes entitlement owners and breaks down reconciliation results accordingly.
- Consumption Rules: Restrict which entitlements can be used to license specific installations, enforcing consumption boundaries.
Use Case Scenarios
- No Grouping, No Consumption Rules: All entitlements are combined, owners ignored, and consumption is unrestricted. This results in a single product license metric combining rights from different entitlements, licensing installations regardless of ownership. One installation may remain unlicensed if rights are insufficient.
- Grouping Only: Entitlement owners are recognized, producing a parent product result with individual product and license metric results per company. However, consumption remains unrestricted, so the actual licensed installations per company can vary depending on processing order.
- Consumption Rules Only: No grouping means a single product result, but license metric results are separated by company. Each company can only consume its own entitlements, and installations without matching entitlements remain unlicensed.
- Grouping and Consumption Rules: Both grouping and consumption rules are applied, restricting consumption by company and breaking down product results accordingly. Installations without matching entitlements are shown as unlicensed with their own product result and no license metric.
Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers
Understanding these use cases helps customers configure reconciliation to accurately reflect license ownership and consumption boundaries across multiple companies and entitlements. Applying grouping ensures entitlement ownership is visible, while consumption rules enforce licensing restrictions, leading to precise license compliance reporting. Combining both provides the clearest view of licensing status by company and highlights any unlicensed installations.
Learn how grouping and consumption rules are used during the reconciliation process through some use cases.
The following use cases help you understand the ramifications of using only grouping, only consumption rules, or using both grouping and consumption rules during the reconciliation process.
We have two entitlements. Entitlement 1 is owned by company A and entitlement 2 is owned by company B. Each entitlement has its own consumption rule. Both the entitlements belong to the same license metric, the same product and both have five rights each. Additionally, there are 11 installations; five installations for company A, 5 installations for company B, and one installation for company C.
Without grouping and without consumption rules use case
In this use case, no grouping or consumption rules leads to a single product result that shows the following outcomes:
In this scenario, the entitlement owners are ignored and consumption is unrestricted. Available rights of the two entitlements are combined into one license metric result under one product result. Additionally, any installation can be licensed with the last one installation being unlicensed due to insufficient rights.
With grouping and no consumption rules use case
In this use case, grouping is specified but there are no consumption rules that lead to a parent product result that shows the following outcomes:
In this scenario, the entitlement owner is recognized and reconciliation results are broken down. See there is a parent product result individual product results and license metric results for company A and company B. Note, however, that the five installs under the company A LMR might be any 5 installs since consumption is unrestricted. Same for company B. It will depends on the order of the devices processed which entitlement is used.
Without grouping and with consumption rules use case
In this use case, no grouping is specified but consumption rules are specified that leads to a single product result that shows the following outcomes:
In this scenario, there’s a single product result but the entitlements can no longer be combined into one license metric result. Two license metric results are created that only company A and company B can consume from respectively. The company C installation is unlicensed.
With grouping and with consumption rules use case
In this use case, both grouping and consumption rules are specified that lead to a parent product result that shows the following outcomes:
In this scenario, consumption is restricted and the products results are broken down by company grouping. Company C also gets its own product result with no license metric result to show the unlicensed installation.