Reviewing Discovery Results

This how-to article will help Asset Application administrators to review the results of an asset discovery job. The user must have Asset Application admin access in TDNext or be a global administrator with access to TDAdmin.

Overview

Every time a discovery job runs, a Discovery/Sync Job Run record is saved in TDAdmin. You can review job results to ensure that the discovery service is running correctly or to troubleshoot errors.

Discovery results should also be periodically reviewed to see if there are any new product types, product models, or manufacturers that need to be mapped, or linked, to existing records.

Discovery Job Runs

To access the results of previous discovery job runs, access TDAdmin and navigate to Applications > [Asset/CI Application] > Asset Discovery > Discovery/Sync Jobs > [specific job name].

The following information is included in the run history:

• Asset Scanner – The scanner that ran the job.
• Scanner Version – The version of the scanner that ran the job.
• Result Message – The results of the job.
• Start Date – The date and time the job started.
• End Date – The date and time the job ended.
• # Created – The number of assets that were created by this job run.
• # Matched – The number of existing assets the job found in this run. Existing assets will only be updated if the data returned by the job has changed since the last run.
• # Ignored – The number of result records that were not created or updated because of insufficient data.
  • For example, if a discovered asset does not include a manufacturer, it cannot be created or matched.
  • Ignored assets still show up on the Discovered/Synced Assets page and will be marked as Ignored.
• # Stuck – The number of result records that could not be created or updated. This is often caused by the job settings not allowing the creation of a new record.
  • For example, if an asset is discovered with a manufacturer of Dell Inc. and that manufacturer does not exist (or has not been mapped) in TeamDynamix, the discovery service will need to create it. If the Create Manufacturers setting is disabled for the job, the manufacturer, and therefore the asset, cannot be created.
  • To resolve a stuck result, change the settings on the job or map any newly discovered product types, product models, or manufacturers. Then, re-run the job.

Product Type, Product Model, and Manufacturer Mappings

When you run an asset discovery job, the service returns a list of devices, including their product type, product model, or manufacturer. If a product type, product model, or manufacturer already exists in the Asset Application, the discovered record will be automatically linked to the existing record.

To view the list of existing product types, product models, or manufacturers, access TDAdmin and navigate to Applications > [Asset/CI Application] and click the relevant item from the left navigation menu.

For details on which fields are used for mapping, please see the Matching Rules section of this article.

If a discovered product type, product model, or manufacturer is not an exact match, such as “Dell” vs “Dell, Inc”, an administrator can manually map these items together.

These pages include filtering options which allow you to find records by name or by the date they were discovered. Records display in a table with the discovered name, the mapped record, and the first and last discovered date. Product Models also list the manufacturer and product type which were related to that model, and product models will only count as a match if those prerequisite items are able to match to product type and manufacturer records. 

In the image below, the discovered manufacturer LENOVO was automatically mapped to the LENOVO manufacturer record by the system when it was found, because the names match exactly. The discovered manufacturer VMWare, Inc. was manually mapped to the VMWare manufacturer record. When asset discovery runs in the future, every time VMWare, Inc. is found, it will use the VMWare record. 

When a discovered asset record does not have enough information to match or create a record in the asset database, it will still be added to the Discovered Assets page and will be marked as Should Ignore. This may be because there is not enough information, or because one of the dependent fields – such as Product Type, Product Model, or Manufacturer – cannot be mapped.

Deleting an Asset record will also delete the related Discovered/Synced data, but if it is discovered again, the asset and discovered data will be recreated. 

Using the Create Product Types, Product Models, and Manufacturers Settings

Each Discovery Job includes a Create Product Types, Create Product Models and Create Manufacturers setting. These settings are inactive by default, and can only be turned on once the job has run at least once. Within each job, you will need to decide whether to turn on these options or to leave them deactivated and manually create mappings using the Product Types, Product Models, and Manufacturer Mappings pages. In environments that already include Product Types, Product Models, or Manufacturers, manual mapping is usually more appropriate and in environments without those records, creating them automatically is usually more appropriate. In either case, the discovered assets can only be created or updated in the asset database if there is a mapping between the discovered Product Type, Product Model, and Manufacturer data and the data in the asset database. 

Discovered Assets 

The Discovered Assets page (TDAdmin > Applications > [Asset/CI Application] > Discovered/Synced Assets) lists all of the assets that have been discovered by TeamDynamix Asset Discovery. Each record lists the discovered asset (Name column) and the existing asset record (Asset column) that it's mapped to, plus some of the related information that was discovered about the asset. 

When a discovered asset record does not have enough information to match or create a record in the asset database, it will still be added to the Discovered Assets page, and will be marked as "Should Ignore." This can be because there is not enough information, or because one of the dependent fields (Product Type, Product Model, or Manufacturer) cannot be mapped. 

Matching

When the Asset Discovery Service processes a discovery result, it uses the following logic to determine if there is a matching manufacturer, product type, product model, or asset record.

• For the items that support mappings, newly discovered or synced records will be compared to existing discovered or synced records and will use their mappings if they exist.
• If no mapping exists, it will compare to the live versions of those records and create a mapping if there is a direct match.
• If no match exists, either create a new record or a blank mapping record will be created, depending on whether Create Manufacturers, Create Product Types, or Create Product Models are checked. 

Viewing Discovered/Synced Assets in TDNext

To see all the information that was discovered about an asset, and the times that it was discovered:

1. In TDNext, navigate to the application menu > [Assets/CIs application] 
2. On the left menu, click Assets
3. Search for the asset you would like to see synced data for.
4. Click the name of the asset to open it.
5. Click the Discovered/Synced Data tab.