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Customisable Assets Poll


Paul Morrow

Custom Assets  

8 members have voted

  1. 1. Is there a use for a General asset that is completely customisable?

    • I'd find it useful too.
    • I do not see any use for it.


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It was suggest that I start a poll for this feature.

The thinking behind it is that current assets have pre-populated labels and fields which are not always of use for certain assets. So it would be useful if we could take a General asset and completely customise it to reflect the types data we wish to record against it.

Question is, apart from ourselves, how useful would this be to anyone else?

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Hi @Paul Morrow

Thanks for your post.

Just to re-affirm our approach in this area.

Hornbill provides out of the box Asset Classes.  

The Classes act as containers like :- Software, Mobile, Printer, General etc

Each Class has a set of available Class Attributes

Each Customer can then define their own Asset Types using anyone of the available Asset Classes, and then choose to use one or multiple attributes for each of their Asset Types, from the chosen Asset Class. You do not have to use all of the available attributes of an Asset Class when creating a new Asset Type.

Every Asset Class makes available generic Attributes, and then a set of Class specific Attributes.

We absolutely expect that customers will have requirements for additional attribute options for different Asset Classes or even needs for new Asset Classes, and we have been growing the number of available attributes which are available, as well as the number of Classes, including a generic General Class as customer's requested them.  

Therefore we encourage customers to post these requirements on the forum so we can review them and look to add them on a periodic basic.

This approach allows all our customers to benefit from having the additional attributes / classes available to everyone, whilst not polluting existing customers existing Asset Class forms, as the new attributes will simply be added as Available attributes which would be available against the classes and would need to be added to appear on asset type forms.   

Please feel free to post the attributes you would see as adding value and the classes you would like them added too

Thanks

Steve

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Hi @Paul Morrow,

Through Manage Asset Types menu, you can create a new Asset Type where you're provided with templates under Asset Class drop-down list. Selecting an Asset Class from the list will present you with the General Properties section. Within each sub-section, you will be presented with related labels and for each, you can define if they should be visible and mandatory prior to creating an Asset Type.

Please refer to my screenshot where I have selected General as the Asset Class (a new Class that we introduced in Service Manager recently). Consider an example where the label State under General Asset Information is set to visible by default. While designing a new Asset Type, you have the option to hide this label. In fact, if you don't wish General Asset Information sub-section to be displayed at all, you can uncheck the visible property for all the labels under this sub-section. This would hide the sub-section and all it's subsequent labels from Assets that are created against this Asset Type.

You can give this Asset Type a name, which will be a template for Assets that are created against it.

It would be great if I could get a good understanding of your scenario here. Could you please let us know if the above helps at all?

Thanks,

Ehsan

Screen Shot 2016-10-14 at 08.23.33.png

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Hi Ehsan

As above you show the properties for General assets. The idea is simply to be able to rename these properties to something else as required.

i.e. I may want to change "Notes" to "Deployment Date" so analysts can see and understand the property.

The task is to make properties for those not so common assets that we have more relevant.

By way of example we have supplied broadband lines to some users and we would like to record the "Source" and "Endpoint" locations for the line as opposed to "Floor" and "Room"

Hope this make sense.

 

Capture.PNG

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Hi Ehsan

That could be a "How long is a bit string question".

I had asked in a previous post about additional properties in Printers Assets to record consumables and their quantities against.

As for what I believe is missing I just don't know which was why I was inquiring about customisable properties that could be use to cover any eventuality.

Regards

Paul

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From a Business use justification perspective, if you don't know what you need, you don't need it!

Slightly flippant, I know, but if you need it (rather then think you might want it) then you know that you need it. I do agree that a degree of customisation is useful, and sometimes essential, but the a completely customisable class would invite an unending expansion of data and you're likely to end up with hundred of fields in the class when you actually reference a dozen or so.

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@Paul Morrow There are a few points to take into consideration here.

Each template of an Asset Class that is provided by Service Manager comes with default attributes. These attributes pragmatically relate to and correspond to a particular Asset Class. As mentioned before, from an Asset Manager's perspective, you can currently control an attribute with two options - Visible and Mandatory. We add to these attributes and classes as use cases or requirements arise. Most recently, we added General as a template to Asset Class to accommodate for scenarios such that other Asset Classes did not facilitate for.

An attribute can capture different types of information. Please consider the following examples.

  • Received date under Financial information section - This attribute opens a calendar and subsequently allows you to capture a Date.
  • State under General Asset Information - This attribute opens a drop-down list, where you can select a value.
  • Cost under Financial Information - This attribute only allows you to enter a decimal value.
  • Country under Physical Location Information - This attribute opens a drop-down list, that only contains a list of countries. You then select a value.
  • Owned By under General Asset Information - This attribute is an auto-complete, which allows you to find a User by selecting from a predictive list.
  • Building under Physical Location Information - This attribute allows you to type in a text, including numbers.

As you can see from the above, depending on the type of an attribute, we provide a mean of capturing information. If we provide an option to re-label attributes, you will have to take into consideration - type, input restrictions, validations and a mean of capturing information, which may all result in invalid data within your Assets.  We take care of all these considerations through intuitive development and this I believe simplifies the process of creating Asset Types and Assets.

Let's consider this example. In Ehsan's Asset, I recorded "This asset only belongs to Ehsan, please don't touch it" text within the Notes attribute. Some time later, my Asset Manager renames this attribute to Ownership Date (in fact, this attribute captures text instead of Date, which raises a question already), the data in Ehsan's Asset will now be invalid, out of sync and the History of the Asset will suggest otherwise.

Going back to my question; I was interested to know your scenario and which properties you believe are missing from our templates, so that we could review them and take them into consideration while proactively designing the Asset Manager functionality to meet all requirements.

Thanks,

Ehsan

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HI Guys.

Let's start again here. There's seems to be some over-thinking of what I asking.

I all the assets provided are probably as stated more than enough or even need to record information against.

I'm asking if the name of the property can customised i.e. if the label of the property can be change. Programmatically I don't care what the property name is. I don't even want to change the data type the property holds, just what it is visually called in the asset record.

The example pervious post where I would want to record the "Source" and "Endpoint" locations for a comms line as opposed to "Floor" and "Room" is a textbox label change, not a data type change.

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Hi @Paul Morrow

If we strip the requirement back to what you have mentioned above, then there is somethings you can do now.

Each label in Service Manger has a translation string - this allows you (via the admin tool) to change the label to anything you like - you can also create different language translations - but you don't have too. 

So in the Admin tool under Service Manager > Translations 

All the translation strings are editable. See below i have edited the Floor Label to Endpoint 

Screen Shot 2016-10-17 at 11.38.12.png

Now there are somethings you need to consider.

1. All Asset Classes share the same set of GENERAL asset attributes and labels  so if you change the above user.view.asset.general.h_floor_description, it will change it on every Asset Type across All Asset Classes, where the Floor Label is used. 

1. You can Change the Label of Any CLASS specific Asset attribute, and it only change the label for any Asset Types you have created for that Class, and obviously only show on Asset forms for Assets of that Class and Type, where you have made the label visible. 

So you could do the following for the Mobile Device CLASS and the user.view.asset.mobiledevice.h_serial_number.label from Serial Number to Source and it will be Mobile Device type specific 

 

Screen Shot 2016-10-17 at 11.39.45.png

If i then create a new Asset Type against the Mobile Device Class, and choose to include the two translated labels you could get the following:

 

Screen Shot 2016-10-17 at 11.42.56.png

The key thing to remember is that the Label changes will be GLOBAL if they are changed in any of the GENERAL attributes sections, but will be CLASS specific if changed in the Additional Properties section.

Hopefully this goes someway to what you where after?

As @Ehsan suggested if you could let us know the specifics you would like for different classes we can look to get these included for the next set of attributes which are updated (including some of the Printer specific one's which we already have a record of)

Thanks

Steve

 

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  • 6 months later...

Hi,

I'd like to have the option to have some of the fields as drop down boxes that lookup from fields.  For example we have a list of departments from our Customers which I would like to tie in with the 'Location' field within the Assets.  That way when we report of them there is less room for typos missing things off.  Manufacturer, Supported by etc are another few fields I think could benefit from a lookup field (to Contacts/Organisations)

Thanks

Tina

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1 hour ago, Tina.Lapere said:

Hi,

I'd like to have the option to have some of the fields as drop down boxes that lookup from fields.  For example we have a list of departments from our Customers which I would like to tie in with the 'Location' field within the Assets.  That way when we report of them there is less room for typos missing things off.  Manufacturer, Supported by etc are another few fields I think could benefit from a lookup field (to Contacts/Organisations)

Thanks

Tina

I'd also like this option - in quite a few places across the apps! There are a number of fields, for example Site, that appear in a lot of places (Assets, Progressive Capture, BPM etc.) where the only option to restrict input is via a simple list. It seems awkward to build such a list which can easily get out of sync with the database when building a dropdown directly from a table column would give the required restriction and have the benefit of being live data.

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The asset management system is something that we are now gathering information together to look at importing our current inventory. It would be usseful if I could change the default drop downs, for instance 'Operational State' I would like to amend the current values to established terms within the business from our current inventory.

I have looked in the admin console but can see where I can do this is possible?

 

Is it also possible to have a default automatic option to also show who created the asset record and the last amendment. I can see it does show the date of creation and amendment but the user would be nice also.

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  • 4 years later...

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