RT 4.4.2 Asset Management configuration and use

RT Users
1

I’ve been using RT for a number of years now, and with the upgrade to 4.4 it seemed reasonable to look at the Asset Management component.

I’ve taken a look at the introductory video, and the tutorial, but I’ve still got a number of practical questions.

Here’s my situation. We have a number of pieces of software that are licensed across our multi-site organisation. As an example, about a third of our PCs are licensed with a Windows volume licence; the remainder are supplied with Windows at the point of purchase. We do not pre-image our Windows PCs.

I want to be able to track which PCs have our Windows volume licence, and which have one supplied with the PC. (This is for audit, but also it allows me to identify which licence to use if a PC needs to be wiped and reinstalled.)

  • Do I create a custom field called something like “Has our Windows volume licence”?
  • Do I create an asset called “Our Windows volume licence” and link all the appropriate PCs to that asset? (This is how I’d consider implementing within a relational database.)
  • Something else?

Can I then count the number of Windows volume licences?

Another example is use of the subscription version of Office2016, which is licensed per person, not per PC. I can’t see an easy way of handling this within Asset Management. Some users have this but others do not. Maybe I try to continue to track this within Office365 Administration Portal, but it doesn’t give me the information my finance department wants, so I still have to munge it around by hand.

  • Do I create a single asset called something like “Office365 ProPlus subscription” and allow multiple users to hold this asset? (Can I even do that?)
  • Do I create multiple copies of an “Office365 ProPlus subscription” and assign one per user?
  • Something else?

I’m interested to hear how other people have configured and use RT’s Asset Management for these kind of situations.

Finally, I want to be identify assets globally but also by office. It seems that one approach is to create a Catalogue for each office. Is that correct?

Thanks
Chris

2

For the Windows license, I would create a custom field called “Windows License Type” or some such, with possible values “Volume” and “OEM”. It could be a combobox so someone could type in something different, when needed.

When you need to count how many of each you have you can search the Assets for the appropriate value and see how many come back, or you can query database tables to find out what cust

3

(Sorry, the “ctrl-delete” I was aiming for turned into a “ctrl-enter” instead.)

For the Windows license, I would create a custom field called “Windows License Type” or some such, with possible values “Volume” and “OEM”. It could be a combobox so you could type in something different, when needed.

When you need to count how many of each you have you can search the Assets for the appropriate value and see how many come back, or you can query database tables to count the appropriate custom field number.

For the Office 2016 one, I might create a separate catalog for users, and have the O2016 be one of your custom fields. (I do feel a little queasy thinking of people as “assets” but there it is…)

If all of your users are RT-enabled already (ours aren’t), you could just create a custom field to apply to Users and not put that bit into Assets at all.

Cheers,
Kyle

4

Thank you very much for those suggestions.

I’m also a little hesitant to consider people as “assets” (even though they are, in a way). The only users I have who are RT-enabled are those that have interacted in some way with the application, so although I could populate the Users list I don’t think it makes sense to do so. On the other hand it looks like I’ll be populating Assets with my list of users (well, those with Office 2016, which is about 100) so maybe it’s not so silly after all. (Perhaps I can automate the import from a periodic sweep of AD… .hmm)

Any thoughts on the identification by office?

Thanks,
Chris

5

I think I missed the question about identification by office. A catalog for each office could work; a custom field for office could also work.

The determining factor for me would probably be how different the sets of custom fields are between the offices. For tracking the same set of information, just with a different office name or number, I’d go with a combobox custom field. But if, say, the Office of Data Input had a vastly different set of data to keep track of than the Office of Temporal Displacement, then I’d think a new catalog would be the way to go.

But I can also see using multiple catalogs, even for the same set of fields, just to keep a manageable number of assets in each one. The way we’re set up, we’re going to have a lot of assets in our single catalog; we’re (so far) okay with using searches on our custom fields to find what we’re looking for. You might not be. (We might not be, either, in a few years…)

Cheers,
Kyle

6

chris, If you would like to schedule a 20 minute slot, I would show you how are using assets.
Overall it is a great application, but there is room for improvement in the feature.
Send me a message if you are interested.