Frank Reay

We have recently started using Asset Management and as a result have a number of suggested enhancements. Support from other Customers using this functionality would be very welcome! Notes (field tips) describing Fields – these are only available to the administrator when creating an Asset Type. They are not available to the users who I would suggest are the people that need to see these ‘descriptors’ to assist when inputting. Audit Log does not show Creation details – when viewing the audit trail for an individual asset there is no info about the creation. The Audit Trail button actually only appears after the first change has been made (and then does not show the Creation info). This info is available from the List screen but that is not user friendly. Within the General Info section there is a field for Company and within Physical Location Info there is a field for Site. These are hierarchical so when the Company is chosen this limits the Sites available based on the Sites config. We have a many-to-many relationship so in the Sites config screen we have left Company blank (otherwise you have to choose just 1 Company). This means that in an Asset, once a Company is chosen there are no Sites available for use to choose from. If we select Site first then Company we can actually get around this validation – however Company appears first and this is not really a suitable workaround. This may be suitable for some customers but I believe that there are parts of the system where this hierarchical validation can be switched off via Instance Settings. Can that be done here as well please. When viewing an Asset, the Class field in the Details section is showing the raw DB value (eg 'basic' for the General Class) instead of the Display value. I have relabelled some of my Classes (via Translations) so this can cause some confusion. Download option - when downloading data this does not reflect the View being used at that time. The user has to select the required columns from fresh. This is really frustrating. List View – this has recently been improved but there is no Share option for customised views which would be very helpful Asset Class icons and names – I would like to be able to update the images for Asset Classes. I have relabelled some of these (via Translations) and as such need different images. Also the images for Computer Peripheral and Computer system were swapped over last year but they are no longer aligned with the default images picked up by the underlying Asset Types within those Classes.

I have recently been configuring Supplier Manager for our use. The tool will on the whole work really well for us but as is the case with a new module I have identified what I believe are some useful enhancements. Any support from other customers would be helpful (although unless people have dived in then I guess that some of this won't mean very much!) When viewing an individual Contract - the associated Supplier can only be identified by the Supplier Logo image (if one has been uploaded). If there is no logo image then the only way to identify the Supplier is to go back to the Contract List View and find it there. So can we have an extra Information field in the Contract screen on the right under the image which says: Supplier: ABC Ltd Currently a Contract can only be linked to an Asset if that Asset is initially linked in the Supplier of the Contract. That is fine and I can see that this ensures good integrity. However the Asset can still be removed from the Supplier without any warning that there are existing Contract > Asset links. If a direct Contract > Asset link is allowed then why can’t we just set that up as a direct link in the first place? On the List View screens (for Suppliers and Contracts) there is no customised Views option as we have in Service Manager. Also we cannot change the pre-set Filters. This means that I cannot create my own customised Views based on my choice of Filters. Furthermore I would then like the ability to Share Views ie same as Service Manager. Finally, this is probably more generic than just Supplier Manager. When I am creating a custom field in either the Supplier or Contract screens I cannot create a Drop down from an HB system list eg Sites, Supplier list (required as I want to link a 3rd party supplier to a Contract typically because they are a sub-contracted support provider). I believe there are further enhancements planned for Supplier Manager. In my view these are what really enable us to leverage the value from using the module. In particular... Integration with Asset Management in Service Manager. I have also raised a separate Forum Topic on Auto Tasks and BPM/Lifecycle Process.

I see that in Supplier Manager the Custom Button does not enable Auto Tasks to be configured (which can be done in Service Manager). Is this due to be rolled out anytime soon in Supplier Manager? Related to the above I was then wondering why we have a BPM tile in the Supplier Manager admin tile. When I tried to create a BPM here I get this message: This came as a surprise as I thought my instance did include enterprise features! This BPM actually seems to be related Lifecycle Processes which was mentioned when this module was being rolled out as a future enhancement. So is this BPM tile just intended for future use and if so then is there a timescale on that? Many thanks.

When working in the Design mode for the Supplier and Contract input screens there is a button to RESTORE DEFAULT. Once clicked this immediately removes all the customisation without any warning. This is easy to click on in error and the customisation has vanished! Can we have a 'Are you really sure?' prompt before it undertakes the action.

I am currently analysing how to configure Supplier Manager. The problem I have is that we use Resellers for purchasing most of our Support Contracts (provided through a Support Provider). Our Support Review meetings are a 3 way affair - us, the Reseller and Support Provider. Our Contract is with the Reseller but clearly we need details of 2 suppliers per contract as we go to the Support Provider for support. Obviously our Resellers may use different Service Providers based on our requirements for each contract. I don't believe this is very unusual so how do people reflect this in Supplier Manager? I can't see how I can link 2 suppliers to 1 contract. We need to be able to report on assets as part of a Contract with a Reseller AND also assets supported by a Support Provider.

We have issues with users who do not have an assigned site, not in any Company or not in any Department. This has been caused by issues with the interface from our HR system. Is there any way I can find Users who do not have any value in Site, are not assigned to a Department/Company etc. For example can I extract a list of users into a csv with the relevant attributes so I can see who has the missing values? Can I also download a list of all Departments in HB? We have pages of them in HB and a csv list would also help in understanding our problems.

@Steve Gthat's marvellous - many thanks.

Asset Administrators have rights to delete Assets. Normal Asset users don't but changes they make can be seen in the very useful History Audit. My Security team are asking if there is any visibility of which Admin deleted an Asset and when?

I would expect the new owner to update the Request with a comment under the standard update tab when they have something meaningful to add. The comment within the assignment tab is a comment about why they are making that assignment - which seems pointless when they are assigning it to themself.

Thanks @James Ainsworth It is more as a hand-off comment - we don't have any audit or compliance requirement here. If someone is handing over to another team or person then it is just good manners to explain why and put it in context. We have too many analysts who just 'throw it over the wall' without any explanation (despite us telling them not to and complaining when other people do it to them!). Being forced to add a comment actually makes people stop and think about what they are doing. Assigning to yourself is different and by inference you are stating that you are familiar with the issues and/or have the time to investigate. HB has the clever functionality to stop emails when assigning to yourself and in my head this is the same principle.

We have recently switched this ON: This is all good, however when a Request is assigned to a Team and an Agent then assigns it to himself he needs to make a Comment. The agents get a bit annoyed by this. I presume this is expected behaviour but can the system be more intuitive (ie the same as when the system does not send an email if an Agent assigns to himself).

Good question - portal users can't see anything in the Details section which is frustrating. is this deliberate? I guess so? What we noticed last week is that end users cannot also see the Priority of any Request. That is even more frustrating and I cannot see any reason for this.

I guess this has been raised before but I can't find anything. My SD Manager becomes frustrated by Agents transferring Requests to other teams (or other Agents within the same team) with very little info or advice. Ideally he would want the Comments section in the Assign Tab (shaded red in pic below) to have some standard headings for info when assigning (and perhaps even made mandatory). I can't see any way of doing this so (apart from hitting people over the head to ensure they enter meaningful Timeline updates and Comments when assigning) how do others overcome this issue?

@Jeremy That's really useful. Thank you.

@Jeremy Thanks for the response. If it isn't too much effort can you point me in the right direction for how you 'lock' the Change post-authorisation.

@Jeremy Using your method I presume that means that if the Scheduled Date/Time is changed (as I don't think this can be 'frozen') then it is not updated in the List View as the Custom Fields are still holding the original values passed over when it completed the step in the BPM?

In Chrome you can right click on the Session tab and choose Duplicate. This pretty much does the same job as you want but with 2 extra clicks.

+1 please

I think you may find that is the total number of unread mails in the Inboxes of BOTH your mail addresses. You need to click one and then the other to find where the 'hidden' mail is lurking.

Alisha, I have asked this before as well - see this...

@James Ainsworth I have had another chat with my InTune expert and I can see why you are asking the questions! There has been some confusion here. There is indeed no Last Modified By and Last Modified Date within InTune. I thought that InTune could record when an admin had accessed a device and updated it - but that is not the case. He definitely showed me something before in this respect but I can no longer see what it was! However my chat did uncover something else related to InTune. Under Mobile Device/Mobile Device Information there is a Last Sync field which maps nicely to lastSynchDateTime in InTune. However this does not appear under Computer System/Computer Information. This is the Asset Group we plan to use for PC's and Laptops which InTune will also be discovering. This date is critical for us to identify when we need to chase up a device that has not been seen by InTune for a set period of time (irrespective of last login). Is there a reason it is missing and if it is oversight then we can have it added (instead of my 2 incorrect fields above)?!

+ 1

+1

I am new to this area of the system so excuse me if this has already been addressed. Is it possible for us to have Sub-Libraries? We currently only seem to be able to go 1 level deep whereas we would like a concept of sub-folders. This would help us enormously in being able to structure dozens of docs and make them easier to group. We have held back from using Doc Manager as we don't want dozens and dozens of Libraries all at the same level. Thanks.

Hi @ArmandoDM Thanks for this. It is quite easy for me to replicate in our instance if evidence is required.