SCCM regular asset uploads and changes

[JBasey]

Hi All,  we want to look at importing our assets into hornbill from our SCCM. 

We have around 3000 computers in our SCCM and these change all the time as new ones are added and old ones are removed.

If the SCCM export script is run nightly or weekly, is it able to remove/archive computers that no longer appear in the SCCM from hornbill and add new ones it finds?  Will it update a PC who's configuration has changed since the last import?

Thanks, James

[Steve Giller]

We're importing data from SCCM and on ours it does update - I'm not sure about archiving, I've not tried to achieve this.

[Steve G]

Hi @JBasey,

As DeadMeatGF has rightly said, you can update assets with the DB asset import tool that we have provided. It can't delete assets from your Hornbill instance, but you can update assets state to "Archived" with it. You just need to add the h_record_state field to the AssetGenericFieldMapping as so:

"AssetGenericFieldMapping":{

"h_name":"[MachineName]",

"h_record_state":"2",

"h_site":"[SiteName]",

"h_asset_tag":"[AssetTag]",

Where 2 is the value that represents an archived asset (0 for Current state, and 1 for Active state).

So if you can identify your retired assets in the SQL query, and transform whatever status they have in SCCM to a Hornbill asset status in the SQL query, then you could define the status with a mapping rather than hard-coded (with the transformed column output set as AssetState in the SQL query in this mapping example):

"AssetGenericFieldMapping":{

"h_name":"[MachineName]",

"h_record_state":"[AssetState]",

"h_site":"[SiteName]",

"h_asset_tag":"[AssetTag]",

I hope this helps, please let me know if you need any more information regarding this.

Steve

[PUbaka]

Hi Steve G,

 

Please could you clarify “It can’t delete assets from your Hornbill instance” – does this mean ever? In other words, say we import daily. Does that mean the Hornbill instance will grow with Assets exponentially? Does this mean that for example, Asset TESTDEVICE was created in SCCM on Monday, then synced overnight with Hornbill. It then exists in Hornbill on Tuesday. We delete the Asset from SCCM on Wednesday (no Record exists in SCCM) – what happens on Wednesday nights’ sync? Does Hornbill keep the orphaned Asset (in which case problem solved, Assets are never deleted, we have to clean up manually somehow via a process), or does Hornbill spot that the SCCM Record no longer exists, and therefore removes the Asset in Hornbill?

 

Paul U