gwynne Posted July 3, 2018 Share Posted July 3, 2018 Hello just an Idea really, I would like to see the possibility of a license count being added when you are creating the vendor product version section or even somewhere else, where when you assign the software asset to a user the count goes down, alternatively being able to add multiple people to an asset so I can put in the description how many licenses are available G 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samwoo Posted July 3, 2018 Share Posted July 3, 2018 +1 !!! This will complement some of the additional fields I raised to have included here: I never even thought about specifying an amount of licence against an asset and for each user assigned to it, for the count to go down. Your idea is a great idea and I would put it above my request above. We are struggling with licences and finding it difficult to manage the different licences for different products so this would be a godsend. Thank you for posting this idea! Samuel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArmandoDM Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 Hi @gwynne, @samwoo I will bring this requirement to the attention of the relevant people. Will get back to you Regards Armando Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArmandoDM Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 Hi @samwoo, @gwynne we have a change scheduled about assets which will allow to set 'Used By' to Groups, external customers and organisations. The change does not cater for any auto count on allocated licenses, which will need to be set manually. Gareth, we added you to the CH as an interested party. Regards Armando Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samwoo Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 Thanks @ArmandoDM! As per @gwynne's request, can the auto-count option be raised as an enhancement? I like the idea from @gwynne about having there be a maximum number of users allocated to an asset set in the Vendor area. Thanks, Samuel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted July 5, 2018 Share Posted July 5, 2018 Thanks for your posts. We do have a planned change as mentioned by Armando to allow for the allocation of multiple users to an asset. This would also include groups such as a department or a team to be added. The primary goal for assets in Service Manager is to help the Service Desk support their customers by understanding what they use, what versions they are on, and maybe what they are connected to, plus other attributes. While we do have a Software class of asset, Software license management is a completely different requirement and is a large area of functionality in its own right. By providing a ''License Count'' field we may find that we begin to cross the boundary into Software License Management. These days there are so many different areas where software licensing varies, such as subscription, named, concurrent, server based, connection based, virtual, citrix, and I'm sure that there are many more. Often usage and becomes an important aspect in licensing too. If someone is not using the software why provide the license and reallocate it somewhere else. Software discovery tools often play a role in this. I guess my question is whether providing a single field that stores a number of licenses against a software asset fulfills all your software license management requirements or is there a vision that many more features will be needed to get to where you want to be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samwoo Posted July 5, 2018 Share Posted July 5, 2018 2 hours ago, James Ainsworth said: I guess my question is whether providing a single field that stores a number of licenses against a software asset fulfills all your software license management requirements or is there a vision that many more features will be needed to get to where you want to be? With regards to everything you say in your post, it definitely sounds like this would have to be another Application in it's own right. If we were to think about a solution just for now... in the future when you introduce the feature to allow multiple users as "owners" or "used by" against an asset, is it possible to have a field that is not editable, but simply counts how many users there are in each field (then we can hide the field we don't want to see). Then as per your suggestion to have a single licence count field against the Software Asset. We can then run regular reports to identify how many licences are being used versus the maximum number of licences available. Is that a possible easier solution to work with for the time being? To summarise: Have a non-editable field that counts how many users are stored in the "Owned by" field Have a non-editable field that counts how many users are stored in the "Used by" field Have a single "number" field to store the maximum licences available for that Software Asset This way we can identify the users who are potentially using a licence and if they dont need it, it'll be a lot easier to recycle. It is a major struggle in our organisation for the lots of different applications that we use across different department. We have a procurement officer procuring these licences and some of the licences are Per User / Per Device / Named Licences / Concurrent Licences so when you get into the IT Provisioning and Group Policies which is dealt with by the Technical Support Team, there are some licences that simply cannot be managed in an efficient way and becomes hard to track. It's actually a lot more complicated than this, but if we were able to have a proper way to manage software licences in Hornbill... everything becomes integrated much easier to manage. @gwynne Do you have anything in regards to what @James Ainsworth has said above? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted July 5, 2018 Share Posted July 5, 2018 52 minutes ago, samwoo said: in the future when you introduce the feature to allow multiple users as "owners" or "used by" against an asset, is it possible to have a field that is not editable, but simply counts how many users there are in each field (then we can hide the field we don't want to see). As part of this feature to allow for multiple users of an asset we are going to allow for groups. The idea being that you might have a printer that is shared by a department and that would allow you to just add the department rather than each individual. A simple count would not work here as the groups might have an ever changing number of people within them. So adding a person to a group in admin would result in having to then check against all the assets that are linked to the group and have the count update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSheward_SGW Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 Hi @James Ainsworth is there an ETA for allowing us to input multiple groups into the used by / owners fields? Many thanks, Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 Hi @TSheward_SGW The change discussed above is primarily focused on the Used by field and not the Owner field. While we can consider including the Owner field in this scenario I would first be interested to understand how you plan to use the Owner field. While an asset may be used by one or more people, the actual Ownership may refer more to an individual that uses their own device within the work environment. If you are looking at this from a financial perspective, the assets have a cost centre field which could be used for this. The change to the Used By options does not have an ETA as of yet, but the priority for providing this has increased. I will update this post once we have had some movement. Regards, James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Summers Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TSheward_SGW Posted July 30, 2018 Share Posted July 30, 2018 Hi @James Ainsworth apologies for delay, thought I'd replied to you. Sloppy post on my part, only really care about multiple groups in the "used by" field, think the "owned by" field was being discussed above and just included it as a matter of course. Thanks for your help in progressing this, will be a very welcome addition. Kind regards, Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 Hi @TSheward_SGW I'm pleased to let you know that we now have a feature that allows you to add multiple users against an asset. On each asset next to the Used By field, you can mark it as a Shared asset. Once enabled, you can add multiple users, or select Groups that use this asset. I hope this helps. Regards, James 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 Hi @James Ainsworth When you search for a user who has a shared asset, the asset does not show as one of their assets (My Assets). Presume this is by design? How would I track an asset assigned to a user that is shared without going in to the asset? Thanks Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted April 10, 2019 Share Posted April 10, 2019 @MikeW Which user search are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted April 11, 2019 Share Posted April 11, 2019 @James Ainsworth Have tried searching via co-workers at the top as well as via asset using name as the search. Neither returns the 'shared' asset. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 @James Ainsworth any ideas on this? Or is it by design? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Ainsworth Posted May 1, 2019 Share Posted May 1, 2019 Hi Mike, At the moment, besides the actual asset form, it looks like the only other place at the moment where you can see the assets that are shared with a particular user is on the Asset Action on a request. On the Asset List, the current filter will only provide results where a user is either the owner, or the sole user of the asset. The same is for the Global Asset Search. I wouldn't say that this is "by design" but rather that the "Shared" feature on an asset is an evolving feature and it will continue to grow and be used in other areas of the product as we get feedback such as yours. Adding additional searching, like we have done on the request, makes sense as a next step in this area. I'll discuss with our development team. Regards, James Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted June 12, 2019 Share Posted June 12, 2019 @James Ainsworth Thanks, be a great feature if possible. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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