Video: Asset Management Suite Overview (3:33)The Asset Management solution provides automated and up-to-date information on your assets, allowing you to track, manage, and generate reports on your asset inventory. After you complete Systems Manager setup, which includes discovery and deployment, you can manage your assets.
Video: Asset Management Suite Overview (3:33)
This topic provides information about the following Asset Management best practices:
The key to Asset Management is the Systems Manager MicroAgent. The MicroAgent, which we recommend that you install on every system at your site, is responsible for gathering system information and providing communication to the Systems Manager Network Operations Center (NOC). You can access the systems information through the Systems Manager Portal (https://manager.systemsmanagementondemand.com).
The Systems Manager MicroAgent collects and stores the following information for every system you are managing:
You can view all of the details for a system on the System Inventory page.
Note: Systems Manager automatically updates the hardware and patch information for you on a weekly basis. You can also scan on demand anytime.
Asset Management allows you to manage an unlimited number of systems.
The System Names report on the Assets tab provides the accurate inventory of the systems with MicroAgents in your environment. Occasionally, the number of systems on the Assets tab differs from the systems on the Discovery and Deployment tabs. This difference is normal: the discovery and deployment pages list many different devices, depending on the type and number of namespaces/domains against which the discovery scan runs.
Finally, if you think systems are missing, follow these troubleshooting steps to locate them.
Note: You can add the Systems Names report to your dashboard.
Asset Management provides a way for you to enter and track contracts and warranty information for your systems. This feature allows you to keep your contract and warranty numbers in one place, associated with the assets to which they belong.
Follow these steps to enter contracts and warranty information for a system:
Video: Creating Asset Field Values (1:26)Grouping systems provides a quick way to manage a large number of systems in a small amount of time. For example, if you create a group with systems that all have the same vendor, then you can add the vendor information at one time. Systems can belong to multiple groups.
Video: Creating System Groups (2:35)
Grouping your systems allows you to take actions, such as software or patch distribution, on those groups. For example, you can create a group to uninstall iTunes from systems. You can also assign custom fields information to system groups as well as run custom reports on those groups.
You can group your systems on the System Groups page. You can also group systems on the System Names report. We recommend that you create groups to track systems by attributes that make the most sense for you. Many of our customers group their systems by location. You can also group your systems by department, vendor, financial information, and many other options.
You can create both static groups and dynamic groups:
Custom field definitions allow Systems Manager administrators to define text fields, long text fields, date fields, and custom select list fields to be tracked on every system. You can name these fields to track information that Asset Management does not track by default. Examples include cost center, internal technical contact, and last service date. You can even enter a URL in custom date fields to track information such as photos of machines or scanned copies of documentation and invoices. When you enable a custom field definition, it displays in asset reports, detail pages, edit pages, and search pages.
In addition, you can assign custom fields information to system groups. This feature allows you to set custom field values for multiple systems at once, rather than one at a time. You can assign any enabled custom fields, including text, long text, date, and custom select fields, to the group.
Asset Management provides several reporting methods for you to monitor the systems in your environment:
You can export the data from any of these reports to CSV, Microsoft Excel, or Adobe PDF.
Video: Inventory Reports (2:50)
Standard reports included in Systems Manager provide immediate, easy-to-use analysis to help increase the efficiency of your IT organization.
The following list identifies some of the important standard reports:
You can create custom asset reports, which allow you to define queries and display preferences. By creating custom reports, you can quickly and easily view information that matters to your environment.
The following list identifies the methods through which you can create custom reports:
, and paste the title in the Report Name of the Import Report page. Video: Importing a Custom Report (1:26)
You can view all of your custom reports on the Reports tab. You can also view your custom asset reports on the Reports menu of the Assets tab.
After you decide which reports are most useful to your daily activities, you can save those reports to your dashboard.
Video: Specialist Dashboard (1:16)
You can display any pre-defined reports, including the asset pre-defined reports, or any custom reports on your dashboard. The following list identifies some examples of pre-defined reports:
You can also copy the URL of a report, standard or custom, that you want to display on your Dashboard and save it in your
When you no longer want to use a system in your environment, you can retire and delete that system. Reasons for retiring a system include selling it, returning it to the vendor, giving it to charity, or putting it in storage. By retiring and deleting a system, you no longer pay the monthly fee to manage that system in Systems Manager.
We recommend that you retire and delete unused systems from your environment on a regular basis, such as once a month. Retiring and deleting systems on a regular basis allows you to maintain a clear picture of your environment. If you do not remove obsolete systems, they can adversely affect your asset reports, your group actions, and your monthly bill from Systems Manager.
Follow these steps to retire and delete a system:
to export the system inventory data. This file contains all of the details (except missing patches and hardware/software change history) about the system you want to retire. Video: Saving an Asset Record (1:01)