Avoiding Duplicate Inventory Records
Hello all, I have recently started my career in IT and am still getting familiar with enterprise environments and their inner workings. One of my first projects is to clean up the inventory and asset management here. Kace was being used prior. All machines have the client installed and we communicate with the machines through it. I will tackle inventorying existing machines down the line. For now I want to streamline the inventory of new machines. Here is our current process.
- New PCs come in
- We do scan through BarKode using the Multiple Scan function
- PCs are tagged with a company Tag and it creates an asset for the Tag itself (this tag is associated with the PCs)
- The PCs serial number is scanned and creates an asset under a Desktop/Laptop asset type, we use the serial number as the asset's Name.
- All PCs have the Kace client installed from our image.
Here's the issue:
- Currently, when the PC's record is created, the name of the record will be the name of the Asset tag in stead of the serial. For example is the Tag number is ABC001234, that will be the name of the PC in it's record. The serial number has it's own field as well however. I thought making this change would solve this issue however it's created a new problem.
- When I do an inventory search for the device, the Serial field will be empty, but the Name field will be populated with the Serial.
- Also, this record under inventory, is now a separate record as well. When I initiate a global search with our asset tag, I will see two records of ABC001234, the asset tag itself (which I don't mind) and the PC.
What I am trying to do:
- Have two records only, the asset tag and the PC. If I do a global search, I want to see two results, the ABC001234 tag, and a serial number corresponding to the PC record associated with that tag. When I modify the records manually, this is the result I get.
- I want to scan PCs when they arrive so when they are deployed I only have to change their location/department.
If someone could knows if this is even possible, any assistance is welcomed. I'm happy to answer any questions and hope I explained myself alright.
Answers (1)
I would recommend storing all of the asset data in one asset type (it sounds like you have two). We have our SMA setup to match BIOS_SERIAL_NUMBER with Matching Asset Field set to Name, also. I have found that to be the most reliable way to match Inventory to Assets. I would then add a custom field to the device asset type for your internal asset tag ID and import that data accordingly. We don't use internal asset tag ID, and instead use the device serial number on our asset labels. However, if your naming convention specifies that your computer names match the internal asset ID, that might not work for you.
Comments:
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I like that idea of having one single asset. Do you recommend having custom field for the tag be a text field? The idea behind our tags is that will make a PC easier to look up rather than reading out a serial number. I have tired this and it seems to work as desired. - adrian8544 5 years ago
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A text field is probably the best bet. - chucksteel 5 years ago
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I've tried this on a four machines, good results! Only 863 to go... Thank you for this! - adrian8544 5 years ago