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Groups 101: Organizing IT Assets By Groups Using IT Asset Tracking Software

Organizing IT Assets By Groups Using IT Asset Tracking Software AssetSonar

AssetSonar gives you the ability to categorize and organize IT Assets using its Groups module. You can also sort IT Assets by location. To learn more about location management in AssetSonar, click here.

Before you create groups to classify your IT Assets, you must first understand how Groups work in our IT Asset tracking software. The Groups module plays a key role in configuring the following:

  • Item Bundles
  • Recurring Services and Maintenance
  • Service Triage
  • Work Orders

Contents

  1. Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it
  2. Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously
  3. Defining the depreciation rate for Groups
  4. Assigning Groups to Custom Fields
  5. Sorting and filtering IT Assets by Groups
    5.1. Sorting IT Assets by Groups in the Asset Listings view
    5.2. Filtering IT Assets by Group in the Asset Listings view
    5.3. Filtering IT Assets by Groups in Reports
    5.4. Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar
  6. Setting up user alerts by Group
  7. Attaching documents to Groups
  8. Running reports on Groups and Subgroups

1. Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it

AssetSonar enables you to create various Groups and Subgroups to categorize IT Assets easily. A Group can have Subgroups, whereas Subgroups cannot have any further division. You can only associate IT Assets with one Group and one Subgroup.

To create a Group, click on the ‘Groups’ icon from the left navigation bar.

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it

Then, on the Groups Listings page, click on the ‘+ Add Group’ button.

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it 1

This pops open the following overlay:

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it

Once you’ve added all the relevant information, hit ‘Create Group’.

You can also associate IT Assets to a Group while adding/editing them. For this purpose, go to the relevant IT Asset Details page. From there, click ‘Edit’ and choose the Group you want to assign to the IT Asset:

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it 4

You can also associate Groups with IT Assets while adding new items to the system. The same method can be applied to Asset Stock and Inventory items.

Note: IT Assets can also be assigned to a Group directly from the Group Details page.

To do so, click on the ‘Groups’ icon from the side navigation bar and open the relevant Group. On the Group Details page, traverse to the Assets tab (or Asset Stock and Inventory tabs depending on the item you want to associate with a Group). Then click on the ‘Add Asset’ button. This enables you to add a new Asset to the system and associate it with a particular Group.

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it 6

You can also link items to a Subgroup of a Group. In order to create a Subgroup, go to the Groups → Group Listings page, select the Group and click the ‘Add Subgroup’ button on the right.

Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it 8

To assign IT Assets to Groups or Subgroups, go to the IT Asset Details page from Items → Assets. Then, select an IT Asset and click ‘Edit’.

2. Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously

You can change the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously using two ways:

  1. Update the Group of multiple IT Assets using an excel import. To learn more about how to do this, click here.
  2. Change the Group using mass actions. To accomplish this, go to Items → Assets → Select multiple Assets → Actions → Edit → Change Group.
Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously 9

The following overlay appears, where you can change and select the new Group for the selected IT Assets.

Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously 11
Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously 12

Hit ‘Proceed’ to continue.

3. Defining the depreciation rate for Groups

The percentage of depreciation that takes place on IT Assets annually is set at the Group level. If you have enabled depreciation for IT Assets from Settings → Add Ons → Asset Depreciation, then you must enter the depreciation (%) per year while creating/editing a Group.

This depreciation rate is applied to all the IT Assets in a Group and its associated Subgroups. To learn more about depreciation calculation, click here.

Defining the depreciation rate for Groups

4. Assigning Groups to Custom Fields

Oftentimes, IT Admins need to track specific information for IT Assets, e.g. their serial numbers or warranty expiration dates. AssetSonar allows you to add Custom Fields for IT Assets to track such information.

However, there may be cases where you’d want a custom field to show for some IT Assets and not the rest. For this, you can assign custom fields to specific Groups. For example, if you have a Group called ‘Laptops’, you can set up a custom field named ‘Software License Expiration Date’ that only shows for IT Assets in that specific Group and not for IT Assets in any other Group.

To do this, go to More → Custom Fields → Add/Edit Custom Field. From the custom field overlay, under the ‘Group Association’ section, select the Groups that you want to associate your custom field to.

Assigning Groups to Custom Fields AssetSonar

When associating custom fields to Groups, you can check the option to ‘Associate to all future groups’. This will make the custom field automatically available to all the IT Assets assigned to any new Group that is created in the system. Learn more about configuring custom fields here.

5. Sorting and filtering IT Assets by Group

Assigning IT Assets to Groups helps with sorting and filtering them for better search lookup. You can use Groups to filter and sort through IT Assets on the item listing pages, reports, and the availability calendar.

5.1. Sorting IT Assets by Groups in the Asset Listings view

To sort IT Assets by Group on the Asset Listings view, carry out the following:

  1. Add a column to view the Group of the IT Assets listed. You can customize columns by clicking on the ‘Edit’ icon of the Asset Listing table.
Sorting and filtering IT Assets by Group AssetSonar 1

2. Once you have added a column for Groups, click on the column name ‘Group’ to sort IT Assets according to their respective Groups.

Sorting and filtering IT Assets by Group AssetSonar 1

5.2. Filtering IT Assets by Group in the Asset Listings view

To filter items by group on the Asset Listings view, go to Assets → Filter drop-down → ‘+ Add/Edit Filters’.

Filtering IT Assets by Group in the Asset Listings view 1

From the overlay that shows, click on ‘+Create New Filter’.

Filtering IT Assets by Group in the Asset Listings view 2

Customize your requirements under ‘Filter Options’ and press ‘Add’.

This opens up the following dialog box where you can create a custom filter note. You can also create filters that will display IT Assets on the basis of Subgroups.

To apply a custom filter to your Asset Listings view, click the ‘Filters’ dropdown and select your preferred Custom Filter. For instance, if you apply the custom filter ‘Laptops’ shown above, you will get the following list view, which only shows IT Assets in the filtered Group:

Filtering IT Assets by Group in the Asset Listings view 4

Note: The same process can be used to apply filters to Asset Stock and Inventory items.

5.3. Filtering IT Assets by Groups in Reports

You can also filter your reports to only include IT Assets that belong to specific Groups or Subgroups. To do this, simply go to Reports → Select a report or graph (that supports ‘Group’ filter) → Set the filter to include the Group you need. Given below is an example of how you can filter checked out IT Assets by Group or Subgroup in Asset Reports.

Filtering IT Assets by Groups in Reports 1

To learn more about item reports, click here.

Note: If you select a filter for both a Group and Subgroup, only the IT Assets present in both the Group and Subgroup will be included in the report.

5.4. Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar

You can also customize the view of the availability calendar according to Groups. You can access this calendar by clicking on the calendar icon shown at the top of the app.

Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar

To customize the calendar view, you can either combine your IT Assets by Group and/or filter them for certain Groups. If you combine IT Assets by Group, you will get an overview of how many IT Assets in that particular Group are available, reserved, checked out, overdue, or under maintenance, with the dates. To combine IT Assets by Group, go to the drop-down ‘Group by’ (on the top left) → Select ‘Group’.

Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar 1

To filter IT Assets by Group i.e. only show IT Assets of a certain Group, click on ‘Filter by’ dropdown (on the top right) → Select ‘Group’ → Select group name. You can further customize the filter by selecting a subgroup as well.

Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar 03
Filtering and sorting IT Assets in the Availability Calendar 04

6. Setting up user alerts by Group

You can set up alerts by Groups so that you’re only notified of actions or events related to IT Assets of the selected Group. To do this, go to More → Alerts → under ‘Select the groups and the locations that you would like to be notified about’ → Select Groups → Save Settings.

Setting up user alerts by Group

This will ensure that you only receive email alerts for IT Assets present in certain Groups. To learn more about the types of alerts in our IT Asset tracking software, click here.

7. Attaching documents to Groups

Rather than attaching certain documents for each IT Asset individually, you can attach the documents to Groups and make the process easier. Attaching documents to a Group will make the documents available for all the IT Assets present in that Group. Go to Groups Select a group scroll down to the Files tab Group Documents Attach File.

Attaching documents to Groups

8. Running reports on Groups and Subgroups

You can also run a report to get a summary of the number of total and checked out IT Assets, and subgroups in a Group. To do this, simply go to Reports → Group Reports → Group List.

Running reports on Groups and Subgroups

Similarly, you can also generate a report for subgroups from Reports → Group Reports → Subgroup List.

Running reports on Groups and Subgroups 2

Read more: Use Packages for Checkouts with IT Asset Tracking Software

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For more assistance, drop us an email at support@ezo.io. You can also visit our blog for detailed support posts.

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