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
- Creating a Group and associating IT Assets to it
- Changing the Group of multiple IT Assets simultaneously
- Defining the depreciation rate for Groups
- Assigning Groups to Custom Fields
- 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 - Setting up user alerts by Group
- Attaching documents to Groups
- 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.
Then, on the Groups Listings page, click on the ‘+ Add Group’ button.
This pops open the following overlay:
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:
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.
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.
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:
- Update the Group of multiple IT Assets using an excel import. To learn more about how to do this, click here.
- Change the Group using mass actions. To accomplish this, go to Items → Assets → Select multiple Assets → Actions → Edit → Change Group.
The following overlay appears, where you can change and select the new Group for the selected IT Assets.
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.
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.
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:
- 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.
2. Once you have added a column for Groups, click on the column name ‘Group’ to sort IT Assets according to their respective Groups.
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’.
From the overlay that shows, click on ‘+Create New Filter’.
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:
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similarly, you can also generate a report for subgroups from Reports → Group Reports → Subgroup List.
Read more: Use Packages for Checkouts with IT Asset Tracking Software
About AssetSonar
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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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