Use Arbitration to define how Staff Users interact with the items visible to them. This helps establish access control and ensures that Administrator intervention is required for item check-ins/checkouts.
For example, Alice as an Admin, can check out Assets to Emily (Staff User), or reserve them for John (Staff User). But Emily and John (both Staff Users) can only take actions for themselves i.e. Emily can only reserve items for herself and not for John.
1. Setting up Access Control
Choose your access control level from Settings → Company Settings → Policy → Arbitration.
- With Arbitration enabled, Staff Users can only reserve an Asset or request a check-in. All such requests will have to be confirmed by an Administrator.
- With Arbitration disabled, Staff Users can check-in and check out assets themselves without involving an administrator.
Please note that Access Control has two types in EZOfficeInventory; Simple and Advanced. The Simple mode lets you choose the same Arbitration settings throughout the app. The Advanced mode let’s you specify Arbitration settings by groups, locations, or both. Additionally, you choose arbitration settings for your User Listings. Learn about Advanced Access Control in EZOfficeInventory.
If you want to have granular control, then that is also possible through Custom Roles. While the system has predefined user roles, every company is different and might want to configure unique roles for each user. Custom Roles enable you to do just that. You can customize the settings and permission for each user, giving you more control than ever before. Learn more about Custom Roles.
2. Processing Staff User requests
With Arbitration enabled, Administrators can choose to accept or deny checkout or reservation requests made by Staff Users. To see all your reservations, go to your Dashboard and click on Reservations
Reservations are added to the calendar once Admins approve the requests. They are cancelled if Admins disapprove of the request. Additionally, they can provide a reason for denying the reservation request.
3. Types of Arbitrations
3.1. All checkouts and check-ins require Admin approval
- Checkout: Staff Users cannot check out any Asset by themselves; they have to reserve them first. When the reservation date arrives, an Admin will check out the Assets to them.
- Check-in: Staff Users cannot check in Assets themselves; they would need to request check-ins. An Admin will then approve these check-in requests.
Note: Admins can always stay on top of checkout reservations from the Dashboard (calendar) and check-in requests by utilizing the ‘Check-in Pending’ filter on the Item Listings Page.
Note:3.2. Pre-approved checkouts: Admin(s) can pre-approve future reservations
Different from the previous workflow, EZOfficeInventory also offers ‘Pre-approved Checkouts’ meaning that an Admin can pre-approve the reservation(s). When the reservation date arrives, Staff Users can check out the reserved item(s) themselves. This is achieved by extending Arbitration to Reservations, allowing Staff Users to ‘request’ a Reservation. Such Reservations appear under the Reservations tab for Administrators to review and take actions on. Enable ‘Arbitration on Reservations’ from Company Settings → Members and Access → Arbitration.
3.3. Staff Users can check in/check out specific Assets by themselves but need admin approval for the remainder
Asset-level arbitration provides enhanced access control to allow for scenarios where only specific Assets/Packages need to have arbitration enabled or disabled. This can come in handy when you’d want an Admin to step in when something important or expensive is being checked out.To try this out, enable ‘Asset Level Arbitration’ from Settings → Company Settings & Add Ons.
To change Asset level Arbitration for a particular item, click the ‘Edit’ button on the Asset Details Page.
Next, choose one of the following from the ‘Arbitration’ field drop down.
- Same as company setting: No change in Asset-level Arbitration. The company-level setting for general arbitration (enabled/disabled) will be applied to the asset.
- Enable: This will restrict Staff Users to undertake actions on specific Assets/Packages only (overriding the company-level setting). For example, you might want Staff users to be able to self-checkout older model iPads.
- Disable: You will be able to authorize access to staff users to take actions on specific assets/packages when general arbitration is enabled (overriding the Company level setting). For example, you don’t want to limit Staff user access to the latest iPads.
3.4. Some Staff Users require Admin approval while others don’t
In multi-team organizations, an Administrator’s intervention might be required for check-in/out to certain User Listings whereas for others, it’s not. For example, you might want company interns to require Admin approval for check-ins/out and reservations, but not the full-time employees.
EZOfficeInventory allows you to set up arbitration settings specific to each User Listing. To configure these, go to More → User Listings → User Listing Name e.g. Interns → Settings. This will lead you to the following page:
Select the highlighted option to reveal User Listing level arbitration settings as shown below:
You can then enable preferred arbitration settings to require Admin approval for item check-ins/checkouts and reservations done by Interns only.
Note: ‘Access Control’ needs to be enabled from Settings → Company Settings → Access Control for User Listings to show up in the More dropdown.
3.5. Staff users can only check out Assets by scanning them
In this workflow, the users can only see (and take actions on) items that have been checked out to them. However, they can pull up limited details of other items by scanning the QR Codes. In this limited view, users will see an option to check out items. In essence, you have forced Staff users to scan an item before checking it out. Here are the steps to enable these settings:
a) Set arbitration to ‘Disabled’.
b) Ensure Visibility is set to ‘Currently checked out to Staff Users’.
c) Configure the limited view from Company Settings → Public QR Code scanning settings.
4. Staff User settings based on User Listings
You can enable Staff Users to take certain actions based on the User Listing(s) they belong to. These actions include:
- Creating items
- Scheduling and starting maintenance on items
To configure Staff User settings specific to each User Listing, go to User Listings → User Listing Name → Settings. Check the options illustrated below and hit ‘Save Settings’.
Note that default Company Arbitration settings will apply to a User Listing if Arbitration settings specific to the User Listing have not been enabled.
5. Arbitration outside User Listings
Go to Company Settings → Arbitration outside a User Listing.
With this setting, Staff Users can reserve and request items that are not in their user listing.
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