Best Practice to Differentiate “New vs Refreshed” Stock in alm_hardware

[PrajjvalSiG]

Hello All,

My client wants to differentiate In Stock / Available assets as:

• Available – New in Box
• Available – Refreshed / Re-imaged

The intent is to improve inventory visibility and reporting and hence they are asking to add these 2 new substates in the alm_hardware table asset form.

I’d like guidance on:

• Whether adding custom substates under the Asset State will impact OOTB HAM lifecycle, workflows, or transitions
• If modifying the state model is recommended or discouraged
• What would be the best-practice solution to achieve this requirement (e.g., custom attribute, asset condition, lifecycle stage, etc.)

Looking for suggestions on the cleanest and future-proof approach without breaking OOTB behavior.

Thanks!

[Robert _ysakows]

We have similar requirement but we won't be modifying the OOTB states/substates as we think, it might became a pain going forward. Since it's really a binary thing (it's either new or not), we will go for a check box or 'Yes/No' field with label 'Used'. This field will be 'false' as long as the asset has been waiting for deployoment for the first time. Once it's deployed, it's changed to 'true' and stays like that for the rest of it's lifecycle.

The other advantage of this solution is that you might not show it on any form and restrict it with ACL, so no one can change it and it's being controlled by the process only. With state/substate you can't really do this, and on top of technical debt you're also introducing operational hassle.