implementing Hardware Asset Management - role allocation

[sbh]

How have you set up Hardware Asset Management? I can't seem to find the documentation I need, which tells me we may be taking the wrong approach. 

To start with, I've granted the following roles to our Helpdesk Manager, who will be managing Asset Management, and to a contractor who will be setting up our current inventory:

• asset
• ham_admin
• inventory_admin

Two questions have come up:

1. They can't add manufacturers. Neither can I, and I have the admin role. Are manufacturers only added through normalization?
2. This one's a larger question, and where we may be making some incorrect assumptions. They want to import a template and a large number of assets and don't have import permissions. And our Helpdesk Manager will want to import multiple spreadsheets when large orders come in. After some discussion (about the broader implications of giving them the ability to import files, and about license limitations on tables - though I think we'd be OK if they keep reusing the same import table with different data sources), we granted them the import_admin role in dev only. They still can't import files. Is there a better way to handle this? Should large orders be processed using grouped bar-code scanning, rather than importing spreadsheets? Do they have to have some version of the admin role in order to import files? Should I create a custom role that allows them to import files only to the Asset Management application (and/or maybe limit them to specific import row sets)?

Adding manufacturers and inputting/importing new hardware assets must be common processes used in Hardware Asset Management. So I figure there must be some basic, widely-used solutions.

Thank you in advance for any help!

[Muralidharan BS]

HI,

1. Manufacturers are from core_company table, vendor_manager or user_admin role can create it. Admin do inherit these roles so you should be able to create them. 

2. import_admin will help them load files, try load data and select an existing table already created for transforming data. Usually admins take care of data load even in the HAM course it states that System admin to do data import.  But if there is special requirement and there is no integration and frequently load data. Create a template and then use the same for data loads. 

[sbh]

Thank you @Muralidharan BS ! This is great information! I've been experimenting and will accept as solution when I get it working.

1. Part of my problem was thinking that it was the Hardware Manufacturer table [sn_hamp_hw_manufacturer]. I can add new records to core_company. (Weirdly, I don't have user_admin, but admin alone covers me.) I didn't know about the Vendor Management plugin so no one had the vendor_manager role before. That alone didn't do it. I had to give the contractor user_admin, which I don't want to do. Maybe I can come up with a custom role that's more restricted.
2. Import_admin alone does not give the contractor the option to import when he uses column headers. Maybe that will change when I get a template set up and give him access to it. I haven't taken the HAM course yet (I didn't know about it) - there's probably a lot I'll learn there.

I'll keep working with it, but thank you very much for giving me so much to work with!!

[sbh]

It turns out there's a simple solution to the import problem, and that I was making some incorrect assumptions. The role required is ham_admin and the files aren't imported using the Import option in the column header menu; there's a form where you attach a zip file and then load the data from the zip file to the hardware library.

Import and export content data

[sbh]

I finally thought to check the ACLs and it's just as you say. No one, not even admins, can create a record on the Hardware Manufacturer table [sn_hamp_hw_manufacturer] table, but ham_admins can create the 'company' field on that table, which is a reference to the core_company table. Supposedly, people with the user_admin or the sn_vlm.vendor_admin role can create records on core_company. I can do it but the consultant, who has the sn_vlm.vendor_admin role, cannot.

I'm not sure why the consultant can't create a company with the sn_vlm.vendor_admin role (along with his other roles, which include itil and ham_admin), but the fact that even admins can't create records on the hardware manufacturer table means there has to be another way to create those records - like during the daily scheduled normalization job, based on the asset's model number?