I have a question about managing assets by using bundles

[CraigSteel]

I have a client who is on Geneva, but is a legacy client, so their Asset Management (which predates Calgary) is in need of some cleaning up.

They have expressed the desire to start managing some of their consumable assets by bundles.   So, they would package up a keyboard, mouse and an inexpensive second monitor as a "bundle of consumables".

There is no need to track these assets through their entire lifecycle, as they do not cross their internal $ thresholds.

I can see how to create a bundled model of consumable assets, the issue I'm having is with how the bundled model behaves when the actual bundle asset is created.

In this client's case, the various parts which go into a bundle are received and stocked from different vendors, and would be in the system long before they are put together as a bundle.   So, they have stockrooms, with consumable assets with various quantities at any given moment in time.

However, when I create an asset corresponding to the bundled model I have created, it creates new consumable asset records for each of the various component parts, and doesn't ever give me the option to source the component pieces from the various stockrooms and existing quantites already in the system.

Do bundles only function as if you are receiving the bundle of goods into the system at the time you are creating the bundled asset?   I played around with the "Asset Tracking Strategy" field enough so that I can set the component pieces to never create assets ... but that also has the side effect of preventing you from creating assets using that component directly (as opposed to just when creating a bundled asset).

Given my client's requirements, is the only way to get the benefits of managing consumables at a bundled level (assign one record - all the children get assigned, and track consumables as only quantites, not individual assets) to manually add the different components into a bundle each and every time a bundled asset is created?   That seems to cut a lot of the legs off the value of creating bundled models in the first place.

I'm assuming that bundled models of actual assets would work exactly the same way.   If I create a bundled model, and then I create an actual asset for that model, any asset components attached to it would be automatically created as generic Assets (and their corresponding generic CIs based on Model Category) at the time the bundle asset is created.   And if I want to assign specific assets that I already have in stock to that individual bundled asset, I need to manually add the components, and remove the generic components created at the time ... or set those individual components so that they never create assets ... and have a duplicate component to allow for asset creation when they receive stock from their separate vendors.

Is there no way to automate the creation of assets based on a bundled model so that you have the opportunity to select items already in the stockroom rather than either having generic assets and CIs created every time OR having to manually assign specific components every time (and having duplicate models to allow for asset creation outside of the bundled model asset creation).

[Community Alums]

Craig,

Bundles support the creation of a group of related assets, whether manually or through the Service Catalog. As you have discovered, you cannot create an asset for a bundle: it just creates the assets themselves. Unfortunately, creating a Service Catalog item for a bundle also does not let you know if you have that particular bundle of items in stock, either, and it also does not break the requested bundle into its components so you can see if you have all of those in stock, either. This behavior does currently limit the usefulness of bundles.

A better bet (right now) for ordering a group of items together would be to create an Order Guide that can provide the selection of the group of items as one item. I have not, however, looked at how a bundle of consumables on its own would be consumed/attached in this situation.

Ben

[Gavin19]

Has there been any resolution to this with the New York/Orlando releases?

[terrichapman]

We have a similar or maybe, just related question. If you have existing hardware models and consumables together in a bundled model, how do you assign an already existing serialized unit of the hardware model? If you decide to deploy a standard issue kit comprised of components that are pre-existing units in inventory, (e.g. a laptop PC, Bag, Privacy screen, Mouse, Headset and extra laptop charger) we don't see how you add existing units to the bundle without creating so that the assignment action can be one transaction that assigns the serialized item (parent) and consumes 1 instance of the other items and updates the user record with all of the issued items.

What am I missing? The way I understand it, the bundle is a model not an instance of the model, but then how does one create and assign instances of the bundle from existing inventory? We would like to consider using the hardware model normalization coming with Paris, because our multi-tenancy situation (with Discovery running) has created a lot of confusing redundancy in the hardware models table. The use of the bundling features seems like a key to going there, but this question is kind of in the way.