Loading Printer supplies (Toner) stock room inventory

Raj56
Kilo Guru

‎02-04-2022 07:24 AM

We are scanning network printers which is giving printer supplies like toner, cartridge info. Now we have a request to load inventory of Printer supplies which are available in stockroom. Idea is to to assign them to a printer once they are installed. Is there any process to streamline this ?

Thanks,
Raj

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CMDB Whisperer
Mega Sage
Mega Sage

‎02-05-2022 05:08 PM

I'm thinking probably not.  Since your toner cartridge is probably being managed as a consumable rather than an individual asset, there is nothing specifically to be "assigned" to the printer.  It simply reduces the number of them on hand in the stockroom and gets "consumed" by the person who requested it.  That person does their job to install it in the printer, but no sign of that asset appears anywhere.  Only the effect of that installation is then detected as configuration data on the printer.


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Ed Laar1
Kilo Guru

‎02-06-2022 07:05 AM

Hey Raj,

OOB there is no specific solution as far as I know. I presume your goal is to have supplies for your printers in stock to be able to request them as soon as a printer has the need for it's supplies. Also the amount of supplies per printer during a certain period is perhaps one of the goals.

Think about this:

  • Register the printers as CI's in the cmdb. Regsiter for each printer model a model in the Product Model table. Regsiter the type of supplies for each printer also in the Printer Model record (ie not OOB gthis can be added). In this way an overview of printer supplies is created. 
  • Create consumable asset models of the supplies, order the supplies and stock them in the stock
  • Create a Catalog Item to request printer supplies and publish this one in the Service catalog. Add the fulfillment workflow in this one, in this case the consumables workflow.
  • Make a change in this workflow in order to register the requeted and delivered supplies on the Printer CI instead on a user. As the rinters are already in the CMDB and therefore also in the AMDB this is visible
  • In this way printer supplies can be maintained on stock levels, can be requested via the service catalog and monitored on used amounts.

Hope you get inspired with this. Let me know if you created something like this.

Idea: If a printer is able to send out a signal if supplies have to be changed, there are automation possibilities also on this area.

 

Ed 

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