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ITInfo -- IT Inventory & Asset Management System with Helpdesk
1. IT Inventory & Assets Management
System with Helpdesk
Abhay Kulkarni
2. Abhay Kulkarni
Worked in YASHADA as Senior System Analyst for 4
and half years
Overall experience of 12 years in IT
Extensively worked in Open Source Software
Evaluation of Applications and Technologies,
Installation, Customization, Programming
Implementation, Administration
Training
Maintainence and Support
3. Agenda
The IT Scenario
Some issues
A few questions
About the Application
Applicability
Demonstration
4. The IT Scenario
Organizations grows and as well its Information
Technology (IT) Infrastructure
IT is a continuous process :
Procurement of new hardware – New Budgets
Maintainence & Support of existing one
Scrapping of the obsolete
Supplemented by acquisitions & mergers
Various operational issues arise
5. Some issues
IT, by its nature is volatile
Service Engineers may join and leave
AMC or Facility Management agencies may change
after a year or two
The computer users may change
When people leave they take away all the tacit
knowledge with them
The organization, as owner of IT assets, remains
helpless and clueless, if loosely managed
And so also the newcomers to head start their job
6. Contd...
All the Administrative information about the assets
must be available
All the Technical details of the assets must be
recorded and updated over and again
All the Management related information about the
assets should be maintained
To keep all the Commercial & Financial information
is equally necessary
So also the history of all the above
7. A few Questions...
Which computers still run with 256 MB RAM and /
or still have CRT Monitors ?
How many computers run with illegal / pirated /
unofficial software and where are they located ? To
whom they are issued ?
How many software licenses do we have ? For
which software ? For which versions ??
How many and where are the assets bought with
last year's budget ?
What is the ink level of our network printers ?
8. Contd ...
How many requests per day were processed by the
support team ?
What is the exact status of the incidents / requests
raised by the users ? I want figures..
Are users raising the same issues again & again ?
Are there any hardware faults or end user faults ?
Are users / managers satisfied with the service ?
Is a particular printer consuming more pages ?
Some actions must be approved by IT Manager only
9. The ITInfo Application
Information Resource Manager
The principal functionality
Inventory
Helpdesk
Management
Reservations
Knowledge base
Reports
10. Inventory
The inventory process is automatic and repeatable
after a predefined time interval
A client is installed on every computer which does
all this and communicates with the server
Further, the records can be modified to a great
extent for better fine grained searches
The client can not be installed on some assets like
network printers and switches. In this scenario, the
server polls the inventory using SNMP
Duplicate computers are found automatically
11. Inventory
Inventory of the computers fleet with management of the
devices, their connections and TCO management.
Inventory of the monitors with management of the
connections to the computers with their serial numbers,
screen resolution, type, model & manufacturer etc
Inventory of the network hardware fleet with management,
switches, of the connections to the devices (IP, Mac
addresses, VLANs...)
Inventory of printers fleet with management of connections
to the computers and management of cartridges and
consumable associated and consumption and the thresholds
of alarm on ink level
12. Contd...
Inventory of the external Miscelleneous devices (scanners,
LCD Projectors, UPS) with management of the connections
to the computers
Inventory of the software fleet with the management of
installations and licenses and expiration dates management
Assignment of the hardware by geographic area (floor,
location...) in parent child notation
Assignment of IT assets to users, groups, departments
Management of the status of the hardware (working, for
repair, scrap..)
History of all actions pertaining to that asset
Record of all volumes and the free space for each computer
17. Management
All the Commercial & Financial information pertaining to
The asset itself
Contracts
Suppliers
Contacts
Documents
Many to Many relationship
18. The Asset
The Supplier, Third Party, The Budget
Purchase Order No, PO date, Delivery date, Startup date
Invoice No, Delivery Challan no, Value
Amortization duration, type, coefficient
Net Asset value (TCO value + tracking cost)
Warrantee start date, end date
Associated contract(s)
20. Contracts
Basic information like name, type, start date, period
Purchase Order No, cost
Maximum number of assets the contract can cover
Notification alarms on end or notice for contract
The contract provider
The assets covered under the contract
22. Suppliers
All the necessary credentials & demographic information
Associated contact persons
The associated contracts by this supplier
The assets this supplier has provided
Any tickets / issues raised about this supplier
24. Contacts
All the necessary credentials & demographic information
Contact information of all the entities like Vendors,
Suppliers, Contractors, third parties, dealers and
distributors etc
Facility of Vcard export of the contact
25. Documents
Integrated with rest of the modules like
Assets : scanned copies of PO, Invoice etc..
Contracts : scanned copies of contract document, PO etc
Supplier : brochures, product lists with rates etc..
Contacts : CV of service provider's engineers etc..
Computer product manual, fact sheets etc..
Software user manual, HOWTOs etc..
Restrict the type of documents (doc files not allowed)
Screen shots uploaded while registering a ticket is also a
document for that ticket / asset
26. Helpdesk
Management of the tracking requests for all the types of
material of the inventory (computer, software, printer,
even mouse and keyboard)
User Can post any intervention in the form of incident /
request
Many tool-tips are available so as to access the information
fast and conveniently
Cost can be recorded in the life-cycle of a ticket
Tasks for ticket can be created and published in the
calendar which can be exported in iCal format
History of a ticket in a threaded manner.
28. End User
End user front end interface for posting incidents / requests
Email notification of tracking & follow ups of the incident
Knows the exact status of his ticket at that time
Can add comments at the request of intervention using web
interface
A user can attach the screen shot of the message he gets, as
a problem if can't describe properly
Can book / reserve an IT asset marked for reservation for a
finite time period
Can change his credentials and basic settings pertaining to
helpdesk.
30. Technicians
Display of the tickets / requests in a central console
Incidents / Requests / Demands priority management
Tracking of incidents / request / demands with email
notifications
Opening / Closing / Re-opening of tickets
Can add one or several follow ups for that particular
incident and may close the ticket
Can send ticket for validation / approval to senior authority
Can link this ticket to any other ticket
Can plan the to-dos
31. Call Co-ordinator
Superuser for the Helpdesk System
Has many administrative powers (Assignment of tickets,
approval of request, assigning tickets to multiple
technicians, supervisors etc..)
Can directly mark the history of followups to knowledge
base as a solution which is available for rest of the users
Can edit the ticket's properties appropriately (change
request source, priority, category, urgency, impact etc..)
Management of planning of a major intervention with iCal
export
33. Helpdesk Statistics
Global graphical bar chart report by status of the tickets,
average time etc..
Cross tab reports by ticket with various search criteria, as,
By requester, Technician, Group, Characteristics
etc..
Cross tab reports by asset with various search criteria, as,
By hardware, its type, model, location etc..
By components like processor, hard disk, memory
etc..
All the reports can be generated in any time frame (By
selecting Start date – End date) with bar / pie chart and
exported in pdf / spreadsheet format
37. Reservations
Management of the assets marked for reservation (eg. A
laptop, LCD Projector, pen drive, external hard disk etc..)
Has intuitive User Interface (Calendar) for the reservation
History of all reservations of a asset per user in a specified
time period
39. Knowledge base
Management of a basic system of Knowledge Hierarchical
Management of a Public FAQ (Technical / Operational issues)
WYSIWYG type of Rich Text format Web based Editor
When a ticket is solved / closed, its answer / follow up can
be posted as a Solution, available to all the users
Facility to upload content items (pdf, audio, video etc..)
Various links can be given to YouTube videos, other training
material, HOWTOs, other public FAQs etc...
41. General Features
Entities management (multi node)
Users management
– Authentication & Authorization based system
– Many options to manage profiles
Multiple Authentication Systems (local, LDAP, Active Directory, POP /
IMAP, CAS, etc...)
Cache & Pagination system
Email notification to concerned users on various events like
– Expiry of contracts, licenses, cartridges, consumable stocks
etc..
– Commercial & administrative information
– Tickets life cycle at various stages
42. Search System
Powerful, Complex & Enriched Search module
– Can have search on many a criteria
– Nested queries to get in-depth reports
– Searches can be bookmarked or saved
– Display fields can be configured at ease
– Export the reports in pdf, csv or spreadsheet
formats
43. IT Inventory & Assets Management
System with Helpdesk
IT Management is Costly
Not to Manage IT is Costlier
