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

13. The Central Console

14. Computer Inventory

15. Components

16. Connections

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)

19. Financial Information

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

21. Contracts

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

23. Suppliers

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.

27. Tickets Central

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.

29. Create a Ticket

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

32. A Ticket

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

34. Report

35. Report

36. Planning

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

38. Reservation

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...

40. Reports

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

44. Thank You