Perpetual Inventory System

There’s two ways to do this….

1. If you are using the inventory system you’re about halfway there. When tickets for device issuance are being issued, you will want to use the fulfill option on the SR. It will bring up a screen like the below and after clicking next the stage/assignee/department/etc will populate based on the requested for user. You can also set the asset state from the next screen.

This *requires* the service catalog item have the fulfillment options set to a single device type (see below).

Unfortunately this means your org has to have a single item assigned to the Service Catalog item for it.  This could be a problem if your org has 3 offerings for laptops; you’d need to create one for each type of device. As models change you can modify the product without much effort.  My org doesnt have a standard make/model number so this isnt possible. 

2. To reduce admin overhead/allow flexibility, my org has setup asset automations where if the last login by changes on a device, the device gets pulled to in use instead of in stock and assigns it to the specified user.
   1. This doesnt account for things that do not have their information pulled via discovery probe/agent (Linux/Mac/Windows machines).
   2. Inventory for non-network connected items you’d have to stick with option 1.  You can use the discovery probe to discover/add network infrastructure, etc (pending they are able accept SNMP/windows/ssh credentials) and put them into in use on discovery (since they are on the network you can assume they are being used). 

We have all of the above supplemented by a daily scheduled automation where if a device doesnt check in for 30 days, a ticket is created (this has to be done via API) to investigate the devices usage/status. This allows for the inventory to be kept up as devices become inactive or returned from users leaving and put on a shelf, they can be moved to in stock/retired as applicable.

This all revolves around network connected stuff for the most part, but if you can automate that, the rest becomes manageable.

You can bulk import off a CSV to get started or over time. Open up the inventory screen and hit import. You’ll have to have fields specified that are required (to find these I’d recommend creating a new asset with the asset type selected, then you’ll know what fields you require and what are unnecessary. Headsets or consumables like keyboards/mice will be a pain in the rear to track if there are no serial numbers on them to identify them. 

I dont recall the role needed to do bulk importing (if it’s admin or just create inventory) but here’s the screenshot from the inventory screen in FS.