SAManage IT Management Blog

Today we are excited to launch the new dashboard, with ability to personalize and add / remove widgets showing more information about your IT assets, contracts and help desk tickets. The dashboard provides a real-time snapshot of your assets and key indicators for your account:

Personalize your dashboard by clicking the Personalize icon to select the widget you wish to add:

You can drag and drop widgets to organize your dashboard, or remove widgets from your dashboard. Some of the widgets can be edited to further personalize the information displayed:

The new dashboard provides an easier way to organize and manage your IT information. As always, let us know what you think!

This week’s addition is the ability to make mass changes on assets, tickets, and contract properties. With the new feature you can select a group of computers and assign them to a site, attach to a computer lease contract or a service/repair agreement, or select a group of tickets and assign them to a new ticket owner.

Using the Mass Update

Click on the Mass Update icon on the upper right corner of each module. You will see the Mass Update frame poping up:

Select the items you wish to update using the checkbox on the left side of each item. The Mass Update status bar would indicate how many items are currently selected and will be affected by this mass update action.

Next, select the property you wish to modify, such as category, department or site, and choose the new value for that property. When you are done with your selection, click the Update Selected icon on the lower right corner.

The system would update the properties for the selected items with the new values you chose, and indicate how many items where actually changed by this action.

Where can you use it?

The new Mass Update feature is available with Computers, Software, Other Asset, Contracts, and Tickets. Each module has different properties you can update based on the context, and you can view all the available properties in the Mass Update frame for each of the modules.

Today, we’re adding a new feature – computer assignment rules – to help you more easily correlate assets to sites and departments. These new computer assignment rules will allow you to automate how computers will be assigned to sites and/or departments, based on the domain they belong to, an IP address range, or the prefix in the computer’s name.

The new rules are accessible from within the organization setup section of your SAManage account. This section is where you create your sites and departments in the system. As you enter new sites and departments, you can now also add rules that correlate assets into each organization unit. Any time a computer in your inventory matches one of these rules, the rule will be automatically invoked and the computer will be assigned accordingly.

Setup your organization's sites and departments

To use the new assignment rules, simply navigate to the organization setup section, and click on ”Add Rule” next to the site or department.  Or, you can click on ”Create New Rule” at the bottom of the page. Select the rule type (domain, IP range, or name prefix) and the matching value, then select “Assign to Site”, “Assign to Department” – or both. When you’re finished, click on “Create Rule” to add it to the system.

Create computer assignment rules

As you create or modify rules, you can test them by clicking ”Apply Rules”.  This will immediately execute all rules. The system will also periodically invoke your rules, to accommodate for any alterations, or any new computers that have been added to your computer inventory since the rules were last executed.

The new assignment rules make it easier to manage and organize your asset inventory. Learn more about IT asset management solutions from SAManage, and how they can help you better manage your technology environment.

Now you can get updates on changes to your assets, inventory, help desk tickets or new risks in your account using the new RSS feeds feature. Each module (such as Inventory, Contracts, Risks and Helpdesk) fully supports output via RSS feeds to make it easy on you to take your information and use it in your favorite feed reader.

Subscribe to your RSS feeds

To activate the new feature and subscribe to an RSS feed for any of the modules in your account, simply click on the RSS icon on the upper right corner of each view (located together with the CSV/PDF/Print icons) or click on the RSS icon in your browser’s URL address. Your browser will redirect you to the default RSS reader and let you add that feed to your reader.

Some ideas to get you started

1. Audit – create a feed of audit events in your inventory – makes it easy to review the audit log and track changes across your inventory. Note this feed is quite large and frequently updated.
2. Risks - view new risks detected in your inventory.
3. New computers/software – activate the RSS feed on the “New computers/software” view to get a listing of new computers/software across your network in the last week.
4. New tickets - view new tickets in your help desk and always stay on top of new support requests.
5. Search phrases – run a search query and get the results as a feed – a great way to create custom alerts on changes to your assets.

Got more ideas or questions about the new capabilities? let us know!

The latest addition to the SAManage IT Management suite is a better and faster search engine. The new search feature includes the ability to group search results by different asset types, as well as the ability to display related information for each asset directly in the search results page.  We have also made it easier to navigate into different areas of each asset within the search results.

Asset inventory search results

Detailed Search Results

The new search facility now returns more detailed information about each asset.  For example, any computer that appears in the search results will include links to its software or hardware configuration.  So, you are always just a click away from more information about that asset. Search results will also now display more information on each asset that meets search criteria, to make it easier to identify related hardware and software components.

Grouped by Asset Types

Search results are now grouped by tabs based on the type of asset.  These tabs will provide a quick count of the related items appearing in the results. For example, if a search for “server” returns matches for a computer, software, and tickets, you will see all the results on the main search result page.  But you can filter those results by clicking, for example, on the computer tab to view only computers with the word “server” in them.

You can search by computer, software, printers, other assets, contracts, vendors, tickets and solutions. All asset properties are now included in the index, so you can search for any type of properties or value.

Advanced Search Options

1. Operators - Searching for a phrase such as ”Server + Mike” will return any results  meeting that exact criteria, while typing in ”Server | Mike” will return results with either “server” or “mike”
2. By Property – Search by various asset properties.  For example, cpu:intel, or status:disposed – here are all available options:
   1. Computer – Name, tag, ip, username, cpu, operating_system, domain, asset_tag, site, department, category, status, manufacturer, serial, mac_address
   2. Software – Name, tag, category, manufacturer
   3. Printers – Name, driver and port, site, department
   4. Other Assets – Name, description, manufacturer, ip, model, serial, site, department, type, status
   5. Contracts - Name, manufacturer, note, item_name, version, tag, purchase_number
   6. Vendors - Name, note, vendor: <value>
   7. Tickets – Name, description, number, resolution_description, type, comments
3. Grouping – Typing in a phrase such as “(asset AND management) or ITAM” will return results containing either “asset management” or “ITAM”
4. Phrase - Complete phrases, such as “hello world” can be easily searched upon
5. Proximity - Searching for a phrase like “ruby rails”~10 will match results that have the words “ruby” and ”rails” within a 10 word span. So, matches similar to this one – “ruby is fun language and rails is capable framework” – will be returned
6. Quorum Matching – Using search phrases like “the world is a wonderful place”/3 will return results that have at least 3 out of the 6 specified words

SaaS-based IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.

Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

Here at SAManage, we are constantly striving to make it easier for you to manage your IT assets. This week’s upgrade provides new ways to better control your hardware inventory, and features that will enhance the way you manage risks within your technology infrastructure.

We’ve added:

Unauthorized Software alerts

SAManage has always used a global dictionary to identify the presence of unauthorized software across your company’s network.  As inventory is checked, the system performs in-depth analysis, comparing the software being used against a list of unauthorized applications.  If there is a match, a new risk alert will be triggered.

Now, you can expand your list of unauthorized software. Want to know the next time a user installs Skype? Simply add Skype to your list of greynet software, and you’ll receive an alert each time Skype is discovered in your software inventory. This will make it easier for you to stay on top of your approved software stack, and to more effectively implement and enforce a software usage policy.

Duplicate Computers

Dealing with duplicate computers is one of the obstacles you may face when maintaining accurate IT asset inventory. This is caused by the dynamic nature of IT systems.  For example, existing hardware is re-provisioned for new employees, operating systems get reinstalled on the same computer, and virtualization technologies enable the launch of multiple virtual instances of the same computer (this topic will be addressed in a separate post).

From an IT asset management perspective, these components must be recognized as the same.  In order for your inventory to be tracked as precisely as possible, the “old asset” must first be removed from your inventory log, before the new asset is accounted for.

SAManage will now add a new alert to your risks module, notifying you when duplicate computers exist in your inventory.  You will then be required to take action, and will be asked to mark the duplicate one, so a single, accurate log of your assets can be maintained.

Computers That Are Not Reporting

In order to most effectively manage your inventory of IT assets, you must ensure that all components are present and accounted for.  Therefore, all assets must be reporting back to SAManage on a regular basis.

Now, SAManage can alert you when specific assets do not report for a pre-defined period of time, so you can immediately take action to locate it and determine its status. Maybe it has been stolen and needs to be reclaimed?  Perhaps it is no longer being utilized, and can now be reassigned to another user?

When a new alert is added, click on the link to the computer to see the details from last time it reported.

Learn more about SAManage IT Management on-demand service or sign up for a free 30-days trial today!

We have recently enhanced the hardware inventory views, and added more information about available memory slots and storage adapters available on the computer.

Memory Slots

Memory information can help you keep track of how much memory is available, versus how much is in use on each computer.  It can also help you determine if there are any available (free) storage slots that can be used to add more memory to that PC. To view the information, simply click on the computer details, and navigate to the Hardware tab.

Memory slots available on a computer

Storage Adapters

In addition to the disk and drive information already available under the Hardware tab, SAManage will now display the logical drives for a computer, allowing you to view the PC’s physical storage adapters.

Storage adapters on a computer

Disks and Drive letters on a computer

Managing your IT risks is a tough job. To make it a little easier on you, we added a new way for you to alert your users on new risks detected on their computers, and request an immediate action to resolve the risk.

To use the new feature, navigate to the Risks section and browse the list of active risks across your network. You’ll notice a new action for “Send Email” next to each active risk:

IT Risks detected by SAManage

When clicking on the “Send Email” action, a new window shows with a default message. There are a number of canned messages to fit each risk category and request a different action to resolve different risks:

Send email requesting attention on a new risk

When the asset already has a user associated with it, the user’s email address will appear in the To: field. Make any necessary changes to the email’s subject or body and click send to have the email alert sent to the user.

When an email is sent to the user, a new ticket is created in your Help Desk to remind you to verify the user took the requested action and the risk was resolved. Not resolved yet? you can send the user a reminder to take the necessary action. As the risk is resolved, SAManage marks the risk as resolved and removes it from your active risks list.

Make it a habit to periodically review your active risks and alert your users to resolve them!

Understanding your organization’s software license compliance standing is a key part of managing your routine business risks. To mitigate the risk of an external license audit or noncompliance fines, you have to be in a position to easily view your company’s compliance status at any time and take any required action to get back on track.

To analyze your company’s license compliance status you have to reconcile your organization’s software licenses (“what you own”) with your software inventory (“what you use”). This sounds a lot easier than it actually is, as your software inventory keeps on changing when users install or remove software from their computers, and new computers gets added or removed across your network. What makes it even more complicated is the clutter of software across your network, which typically includes patches, security updates, drivers and other types of software that has nothing to do with licensing or compliance.

To make it easier to reconcile software licenses and software inventory we created the new software reconcile feature:

Reconcile your software inventory with your software licenses

The new reconcile feature analyzes your software inventory and lists software titles with no matching license available in the License Repository.  As you work your way through the list you can mark the software as such that requires no license, or simply create a new software license and enter any licenses you own into the License Repository. This provides for a quick and effective way to go through your software inventory, make sure you capture all the software licenses you own, and validate your license compliance standing.

Learn more about software license management and how SAManage can help you manage your IT assets, or get started today and sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

What is Software Asset Management?

Learn how companies can improve IT efficiency and ensure license compliance with Software Asset Management.

Download our quantifying the value of software asset management white paper.

This week’s upgrade introduces the ability to manually track all the other IT assets that can not be inventoried automatically. Now you can use SAManage IT Asset Management software to track none-PC assets such as scanners, external hard drives, backup devices or communication equipment such as a router or a firewall device – everything goes!

Track the asset physical location and the asset owner, as well as “assets in transit” – sent a projector for service? simply change the asset status to in-repair to have an accurate inventory of all assets and their current status.

Capturing your existing asset information and adding assets to the SAManage Asset repository is easy – either enter them manually, or import an existing asset list from a CSV file:

SAManage IT Management SaaS service makes it easy to manage your hardware inventory and optimize your IT. Learn more about SAManage or sign up for a free 30-day trial and get your own SAManage account.