Using CERMM

Assets and labels

The hardware you have, enrolled or not: spares, loaners, parts, the switch in the drawer. What you've got, who has it, and the last thing you did with it.

An asset

• An asset tag: A-0001 onward, given when it's added, or your own (IT-0123) kept from an import or typed. Unique.
• A name (or its make and model), kind, and status: Spare, In use, Repair or Retired.
• Make, model, serial (unique), location and assigned to (suggested from the ones you've used).
• A linked device, purchase and warranty dates, details.

What you do with one

The page's main button is whatever's next; the rest are in its ⋯ and a row's right-click:

• Check out to someone (In use), and Check in (back to Spare, Needs repair or Retired).
• Send for repair and Back from repair, Retire, Duplicate.
• Add note.

The log is what happened, newest first: changes made together on one line, with the note written with them. Notes can be removed; changes can't.

The list

Assets has its own row after Tickets. Each row: tag; name with make and model, serial, and a warning when the warranty ends within 60 days or has ended; status; with whom or where; the last line of the log. Status pills plus Warranty, kinds at a glance (3 laptops, 2 monitors), a filter, and sortable columns (remembered).

Getting assets in

• Add several: one serial per line, typed or scanned; each gets a tag.
• Import CSV, or cells pasted from a spreadsheet. Headings are matched by their usual names (Asset Tag, Manufacturer, Service Tag, User, Warranty Expires…); kinds, statuses and dates are read leniently. A preview says which columns it reads and which it ignores. Rows whose serial or tag is already here are skipped and listed.
• Add from devices: enrolled physical machines (not VMs or containers) become assets In use, linked, with make, model and serial from their reports. The list offers it while there are some (Not now hides it).
• A device's menu has Add as asset.

Export CSV gives it all back. Assets are in the title bar's search: tag, serial, name, model, location, who has it. Changing assets needs Manage devices; everything is in the audit log.

Labels

Print label… on an asset (its Label button, ⋯, right-click), Print labels for the list as filtered, or from a device's menu (a machine that isn't an asset yet is added as one first, after asking).

A label has:

• a QR code of the asset's address on your server (…/#a/A-0042): a phone's camera app opens it, nothing to install, as long as the phone can reach the server;
• the tag in big type, the name and serial, and an optional top line ("Property of …");
• the tag as a Code 128 barcode, for handheld scanners.

Sheets have Start at label for a part-used sheet. Labels print through the browser at the label's page size, with nothing else on the page.

Scanning

• A USB or Bluetooth scanner works anywhere: with nothing focused, it opens what it read. In the title bar's search, Enter on a tag or serial opens it.
• The title bar's scan button uses the camera where the browser has BarcodeDetector (Chrome and Edge on Android, ChromeOS, macOS), otherwise it's a box to type or scan into.
• A code is matched to an asset's tag or serial, then a device's serial or name. One nobody has offers Add it as an asset with that tag, for pre-printed tags.