Tree structure design

All assets are tracked as objects in the object tree on the Objects page.

The tree should have the following basic structure:

• organization (object type Organization)
  • organizational breakdown (object types Building, Department, etc.)
    • ...
      • employee (object type User)
        • asset (object type Computer/laptop, Monitor)

At the root of the tree is the Organization object, which is further subdivided into smaller units according to the appropriate organizational breakdown. In the smallest organizational units (e.g. department, division, etc.) are located individual workers (User object) and under each worker is kept the asset that has been entrusted to the worker for use (e.g. computer, mobile phone,...).

Property inheritance

The arrangement of objects in the tree takes advantage of the inheritance of certain object properties. For example, a sales department will be represented by a Department object, which will be described by a Department property with the value "Sales department".

• Organization
  • Department="Sales department" (Department object)
    • ...
      • User="David Cooper" (User object)
        • asset

The Department property will be inherited to all child objects in the Sales department. This means that if we look at the properties of the David Cooper object, we will also find the Department property with the value "Business department". However, this property is defined in the parent object Department and is only inherited into the David Cooper object. Therefore, the value of the Department property that we see in the David Cooper object depends on which department David Cooper is located in the tree. This will make it easier for us to work in a situation when a worker moves to another department, because then we only need to move the corresponding object representing the worker to another place in the tree. The situation is the same when moving assets between workers, because the object that represents the asset inherits the name of the user (the User property) to whom the asset was assigned.

To set the property inherintace, go to Administration - Asset Management - Object templates. Select particular template and in the template pane on the right, choose the particular property. Use the Edit property command and check the Inherit property into child objects option.

Organizational breakdown

Let's start creating an organizational breakdown tree now.

First, on the Objects page, edit the object at the root of the tree to represent your organization/company.

1. The new database already contains the <Organization> object you created. Select this object in the tree.
2. On the Properties tab on the top right, double-click the Organization Name property with the mouse and enter the actual name of the organization and save the value with the ENTER key. This property is set to form the name of the object in the tree and therefore the organization name will change in the object tree as well.
3. Similarly, enter the address of the organization in the format Name;Street;Zip Code City as the value of the Address property and the organization code (abbreviation) in the Organization Code property. .

We will further divide the organization into smaller units according to the breakdown that is common for you. If your organization has one headquarters and several branches in different cities, the breakdown might look like this:

• Organization
  • New York headquarters
  • London branch
  • Paris branch

Here is the procedure for inserting the headquarters:

1. In the tree, right click on the organization object and select the command - New Object from the menu.
2. In the New Object - Select the sample object - Object Templates, select <Plant> in the Organizational Structure folder and confirm with OK.
3. The enterprise object type is inserted into the tree. Select it with the mouse.
4. On the Properties tab on the top right, select the enterprise property and edit its value to "New York Headquarters" and confirm with ENTER. The property again determines the name in the tree, so the name of the object in the tree will change automatically.

Similarly, insert objects for the London and Paris branches into the tree. Each branch will probably have further subdivisions into individual departments, etc. We will insert the department into the tree similarly to the branch, only instead of the Plant object we will use the Department object.

To subdivide the organization, you can use the objects that are in the Organizational Structure folder when you add the object to the tree, i.e.:

• Building
• Floor
• Room
• Workplace
• Division
• Department
• Department
• Network
• Subnet
• Network branch
• Storage
• Disposed assets
• A plant
• Section
• Centre

The following properties are available for describing objects:

• Building
• Division
• Office
• Room
• Department
• Department
• Floor
• Workplace
• Section
• Centre
• Location
• Section
• Unit
• Plant

Objects do not have to be described by only one property, but you can use more than one. For example, if the entire sales department is located on the second floor, you can describe it with a Department object with the properties Department="business" and Floor="2".

Organization staff

Organization employees are represented in the tree by the User object and are inserted into the tree in a similar way to organizational objects. Just select the <User> object in the object menu in the - New Object command. Each user is described by default by the properties Office (office number), User (employee name), Personal number, etc.

Asset

Assets (computers, printers, phones, etc.) are also represented by objects in the tree. They are generally handled in the same way as organizational objects or employees.

Each asset in an organization is usually the responsibility of a specific person, e.g. a computer is the responsibility of the user to whom the computer has been assigned. In this case, the computer and other objects should be inserted in the tree as child objects of the respective employee:

• Joseph Freeman (user)
  • iPhone x (mobile phone)
  • PC154 (computer set)

If an asset in the tree structure cannot be placed under a specific person (for example, a shared printer in the hallway), place it as a child object under an organizational structure component (for example, a department). Then, on the folder, specify the person responsible for the assets in this folder in the Responsible for assets property:

• IT Department (Department) - Property value "Responsible for assets" = "John Black"
  • HP LaserJet Pro (printer)
  • Joseph Freeman (user) - Value of property "Responsible for assets" = "Joseph Freeman"
    • iPhone x (mobile phone)
    • PC154 (computer set)

If you need more than one person to be responsible for the assets in a room, for example, divide the assets into different folders and set different people on these folders in the "Responsible for assets" property. For example:

• Server room (Room) - value of property "Responsible for property" = "John Black"
  • Servers, Joseph Freeman - value of property "Responsible for property" = "Joseph Freeman"
    • Dell PowerEdge 2950 (Computer/Server)
  • Network Elements, Peter Jenkins - value of property "Responsible for assets" = "Peter Jenkins"
    • HP 1810 (Switch)
  • PowerEdge 2420 (Rack)

Users can check their asset records at any time in the user menu - My Directed Assets. The command is only displayed to users who are registered in the object tree and have the User Name property filled in. In Administration - Users users do not need to be registered. If ALVAO Service Desk is not activated, but only ALVAO Asset Management, the My Trust Assets page is the default.

Computers, monitors and some printers can be detected by the system on the network and added to the records, see Hardware and software detection. Other objects such as copiers, phones, electronic diaries, etc. need to be entered into the register like any other object, i.e. with the command - New Object. Standard types of devices and objects can then be found in the object templates in the folders.

• IT inventory
• Other inventory
• Supplies

Read organizational, employee, and computer information from Active Directory

In addition to manually creating organizational structure objects and objects representing the organization's workers as described in the previous sections, you can automatically retrieve these objects from Microsoft Active Directory. The scope of the retrieved data can be user-defined.

The process of retrieving objects from Active Directory:

1. Select the object in the tree into which to load the organizational structure and select Object - Load from Active Directory from the menu. If you want to load the organizational structure into the root of the tree, do not select any object.
2. In the Retrieve Objects from Active Directory, specify the LDAP path to the folder with the organizational breakdown in Active Directory, check the Organizational breakdown box, User, Computer, and press the Read button.

   Example 1. LDAP paths

   Path to the CONTOSO folder of the CONTOSO organizational structure on the CONTOSO.COM domain

   LDAP://server/ou=contoso,dc=contoso,dc=en

   Path to the IT folder in the CONTOSO organizational structure on the CONTOSO.COM domain

   LDAP://server/ou=it,ou=contoso,dc=contoso,dc=en

3. The program creates new objects and adds them to the tree, which can take several minutes depending on the extent of the structure in AD.

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