Designing Tree Structure

Now that we have created an empty database, we can proceed with building up the Objects tree. The tree is displayed on the left-hand side of the Main Window.

The tree should have the following basic structure:

• organization (object Organization)
  • organizational structure (objects Organizational part, Building etc.)
    • ...
      • employee (object User)
        • assets (objects Assembly, Copier, Telephone etc.)

The root tree includes the object Organization which is further divided into smaller entities and groups. The smallest organizational units (e.g. department, section etc.) includes the individual employees (object User) and each employee disposes of assets he/she has been assigned (e.g. computers, mobile phones etc.).

Inheritance

The objects in the tree structure use the inheritance of some properties. For example, the Sales Department will be represented by the object Department which is described with the property Department with the value "Sales Department".

• Organization
  • Department="Sales Department" (object Department)
    • ...
      • User="John Smith" (object User)
        • assets

The Department property will be inherited by all child objects in the Sales Department. For example, if we have a look the properties of the object John Smith, we will see that one of the properties of this object is the property Department with the value "Sales Department". However, this property is defined in the parent object Department and is only inherited by the object John Smith. The property value of the object Department that we see under John Smith thus depends on the department, in which John Smith is placed in the tree. This is very convenient in situations when an employee starts working in another department: in this situation, all you have to do is to move the employee object to a different place in the tree. The same goes for moving assets among employees, because the object representing assets inherits the user name (property User) of the user who has been assigned the assets.

Organizational Structure

This section describes the process to create an organizational structure tree. If you cannot see object templates or the recycle bin in the tree on the left-hand side of the Main Window, the option to show hidden objects is disabled. You can display these objects in the View – Hidden objects menu.

First of all, we will go to the tree root to edit the object which will represent our organization/company.

1. The object <Organization> should already be created in the new database. Select this object in the tree.
2. On the Properties tab in the upper-right corner, double-click on the property Organization name, enter the real name of your organization and press ENTER to save the value. This property constitutes the object name in the tree; thus, the organization name will also change in the Objects tree.
3. Provide the organization address as <Name;Street;ZIP/Postal code City> as the property value Address and the organization code (abbreviation) in the property Organization code.

The organization will be further divided into smaller units based on your company's usual structure. If your organization uses one main office and several subsidiaries in different cities, the structure may look as follows:

• Organization
  • Main office London
  • Subsidiary Manchester
  • Subsidiary Liverpool

Follow the instructions below to create your main office:

1. Right-click in the tree on the organization object and select - New object from the context menu.
2. In the New object – select a master object – Object templates go to the Organizational structure folder, select <Facility> and click OK.
3. The object kind Facility will be saved in the tree. Click on the Facility to select it.
4. On the Properties in the upper-right corner, select the property Facility and edit its value to "Main office London" and press ENTER to confirm. Again, the property specifies the name in the tree, so the object name in the tree changes automatically.

Use the same process to create the Manchester and Liverpool subsidiaries. Each of these subsidiaries will probably be divided into individual departments etc. You can create a department in the tree in a similar way as with the subsidiary, but this time, select the object Department instead of Facility.

You can use other objects to further divide the organization. These objects are found in the folder Organizational structure and they are:

• Building
• Floor
• Room
• Site
• Division
• Section
• Department
• Network
• Subnetwork
• Network branch
• Warehouse
• Disposed assets
• Facility
• Division
• Center

The following properties are available to describe the objects:

• Building
• Division
• Office
• Room
• Section
• Department
• Floor
• Site
• Section
• Center
• Location
• Division
• Unit
• Facility

You can use multiple properties to describe a single object. For example, if the entire Sales Department sits on the second floor, you can use the object Department with the properties Department="Sales" and Floor="2" to describe it.

Organization Employees

The organization employees are represented by the objects User in the tree and you can insert them in a way similar to that used to insert organizational structure objects. This time, select <User> in the - New object menu. Each user is by default described with the properties Office (office number), User (employee name), Personal number etc.

Assets

Items in the asset management, such as computers, printers, phones etc., are also represented by objects in the tree. You can work with them generally the same way as with organizational structure objects or as with employees.

Each asset is usually under the responsibility of a concrete person in the organization; for example, the person responsible for a computer is the employee to whom the computer has been assigned. In that case, the computer and other objects should be inserted in the tree under (or, more precisely, "into") the respective employee:

• John Smith (user)
  • Nokia 6610 (mobile phone)
  • PC154 (computer assembly)

The system can detect computers, monitors and some printers in the network and add them to the Asset Registry, see Hardware and Software Detection. Other objects, such as copiers, phones, electronic memo pads etc., must be entered manually just like any other object, i.e. with the - New object command. You can find standard device and object types in the object templates in the following folders:

• IT Assets
• Other Assets
• Consumables

Load Organizational Structure, Employees and Computers from Active Directory

In addition to creating organizational structure objects and employee objects manually as described in the sections above, you can also load these objects automatically from the Microsoft Active Directory. You can customize the extent of data that will be loaded.

Loading objects from Active Directory:

1. Select an object in the tree where you wish to load the organizational structure and select Object – Load from Active Directory in the menu. Do not select any object, if you wish to load the organizational structure into the tree root.
2. In the Load objects from Active Directory window, enter the LDAP path to the Active Directory folder containing the organizational structure, check the Organizational structure, User, and Computer checkfields and click on Load.

   Example 1. LDAP paths

   Path to the ALVAO organizational structure folder on the ALVAO.CZ domain

   LDAP://server/ou=alvao,dc=alvao,dc=cz

   Path to the IT folder in ALVAO organizational structure on the ALVAO.CZ domain

   LDAP://server/ou=it,ou=alvao,dc=alvao,dc=cz

3. The application creates new objects and adds them to the tree. This can take several minutes, depending on the structure depth in AD.

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