Assets Nested Object Types?

[Tauhid Smith]

Good morning! 

I am trying to build out a sort of ITAM scheme within JSM Assets, and I had an idea for something I'd like to implement but it doesn't appear to be possible. Essentially I'd like to sort Vendors, then within that, the product type, then the product line, then the models and within the model a specific hardware configuration. Then, I would like to create a hardware object that links to that specific hardware configuration object, pulling in the collective object types the configuration is nested under, displaying them within the hardware asset object. 

I'm not sure if I'm being clear, but the configuration object might look a little like this:

Then the HW asset might look like this:

The problem with this is obviously that you lose all of the values within the "tree" of object types. In fact, the values of the Configuration Type object are gone themselves, although they can be displayed by clicking the configuration object, but you still don't have any record of the object types above "7680" in the example given, and even then the HW asset doesn't "know" it's a 7680 (much less Precision, Laptop, or Dell), it only knows the hardware configuration of the 7680.

The easy answer here is that what I'm looking to do is simply not supported in Assets, but I am hoping that I just haven't been able to figure out how to do it. Any ideas?

[Robert DaSilva]

Hi @Tauhid Smith , welcome to the Community!

I think Assets can support the use case you're describing, but it'll require a bit more configuration.

Generally, JSM Assets operates on an individual physical object model, where that object can have a number of properties associated with it. Assets does support "Linked Attributes" however, which can link two different objects together with a relationship link that you can configure.

I'd start with building your object tree to be similar to something like below

Vendor - Object Type (containing objects for Dell, Microsoft, etc)

- Product Type - Object Type (continuing objects for Laptop, Desktop, Mouse, etc)

- - Product Line - Object Type (containing objects for Precision, Surface, and other product lines you want to track)

- - - Model Number - Object Type (containing objects for individual products, such as the 7680 product)

For each of those Object Types, as you go further down, you'll want to add Related Attributes to the parent objects to link the "7680" object to the Precision product line, the Laptop product type, and the Dell vendor.

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With all that said, I would encourage you to consider a different method where each of those attributes and levels in the tree are simply collapsed down into singular attributes. You could simplify this significantly by going with a single "IT Assets" object type, and have an attribute for each of the options listed.

This would be an attribute for Vendor, where you populate the options. A second attribute for Product Line, Product Type, etc etc.

If there is a compelling reason to have the object tree set up, then perfect. Otherwise, there are likely ways to simplify.

Hope this helps!
Robert