Product spotlight: Using Assets in Jira Service Management

[Emily Dang]

Hi Community,

Welcome back to the third Product Spotlight for JSM June where we’ll be focusing on asset and configuration management! This Community post shines a spotlight on two of our Jira Service Management Product Managers and their tidbits of wisdom for using Assets.

Share your best Assets advice

We want to hear from you too! Leave a comment (or share a Loom) with your top advice for using Assets in Jira Service Management. All submissions will earn the JSM June Assets badge!

Let’s meet the team

• Name: @Dorothea Linneweber 
• Role: Senior Product Manager, Jira Service Management (Cloud)
• Where you’re from: German expat based in Sydney
• One song or word to describe your team: Better Together - Jack Johnson
• Favorite superhero: Rocket Raccoon
• Advice: When configuring Assets in Jira Service Management, make sure you consider data storage, maintain high data quality, and broaden your perspective on what you consider an asset.

• Name: @Jehan Gonsalkorale 
• Role: Senior Product Manager, Jira Service Management (Cloud)
• Where you’re from: Sydney
• One song or word to describe your team: Jira Nerds
• Favorite superhero:
• Assets tip: Check out the video to learn how assets can be utilized for automation and as lookup tables.

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  Don't forget:

  • You can keep track of all JSM June activities and challenges here. ☀️ Commenting on three or more JSM June challenges will earn you the mega JSM June Community badge.

  • New to Jira Service Management? Learn more here.

  • Have a question about Jira Service Management? Drop your questions in our Ask Me Anything (AMA) post. 

[Andy Gladstone]

My advice is simple and powerful. We realized the importance of utilizing Assets when our workforce went from fully on-premises to completely hybrid. With users taking PC's, Laptops, Phones, Monitors and peripheral equipment home it became very difficult for IT to manage who had what and where. In the past, they would provide service at the user's desk and collect asset tag info to update their ticket on the backend at the end of the day. Now that most of the HW and SW support is taking place via remote tools, keeping track of the asset history and WHO has WHAT and WHERE has been a major shift for the IT staff.

Maintaining an accurate asset inventory has helped to increase first call resolution and SLA metrics.

[Susan Waldrip]

HAAA! Yeah, a little amusing now but it was a nightmare at the time...

[Stephen_Lugton]

We use assets not just for things like laptops and monitors, but also for things like software & licenses, risk tracking, ITSM controls, etc.

One tip I have is use csv exports if you want to make a change to an existing attribute, you can then delete everything make the change and reimport it.

A second one is that if you want to control who can edit a field you can create a schema for that field and set permissions for view and edit.

[Tyler Krzanowski]

We track all of our hardware (laptops, monitors, docking stations, etc) and IT houses and manages all of Assets but sometimes there are departments asking to view data.  Since we do not want to give access to JSM for non-agents, we gave the departments access to the Object Viewers role.

We exported our data to a confluence page and the members of the Object Viewers role can navigate to that site and view all the pertinent information they need.

This has saved us lots of time and money!  We no longer have to search for the requested data and did not have to pay for a license just to have users view data.

[Kevin Thibeault]

Is this possible without Confluence? 

[Tyler Krzanowski]

Don't quote me, but I do not think so.  

We have a table inserted into a Confluence page and the table has AQL syntax that pulls data from Assets 

[Summer Hogan]

Not sure how to answer since my org does not use JSM, but love learning from the rest of you who commented. 

[Jean-Marc Du]

Thanks for the spotlight.

[Brant Schroeder]

We have been using Proforma to improve the information we get and simplify our service desk through conditional logic for sometime.  We have been adding assets and integrations to automate work in other systems so individuals who were doing things manually can just approve a request and JSM automations fire off web services to perform actions in other systems that used to be done manually.

[Jake Good]

Our Service Desk Supports a large number of external customers with their own facilities spread out all across the globe. Each of them have their own unique attributes and quirks. Being able to have them all in databases that we can infinitely update and modify has been nothing short of amazing. Also then being able to bring that information directly into JSM when incidents and requests have been submitted is pivotal to keeping us agile. Now with the ability to show this data in confluence as well so that more than our Agents can use it has also been great!

My best asset advice is that its not just about keeping track of laptops and mice but it can be used to keep track of anything in your organization that you want to be able to bring into your JSM tickets quick and easily. Don't limit yourself to specific "normal" use cases.

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

Not using JSM to track our assets yet. 

We have looked at what assets we tracked prior to Covid, and why.  That resulted in an adjustment to just tracking a subset of assets, and some moved to consumables. 

[Rick Westbrock]

We not only track hardware devices in Assets but we also built out a delegated approver mechanism which allows an approver who will be out of the office to nominate a delegate to approve on their behalf. The delegate is stored in the Person object of the approver but we also have a Planned Delegation object type which allows users to schedule a delegation ahead of time with a start and end date.

Nice video @Jehan Gonsalkorale, I think I have heard about "a database of anything and everything" somewhere before. ;)

I thought I knew a lot about using Assets for lookup tables but hadn't thought about having onboarding tickets display suggested applications to install  based on job title so I am going to see if our IT Service Desk team might get value from that.

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Hey Rick! Good to hear from you! 

I won't lie, you and Kevin certainly gave me plenty of inspiration and set the bar high! 

Glad you liked it, I'm now keen to see what you use assets for next! Let me know :) 

J

[Ren Tessier]

In regards the using Assets in Jira Service Management, It's really nice having the Asset Management system so close by, a tab away to look up asset information.

[Valerie Knapp]

We use Assets in many different ways but a cool use case we were able to implement was to track different policies and who were the responsible people, using also Assets custom fields on the Jira side.

[vikram]

Hi 

We just started to implement through JSM for our Module. 

But other Module teams are alreadying using assest management through JSM.

Vikram P

[Sam Nadarajan]

Take advantage of all the integrations throughout the Atlassian ecosystem that Assets has to offer. It does wicked cool stuff as an easy to use data-modeling tool, but using custom Assets fields, and using assets components in Automation rules really brings it all together. I am happy that Atlassian is focusing more on developing and maturing this module in the near future!

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Always good to hear from you, Sam! 

[Vronik]

Assets are very important for the company and having them located, especially when you work with a 100% remote team, becomes even more important.

But without a doubt, it is vital to have them updated because having an inventory of outdated assets is exactly the same as not having them.