IT Asset Management: Bring Control to Your Help Desk

Your Help desk can be used for a variety of use-cases be it an Internal Help Desk, Customer Service Desk, or an IT Help Desk. When used as an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool, it becomes inevitable to have a provision for IT Asset Management. IT Assets form an important link while delivering Information Technology Services to customers and resolving their issues.

This post talks about a powerful feature – Asset Management and how to set it up in HappyFox Help Desk. So let’s first quickly understand assets and asset management capabilities in a help desk.

What are IT Assets? 

Assets comprise the underlying components that deliver products and services to the customer. Assets can be hardware assets like Laptops, Printers, Test devices for the Quality Assurance team or they can be intangible, for example, Licenses for Software Design tools, Accounting Software Licenses

How does an Asset link with a ticket and a contact in HappyFox Help Desk?

Let’s connect the three pieces of the story here. Asset, Contact, and Ticket. Every asset can be linked to a user or contact. If there is an issue with an Asset, the respective Contact raises a Ticket to the Help Desk. HappyFox lets you assign an asset to a contact so you can see what devices each user has when he submits a ticket. And vice versa – when there’s a problem with an asset, you know who to contact.

Why do we need IT Asset Management(ITAM) in a Help Desk?

Asset Management is now becoming an important feature for any IT Help Desk. It simplifies a lot of operational problems and keeps both customers and support teams happy. Here are some important benefits of having assets:

•  Get faster resolution of tickets – Adding an asset to a ticket can help save a lot of time and effort required to resolve a ticket. For example, take a scenario where a user submits a ticket saying his laptop is broken. The technician does some work to fix it and everybody is happy. This information is recorded in the ticket and can help speedy resolution if the same issue arises again.
• Reduce licensing and support costs – By keeping proper track of the asset lifecycle your team can eliminate or reallocate under-utilized resources and licenses. Thus easing out the decision making process.
• Associate assets with tickets and contacts – With the knowledge of tickets and contacts linked to an asset, the team gets a complete picture of the issue and the speed of IT Support improves drastically.
• Self-Service portal – With a self-service portal as a part of the help desk, customers can easily find solutions to common IT issues.

Having understood the crux of asset management in HappyFox, let us now understand how to work with assets in HappyFox, right from creating asset custom fields to using assets in tickets.

How to create Asset Custom fields?

Every asset requires some meta-information that identifies it uniquely and provides enough information about the asset. The Assets module in HappyFox has two standard fields namely: Name and Display ID. You can add more custom fields to the assets module based on your use-case. Those asset custom fields will then be visible on the ticket detail page in a separate asset section along with the other standard fields.

Here’s a video tutorial on how you can create asset custom fields easily in the Assets module:

How to import assets?

Asset inventory can also be imported into HappyFox Help Desk via the Assets Import option in the Assets module. HappyFox lets you import both the standard field values and custom field values on an asset via a CSV file. 

Here’s a video explaining asset import with examples:

How to use assets within tickets?

It’s super easy to link a single asset or multiple assets with tickets. In order to associate an asset, say for example MacBook Air 2017, you can search for the item via the name or display id or any other field values that you remember. You will then be able to locate it in the search result right and associate it to the ticket. 

You also have the option to enter the quantity of the device or asset needed. For example, you are the project manager and want 3 mobile devices for the Quality Assurance team, then, in that case, a quantity of 3 can be marked against the asset in the ticket detail page. 

Watch this video and get a complete idea on how you can use assets within tickets:

As shown in the video, you can filter out tickets that have assets linked to them and also create a queue for such tickets which will help IT technicians or anyone who works on these tickets to find them in a breeze. 

So as you can see, asset management in HappyFox Help Desk can help your IT teams improve support efficiency. Do you think this could be implemented in your support process as well? Give HappyFox Help Desk Software a spin. Get a one-on-one demo with our product expert now!

FAQ’s

1. What is IT Asset Management (ITAM) and why does it matter for a help-desk?
   IT Asset Management (ITAM) is the process of tracking, managing and retiring all hardware, software and cloud-based assets in an organisation. It matters for a help-desk because linking asset lifecycle data to incidents gives support teams context, speeds up resolution and drives cost control.
   
2. How does IT Asset Management integrate with a help-desk platform like HappyFox?
   In the help-desk context the IT asset management system shares asset inventory, purchase, location and assignment data with the support system so agents instantly see device history when tickets come in, enabling faster and smarter service.
   
3. What are the key capabilities of a strong IT Asset Management program?
   The essential capabilities include asset discovery and inventory, asset lifecycle (procure → deploy → retire), software licence tracking (SAM), financial and contractual oversight, and integration with ITSM processes like incident and change management.
   
4. What business benefits can organisations expect from implementing IT Asset Management?
   Organisations can expect reduced IT spend, improved asset utilisation, stronger compliance and audit posture, faster support resolution, and fewer shadow‐IT risks thanks to full visibility and lifecycle control.
   
5. When should a help-desk team prioritise implementing IT Asset Management?
   A help-desk team should prioritise ITAM when asset sprawl or orphaned devices grow, when incident resolution is hindered by lack of asset context, or when licence/compliance risk and cost-leakage are rising. At that point linking asset data to ticket workflows delivers real value.