Understanding Asset Fields and SmartLists

Nearly everything you do in asset management is based on information about your assets. To identify an asset, you must know its description, classification, location, serial number, purchase order number, or any of a myriad of bits of information available on an asset. The application contains asset fields for each of these bits of information and many more.

Nearly all of these asset fields are fully customizable. In addition, you can create SmartLists of valid entries for the descriptive fields of assets. For instance, you can create a SmartList for the Department field. You might only have three departments in your organization: Administration, Warehouse, and Machining. Why allow users to add other departments, or to add them at random? Field entries are a prominent part of reports. Allowing users to add their own department at random can create a report that has many variations of the same department:

• Machining

• machining

• MACHINING

• Mach

There is beauty in consistency. In addition to the aesthetic problem posed by the above entries, it would not be possible for you to perform accurate sorts or create valid groups with these types of entries. To avoid this situation, you should create SmartLists from which the user can select a valid entry when needed.