Turning on IT asset management

Switching asset management on takes four clicks. The decision worth making first is what counts as an asset for you.

Switching asset management on takes four clicks. The decision worth making first is what counts as an asset for you, because that is what determines whether the register stays worth reading.

Turn it on

1. Open Admin Center.
2. Click the IT assets icon in the sidebar.
3. Go to Assets > Overview.
4. Select Turn on IT asset management.

An empty asset register appears and the asset fields become available on tickets.

What you get, and where it stops

Extra asset records are added in packs from the Subscription page in Admin Center. Look at the 500 included before you import, so the size of your estate is a decision rather than a surprise halfway through.

Decide what counts as an asset first

Every organisation starts by wanting to track everything and ends up with a register nobody trusts. A workable test: would you raise a ticket about this thing? Laptops yes, phones yes, monitors probably, cables no. If it never generates a support question, tracking it in a support tool adds work and produces no answers.

With 500 records included, that judgement has a practical edge as well: a register of the devices people contact you about fits comfortably, and one that includes every cable does not.

Then decide who keeps it current

A named person or a named process. Assets go stale faster than anything else in a service desk, because devices move without anybody raising a ticket. The two moments that matter are issue and return. If both produce a ticket, the register stays true. If either happens by someone handing over a laptop in a corridor, it does not.

See also

• What IT asset management in Zendesk does
• Setting up asset types, fields, locations and statuses
• Bulk importing asset data