Ownership Management

In most organizations, employees are provided with a desktop, laptop, and multiple other devices for which they are a primary user. Asset Vision provides a way to automate these relationships between the user and devices via Ownership Management. With this feature, you can choose to associate the last logged in user, or the user with the most recent usage to be the Owner of a given device, should Primary User information be unavailable. Once this association is established, Asset Vision is able to report on hardware and software assets in terms of the attributes associated with the user rather than the assets themselves.

Configure Ownership Management

By default, the Primary User of a device is defined by the user that uses the device more than other users. This information is automatically determined  by the agent at the time of usage. However, not all devices are capable of tracking usage, but still have a valid user. It's these cases where Ownership Management Automation helps.

By default, Ownership Automation is diabled. To configure it:

  1. Navigate to Setup >> App Adminstration >> Registry >> Ownership Management.
  2. In the Ownership Management Configuration window, click the Edit button (pencil icon).
Ownership Management Main

In the Overview tab, select from the following configuration options:

  1. Enable Automated Ownership
    • Enable owner automation - This option is required in order for Ownership Automation.
    • Update owner every time? - When checked, the owner is automatically associated every time Ownership Automation is run. When unchecked, it only sets owner association once immediately after initial configuration of Ownership Management.
  2. Alternatives if Primary User Does Not Exist
    By default, ownership of a device is always set to Primary User, which is determined by an agent algorithm. If for any reason the Primary User is undefined,  Ownership Automation attempts to assign alternate user options using the settings below. Note that if both alternate user options are selected, the last logged in user option is considered first.
    • If no primary user, set last logged in user as owner? - If there is no primary user associated with an asset, then Ownership Automation will set the last logged-on user as the owner.
    • If no primary user, set owner to user with most recent usage? - If there is no primary user associated with an asset, then Ownership Automation will set the user who used the device most recently.
    • How many days of recent usage should be considered? - Configuration to define how many days of usage to be included when considering the most recent user. Default is 90 days.
  3. Identify Eligible Users
    • Which data view should be used to identify eligible owners? - Defines the data view that contains users to be considered by Ownership Automation. If defined, all users in the data view will be considered eligible. If none is selected, all discovered users in Asset Vision will be eligible for asset ownership.
    • Who is eligible to own computers? - This criteria field can be used to include or exclude users from being considered for asset ownership.
      A common case would be to define all users with an email suffix that matches the organization's email suffix. This would automatically exclude any non-company user who may have been discovered.
      Another common case would be to exclude any specific users from being eligible for ownership, as in any IT Admin accounts, which frequently log in to many different computers, but should not be considered a primary user.
  4. Once the settings have been configured, click Save or Apply.

Ownership Automation will now be configured. You should see owners for all assets based on the parameters specified in reports throughout Asset Vision.