The moment you capture all of that data, it will begin to change. Louis, your question about tracking your systems is only part of your issue. Make sure that the information in SW matches records and matches any information you want to maintain in AD.Īre you having to do this all for your local office or the whole company? This could be a substantial undertaking and you might want to get some assistance. Fill out all the information that you want to have in there. Scan a couple of computers and your servers. A great way to do this is start with your own stuff. You have to be able to verify things first. After hours (nights/weekend) get a building master key and go room to room documenting anything IT-related (keyboards/mice, monitors, desktops, laptops, docks, servers, whatever). The best advice I can give is combine SW and a 100% physical inventory. If it is still being used in some way, shape or form you can bet that once the owner can't log into it you will get a call about it. I will tell you that one way to find a machine on your domain is disable it in AD. Two, as Bryce said don't assume anything. I'm sure you could leverage SharePoint or even Excel to do the same thing. I'm pretty sure there are inventory database templates on. If your Office license includes Access, you may want to go with that. You'll need a way to track the check-in and check-out activity. NOTHING leaves storage without proper paperwork. For mobile devices (laptops, phones, tablets, etc), have users sign for receipt and sign off when things are returned. NOTHING that needs to be tracked gets deployed until it's been properly received into the system and assigned an asset tag (where applicable). Get draconian about equipment check-in processes. Accounting may change their tune with they find out how much those cost. Not every device has a readily-accessible serial number, so you may find the need for asset tags. Individual mice & keyboards? Maybe, hopefully not. Generally speaking, if it costs more than a set amount, Accounting will want to know about it. Work with leadership to determine what assets they want tracked. This keeps track of the serial numbers and dates that you got rid of old kit. You can setup a "Decommissioned" group and move old equipment into it. Spiceworks is actually a great tool for this. You'll need a database of some sort to track hardware and software. Do you write them off as decommissioned? Do you keep looking? Something else? When that's done, present the list of unverified serial numbers to leadership and ask how they wish to proceed. Compare found equipment against your list. Check every office, closet, and storage room you can find for equipment crammed into nooks and crannies. Check Lansweeper for duplicate serial numbers vs machine names (if possible) to see if you can identify any stale records machine names do occasionally change. Compare purchase records against your Lansweeper reports and match up serial numbers. Repeat hands-on verification for these units.Īt this point you'll be left with a list of units that you haven't been able to put your hands on. Once you've verified all the stuff you can put your hands on, it's time to notify mobile users that you need to see their machine for 10 minutes as soon as possible. If the hands-on verification contradicts info in Lansweeper, update the Lansweeper data as required. If the units aren't already labeled with the machine name, consider doing so. Verify make, model, serial number, CPU, installed RAM, and hard drive size. Compare this to your Lansweeper reports and go walkabout. Query AD for a list of active machines - that is, a list of machines that have checked in during the past 30 days. Get with Accounting and ask for purchase records going back as far as they have. but neither should you assume it's right. Your statement that the list of machine names in AD "can't possibly be correct" could lead to trouble.
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