A lot of companies think that simply having their devices in Intune is enough to stay in full control of their assets.
Unfortunately, there are some key elements missing for it to be a proper IT Asset Management solution - like;
- Audits and maintenances: Keep the full audit and maintenance history of an asset in one place, and schedule new asset audits.
- Detailed change- and checkout log: See the complete history of an asset, and keep track of it's condition through the asset lifetime.
- Less busywork and interruptions: Let all stakeholders be able to check who has what, without having to email you or purchase a new Intune license.
- Having everything in one place: Manage all your accessories like keyboards and consumables like printer ink in the same place as your assets.
Exporting a bunch of spreadsheets and copy/pasting data into a new system is an incredibly time consuming task, and very easy to keep postponing.
Luckily, there is a simpler way!
What if I told you that all the assets in the screenshot below were automatically imported from Intune, and that they were also checked out to their current employee automatically?
That would give you a great head start in finally implementing ITAM in your company, wouldn't it?
In this article, we will show you how you can get up and running with IT Asset Management in as little as 20 minutes, using a software like BlueTally.
Active Directory
Let’s start with integrating Active Directory with the app, so all our employees will be added automatically.
We start off by going into our account settings, selecting SCIM 2.0, and following the setup guide for configuring Azure AD sync in 10 steps.
And voilà, a few minutes later, all our 352 employees from Active Directory were added to the app, and we can now checkout assets to them.
If we click on one of them, we can see that their email address, name, job title, and the department they belong to has all been automatically added to the app.
Any changes to the employees made in Active Directory will be automatically updated in the app, so you never have to worry about maintaining multiple data sources.
Intune
Now that we have all our employees in the app, we can start the second step, which is importing all our devices from Intune.
We go into our account settings, select Microsoft Intune, and follow the the setup guide for configuring Intune sync in 18 steps. We also enable the automatic checkout option, so that all assets gets checked out to their assigned user in Intune.
And voilà, a few minutes later, all our 439 devices from Intune were added to the app as assets. The assets were even automatically checked out to their current employee, meaning we just saved hours of grueling busywork.
Teams
Finally, we'll set up the Teams integration, so that we can get notifications directly in Teams when items are checked in/out, warranties or licenses are expiring, audits are due, or assets are due for check-in.
We go to our account settings, select Microsoft Teams, and follow the setup guide to setup Teams notifications in 4 steps. We could also set this up for Slack.
From now on, we'll receive all notifications directly into our Teams channel, like this:
In less than 30 minutes, we now have all our employees and assets in the app, and we're ready to continue our IT Asset Management journey with a flying start.
BlueTally is a simple to use ITAM solution that lets you manage both your physical and digital assets with ease. Learn more about BlueTally and get started for free today!
