Asset Planning

There are a number of ways you can use assets. Some organizations will want to track assets without serial numbers, others will want to track serialized assets, and others will use external applications to validate serial numbers.

The steps you use to manage assets vary depending on your organization’s needs. Consider these general use cases before you configure your asset management system.

• You want to track assets that do not use serial numbers—In this instance, you need to create asset products, but you do not need to create individual asset records since they can be created when customers or agents register an asset with a contact or organization. When creating products in the product catalog for non-serialized asset products, you will not select the Serialized check box. See Add or Edit a Sales Product to Use with Assets.
• You want to track assets with unique serial numbers and want to validate the serial numbers using B2C Service—In this instance, you need to create asset products, and then add an asset record for every unique serial number. After the asset records are created, customers can register their product on the customer portal by entering their product’s serial number. The system then associates the contact or organization with the asset record that has the serial number the customer entered.

When creating asset records in advance of product registration, the records should have a serial number, a status of Unregistered, and not be associated with a contact or organization.

• You want to track assets with unique serial numbers and you have an external serial number validation system—In this instance, you need to create asset products (see Add an Asset Record), but you do not need to create asset records. However, you need to use a customized customer portal widget that accesses your validation system. When a customer enters a serial number, the custom widget sends the information to the external system to validate. If the serial number is validated, the custom widget then creates an asset record, populates it with the correct information, and creates the association between the contact or organization record. Contact your Oracle account manager for information about custom widgets.
• You want to track assets with unique serial numbers but do not need to validate the serial numbers—In this instance, you need to create asset products, but not individual asset records. Using a custom widget, customers enter serial numbers for their products on the customer portal, but the serial numbers aren't verified. The custom widget then creates asset records and populates them with the serial numbers your customers provide along with other pertinent information.

Regardless of how you manage assets, standard reports make it easy to view information related to them. These reports are available in the Reports explorer’s Public Reports/Service/Assets folder. You can also create custom reports if the standard reports do not meet your needs.