1. Using Maintenance
  2. How You Manage an Asset Logical Hierarchy

How You Manage an Asset Logical Hierarchy

Logical hierarchies help you group assets that operate in the same or even across different inventory organizations. You can use your hierarchies to model a plant, production line, vehicle fleet, customer, or location. When created, you can easily search for, interact with, and manage your related assets.

Logical Hierarchy Name

To start, create a new logical hierarchy by name using the Create Logical Hierarchy page. The name will be the top-level node of the logical hierarchy under which assets and their levels will be defined using the Hierarchy Navigator page. You can disable a logical hierarchy name, then you can't edit it any longer.

Hierarchy Definition

Using the Hierarchy Navigator page, you can search and associate assets at different levels in the hierarchy.

You can only associate to a hierarchy if:

  • They're not already associated to the same logical hierarchy name.

  • They're not at a child position in an existing asset physical hierarchy. Only the topmost parent of a physical hierarchy can be associated to a logical hierarchy position.

  • They're in a physical hierarchy of assets, but they're the topmost asset parent.

Logical hierarchies can contain a mix of enterprise and customer assets, depending on your user role and privilege.

You can move and rearrange logical assets within the hierarchy by updating their parent and child positions using the action buttons. If you associate an asset that's the topmost parent of a physical hierarchy, you can view the children in the Hierarchy Navigator as well. However, you can't edit these physical hierarchy relationships.

When an asset is associated to the hierarchy, you can click on the asset number hyperlink to navigate to the Edit Asset page. You can view and edit the asset details based on your user role and privileges.

You can also search for any asset in the hierarchy by its attributes, both logical and physical, using multiple search criteria. Search matches are identified to the user using a count of matching results, as well as displaying a push pin icon at the matching hierarchy level.

For each asset level in a hierarchy, there may be icons displayed to indicate if an asset has related maintenance work orders or a maintenance program. Click the icon to navigate to these respective objects in the context of the asset.

Use the new Create Order button on the navigator header to create a work order for the selected asset. Select an asset row in the hierarchy and click the button. This opens a Create Maintenance Work Order dialog box, where you can enter the details for the work order. The asset field is filled by default with the value of the selected asset row. After you enter other details for the work order in the dialog box, you have two options:

  • Save and Close: Use this button on the Create Maintenance Work Order dialog box to return to the Hierarchy Navigator page. When you refresh this page, you'll see a new Review Work Order icon in the work order column for the context asset. Click the icon to go to the Manage Work Orders page that displays a list of orders in Unreleased and Released statuses

  • Save and Edit: Use this button to go to the Edit Work Order page for the newly created work order. You can update your work order as you like, and even release it. Click the Save and Close button or the Cancel button to return to the Hierarchy Navigator page.

Managing Hierarchies Using Rest API

You can also create logical hierarchy names using the new Asset Logical Hierarchies REST API. When created, assets can be associated or removed from a hierarchy using a new Asset Logical Hierarchy Relationships REST API. This is helpful in creating logical hierarchies for large numbers of assets at different levels.

You can create logical hierarchy relationships by passing object and subject identifiers or by passing object and subject asset numbers. You can create relationships for an asset directly under the hierarchy name node and then create asset to asset relationships as needed. Additional documentation is found in the REST API documentation