Serial numbers?

[Magellan]

Hiya Folks!

I'm considering giving PK a try, it certainly looks great and appears at first glance to have just about everything* anyone could possibly need to run a parts inventory.

* What I don't see...and wonder if it's possible to implement, is serial numbers. 

We carry quite a substantial number of hard drives & SSD's at our office and also at our datacenter. These all have different serial numbers, which allows us to track OEM warranty status. Now I suppose we could re-use the "internal part number" field (first guess at it) but being able to actually create serial number field would be (probably) a way better solution.

Can this be done? 

Any comments, thoughts, hints, tips, remarks (or even insults) will all be most appreciatively read and endlessly savored.

Warm regards & TIA,

-M

[Emery Premeaux]

Hmm.. There's one or two fields typically unused by most people. Not sure how it'd work out for you.

To be honest, PK is very awesome and functional, bit can't fit every situation.

For PC hardware of all types, check out GLPI.
We use both products at our company. I use PK for consumable inventory (not counting printer carts and office inventory).

IT dept uses GLPI.

[Emery Premeaux]

BTW custom fields is a likely feature in next versions of PK.
Several feature requests in the tracker already call for it.

[Emery Premeaux]

http://www.glpi-project.org/?lang=en

[Magellan]

Thanks for these ideas. Much appreciated!

I think we'll hang in there for the next PK version with serial number field, because at this stage, GLPI is a bit of overkill...and although (in general) I love overkill, this might be the "Bridge Too Far" in terms of our rather modest needs.

In the meantime, PK is now installed for evaluation purposes - to become familiar with it - so that once the next release arrives it can be rapidly deployed into production.

Great package...just great. Loving everything so far.

Warm regards,

-M

On Monday, August 17, 2015 at 3:15:43 AM UTC+2, Emery Premeaux wrote:

http://www.glpi-project.org/?lang=en

[Felicitus]

> I think we'll hang in there for the next PK version with serial number
> field, because at this stage, GLPI is a bit of overkill...and although (in
> general) I love overkill, this might be the "Bridge Too Far" in terms of
> our rather modest needs.

I'm actually thinking about implementing such a feature to also allow
PartKeepr users to do asset management.

Being designed for electronic components, serial numbers and individual
items weren't required (not sure what the correct term for that would
be). However, the need for inventory tracking raised for me as well. Not
specifically for electronic components, but for things I might lend to
other people.

A possible workaround would be to create one part with an individual
serial number. The field "internal part number" could be used for that.
That field can also be searched by the main search. Thanks to the
"duplicate part" function, subsequent items could be created quickly.

As I'm not very familiar with the process/requirements of asset
management: Can you describe a typical workflow or give me more details
what could help you?

cheers
Felicitus
PartKeepr Lead Developer

[Magellan]

Sorry to be so late on this. It's been a mad month and all kinds of stuff had to be sidelined to make way for priorities.

ANYWAY....to answer the question you posed;

I'll use hard disks as the example here, although of course this applies to any item carrying a UID, a serial number in other words

Our existing "workflow" consists of some or all of the following:

1.1. Part is received as new purchase, entered into inventory along with supplier, price (for reference, not LIFO/FIFO purposes) and...of course...serial number. The location is HQ_Stock

1.2. That part is then registered with Mfr for warranty purposes, warranty expiration is also noted in $some_field within inventory (right now, in a "misc notes" field)

1.3. If the disk needs to be installed within a datacenter box, its location is changed to "DC_Installed"

     - a note on the above: we're transitioning over to a rack management system, and in THAT package, the relevant server will contain disks with serial numbers

---

The disk breaks - reasons unimportant, so now we move to RMA

2.1 RMA documentation is completed with Mfr, and disk packed up and returned to mfr. It's inventory location is now changed to "RMA in process" which means effectively that it's "gone" (qty=0 for that serial number) but we need to know that it's in an RMA pipeline process.

2.2 Replacement arrives, and entered into inventory as per 1.1 above, but with the note "RMA replacement". The balance of warranty is now the warranty expiration as per 2.2 above.

2.3 The RMA replacement is now "HQ_Stock"

2.4 The original (broken) "RMA-In-Process" location is now changed to "RMA-replaced", the new serial number OF the replacement item is noted in a notes field (for long term reference purposes if ever needed). 

---

The moment an RMA unit is sent to mfr it ceases to exist as a stocked item...so then....

  - "RMA-In-Process"  AND "RMA replaced" are non stock ~ as mentioned, and will be purged periodically. We think 3 years is a reasonable period to retain such records.

So, IF we are going to use "internal part number" as opposed to a dedicated field for serial number, that's perfectly fine. We don't assign internal part numbers anyway, so that field would remain unused, and in that sense is ideal for purpose. It affects nothing in terms of functionality.

This is how we intend to use PK...when I liberate some time to install it and start some testing, that is :-) I hope this overview is of some help.

Thanks so much for your feedback.

Warm regards,

-M

[Felicitus]

May I copy and paste your mail to an issue on GitHub?

cheers
Felicitus

[Magellan]

Of course, please feel free to do so!

-M