IT assets and customer data
Additional IT asset management features are available for service providers that manage multiple customers.
You can associate customers with assets so that agents can find agreements and response plans for tickets, work orders, or sales orders created for assets. By associating customers with assets, you can provide the appropriate response to that customer and their assets and ensure timely and accurate billing for services that you provide. You also associate customers with assets so that access to assets is restricted to individuals who are authorized to work with information related to that customer.
Primary customers
You can associate more than one customer with an asset, but one customer must be the primary customer.
When a ticket or work order for the asset is created, information about the primary customer is copied to the ticket or work order. The combination of location, asset, and customer for these objects is used to determine the best matches when a service desk agent or workflow process searches for service level agreements, price schedules, and response plans.
The primary customer of an asset determines the classifications, and attributes of classifications, that an asset can use. All assets can use global classifications and global attributes that apply to the asset. If you want to use customer-specific classifications or customer-specific attributes, the primary customer of the asset (or parent of the primary customer) must match the customer on the classification or attribute.
By default, the first customer that you associate with an asset is the primary customer. If you select multiple customers to associate with an asset, and there is no primary customer for the asset, the first customer alphabetically from the selection becomes the primary customer for that asset. You can change the primary customer for the asset at any time.
When you associate a customer or primary customer with an asset, child assets do not inherit the association.
More information
For more information about working with the Assets application, see the Assets application help in the Modules and applications section of the information center.