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Create and manage partitions

Note

This article is new, to support the preview release of the new Asset Management and its new UI.

Asset management in Hornbill provides the ability to facilitate multi-org asset management: centrally managed assets in one system but with the capability to create multiple, independent asset databases, each with access and visibility controls. By default, there are no partitions in your asset management implementation; once you add one or more partitions, your implementation becomes more flexible.

If your instance does not have partitions, then anyone with the Asset Management Admin role or the Asset Management User role has access to all the asset records.

Admins can create one or more partitions in Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Partitions.

Before you begin

When accessing the Asset Management capabilities of Hornbill Service Manager as an admin, first make sure your user account has the correct role associated, and make sure your instance is enabled for partitions.

To do this You need this role assigned You need to enable this setting:
Add partitions to an instance Asset Management Admin asset.partitioning.enable

Important

Make sure you understand the implications of partitioning assets before you create partitions in your Hornbill instance.

Understanding partitions in Hornbill Asset Management

With increased flexibility comes increased complexity. Here are a few important facts about partitioning assets in Hornbill:

  • Each asset record can be allocated to one, and only one, partition.

  • Just as with asset records, asset types and asset categories can be allocated to one, and only one, partition. (But asset types and asset categories can exist with the same names in multiple partitions.)

  • If you don’t want the one-and-only-one restriction mentioned above, you can allocate asset records to Un-partitioned Assets. When asset records are in Un-partitioned Assets, it is as if there were no partitions enabled. (The Un-partitioned Assets allocation is only visible once you have enabled partitions on your instance.)

  • Each partition has visibility controls to establish who has access to the assets as either viewers or asset managers.

  • Asset managers and viewers can see assets from only one partition at a time.

  • You restrict access to partitioned records by user, group, or role.

Deciding whether to create partitions

Only partition your assets if you have a strong reason to do so.

There are various places in Hornbill where assets can be viewed and acted upon by users who do not have the Asset Management Admin role or the Asset Management User role. For example, when agents log a request, they may need to select an asset as part of that process in the Intelligent Capture.

In the case of a managed service provider (MSP), that Intelligent Capture is designed for a specific set of users. Each service is defined separately for each customer. The service defines an Intelligent Capture, and the Intelligent Capture — by prompting the user for an asset — defines which asset partition they can search and select from. The form filters further based on ownership, shared visibility, and so on.

As an assets admin, you control Asset Management users’ access to partitioned asset records by role, group, or user — but not to individual integration points such as the search form in an Intelligent Capture.

If you choose to enable partitioning, you must revisit all your Intelligent Captures that use the Asset form and change this to the Partitioned Assets form.

In terms of access to partitions for agents, you only need to set up access to partitions to those agents who need to view and manage the full asset record. If agents do not have permission to view an asset, they can still see the asset in related asset lists (e.g. in a request). But if they try to view the record, they will get an access error.

Creating partitions

You create and manage partitions in Configuration > Service Manager. Asset Management users can then work with assets within those partitions in Service Management > Assets.

On a per-user basis, the partition selected by any user is saved. When that user goes back into Asset Management, they view that same partition again. This remembering of the users’ selections can be deactivated using the application setting asset.partition.current.

To create a partition:

  1. Navigate to Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Partitions.

    Tip

    If you don’t see Manage Partitions under Assets, you need to enable the application setting asset.partitioning.enable.

  2. In the partitions list, click + New Partition.
  3. Give the partition an ID, or click Auto ID.
  4. Give the partition a name.
  5. (Optional) Enter information in the Summary field.
  6. Navigate to Service Management > Assets.
  7. In the Partitions dropdown above Dashboard and All Assets, click the down arrow to view your new partition in the list.
  8. Click your new partition’s name to go to its dashboard.

Now you can add asset categories to your new partition, or move un-partitioned assets into it.

Managing access to partitions

When working with a partition in Manage Partitions, you can configure permissions to control who has access and what they can do with that access.

Important

If you don’t define any access permissions, anyone who has access to view assets will see that partition.

The permissions you grant are overridden by the users’ asset role permissions. For example, if the users’ role does not allow them to delete assets, then they cannot delete assets even if you allow deleting.

To manage access to a partition:

  1. Navigate to Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Partitions.

  2. In the partitions list, click the name of the partition you want to manage.

  3. In the Partition Access section, click Add New.

  4. Use the first dropdown to grant access by role, group, or user.

  5. Use the second dropdown to add further filtering to the access granted.

  6. Use the third dropdown to specify whether the access allows viewing only; viewing, creating, and updating; viewing, creating, and deleting; or all of those actions.

  7. Save your changes (click the icon next to the third dropdown).

    Your changes take effect for your chosen users when they refresh their browser or log out and back in.

Organizing assets in partitions

Once you have enabled partitions on your instance and created partitions, it’s time to organize the assets they’ll contain. You can create new categories and types in the partition, move un-partitioned assets into the partitions, or move assets from one partition to another partition.

To add a new asset category into a partition:

  1. In Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Types, from the Partitions dropdown, select the partition you want to work with.
  2. In the Asset Categories row, click Add new category (the plus sign).
  3. Give the category a name.
  4. (Optional) Enter a description.
  5. Click Create.

You can now add new asset types in the category you have created.

You can create asset categories and asset types with the same name in different partitions. You cannot, however, move a type to a different partition if there is already a type of the same name there. If you move a category to a different partition that already has a category of the same name, the two categories are merged into one.

To move an asset category into a partition:

  1. In Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Types, click the category name.
  2. Under the list of available asset list columns, click Move to Partition.
  3. In the Migrate Category dialog, from the dropdown, select the partition you want to move the category to.
  4. Click Migrate.

To move an asset type into a partition:

  1. In Configuration > Service Manager > Assets > Manage Types, click the type name.
  2. In the General tab, at the bottom of the view, click Move to Partition.
  3. In the Migrate Type dialog, from the first dropdown, select the partition you want to move the category to.
  4. From the second dropdown, select the category you want to move the type to.
  5. Click Migrate.
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