Barcode Asset Management via the KACE SMA Series Appliance (4308486)

The use of barcodes is becoming standard practice for asset management in many institutions. Often we will see these barcodes on computers, monitors and printers but they can be applied to many other things including locations, vehicles and more. The difficult part is managing the barcodes in a simple-to-use manner. The KACE System Management Appliance (SMA) has the ability to get you started in simple barcode asset management right out of the box.

The KACE SMA Asset Management feature allows you to manage any type of Asset including barcodes.

You may specify one or more barcode tags for the type of asset for which you want to add barcode information. For reference on how to achieve this please see: How to Add a New Barcode Tag to an Asset Type https://support.quest.com/kb/256647/how-to-add-a-new-barcode-tag-to-an-asset-type

However, you may also have a barcode asset type on its own for other purposes.

1. To add a new Barcode Asset Type, navigate to Asset Management | Asset Types | Choose Action | New
2. Give your new Asset Type a name.
3. Under Asset Fields add a new attachment type field for you to be able to upload barcode images for your asset. Having an attachment field for adding images of the barcode can be helpful if you find the need to see it, print it, or scan it directly from the screen. In this example, the field has been named Barcode JPG. 
   The name field will be already there by default. You may add other fields as needed to the new asset.

After the Barcode Asset is created, a third party barcode creator will be necessary to create the barcode itself as well as printing a barcode out to apply it to an item.

When creating the barcode asset in the KACE Appliance, the two fields you made available will appear. Once you place the cursor in the Name field of the asset you may use a USB connected barcode scanner attached to your computer to read the barcode data on the name field or have it entered manually as well. You can also browse to the JPG file of the barcode on your computer to attach a picture of it to the asset.

Click Save.

Now the barcode asset is created and there is a thumbnail of the picture which you can expand by clicking on it. Once clicked, it is usually large enough for any basic USB-to-Computer attached barcode reader to scan right from the screen.

Associating the barcode to another asset in the KACE Appliance:

Now that the barcode has been created, you can use it or apply it to other assets for tracking purposes. This can be done in a few different ways depending on what needs to be achieved.

For example, let’s say there’s a school where each user has been assigned an ID with barcode information that helps track all the resources that have been assigned to the user. We may as well look for the specific user by typing its name, or have their barcode information scanned so we may quickly find a list of assets assigned to the user.

To achieve this, please follow the steps below:

1. Add a user field to each specific barcode created for each individual user on Asset Types | Barcode. This will allow us to link back to the barcode asset from the user detail (Settings | Users) as well as see on the specific barcode asset the user that has been assigned to it.

2. Navigate to Assets, and look for the barcode that you would like to associate to a user. In this example it would be ‘Bar123321’.

3. Select the user to which the barcode will be assigned, and save.

Now, we have multiple asset types that could be related to a specific user: devices, location, licenses, etc. Therefore, we will add the barcode asset field to each of these asset types.

4. Navigate to Asset Types and select the asset type that you would like to link the barcode to.

5. Add the Barcode field under the Asset Type. The barcode field should be ‘Asset barcode’ type. We may choose multiselect if the device may be assigned to multiple users.

6. Next, search for the device asset and select the barcode associated to the user. If the device asset is assigned to multiple users, you may choose multiple barcodes from the available list.

Once all the necessary assets have been assigned the barcode information related to the specific user, you can easily track all the resources assigned to it when having the barcode scanned into the system.

Furthermore, you may use the KACE Go App for searching the assets related to the user barcode as well. It is possible to scan the barcode information and have it related to the Barcode asset previously created, so next time the barcode is scanned through the KACE Go App, it will immediately bring up the barcode record showing all the assets associated to it.

Because the Related Assets section will have clickable links, you may click on any of the other related assets to see more information about that item.

Now that you have a list of barcode assets, they are all easily found in the database via the reporting tool or by utilizing the search section in the upper right of the assets list.

There are multiple scenarios in which a barcode asset may be utilized to link several resources into a single one. The above is just a demonstration of one of the scenarios where you may be able to relate one asset (not only barcodes) to another for easy tracking.

 Note: Only the KACE K1 GO app and physical hand held barcode scanners have been tested to work with our Asset Management tools.