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Asset & Equipment Survey Mobile App

To enable users in the field to easily collect asset data, ARCHIBUS provides the ARCHIBUS Asset & Equipment Survey mobile app, which works in conjunction with the ARCHIBUS Asset Portal application that runs on Web Central and Smart Client. With this mobile app, field auditors can survey the facility and use their smart phones and mobile devices to record the equipment items and assets as they actually exist. They can then upload this data to the ARCHIBUS server so that a facility manager can compare the survey results to the electronic inventory, investigate problems, and update the official electronic inventory with the audit results.

Note: If your site chooses to provide floor plan drawings to auditors to help them easily locate the areas to visit, it is highly recommended that the auditors run the Asset & Equipment Survey app on a tablet and not a smart phone. This is due to the size limitations of smart phone screens.

Note: The Asset & Equipment Survey mobile app works in conjunction with Web Central's Asset Portal application. Your site should have a license for the Asset Portal application so that mobile users can access the equipment inventory developed in Web Central and update it using the Asses & Equipment Survey mobile app.

Users working with the Asset & Equipment Survey mobile app will find that it has an intuitive interface and messages to walk them through its use. For facility managers and others involved in managing assets, this topic overviews the Asset & Equipment Survey mobile app and how to use it to update the electronic inventory.

This topic has the following sections:

• Why Survey your Equipment and Assets?
• Facility Manager: Enable Mobile Users
• Facility Manager: Prepare the Asset Inventory for Download
• Mobile Device User: Sync the Mobile Device to Obtain the Survey Task List and Facility Data
• Managing Asset Surveys

You will also want to review the complete survey process: Conducting Equipment Surveys Using the Asset & Equipment Survey Mobile App.

Why Survey your Equipment and Assets?

In the day-to-day operation of a facility, the status of assets and equipment and its location can change such that the electronic inventory becomes out of date. One contributing factor to an out-of date inventory is employees moving or trading assets and equipment among themselves without notifying the facilities manager. For example: 

• a lamp may break and rather requesting that it be repaired, its owner can take one from a vacant desk
• a department printer can be moved to a new location to make room for a temporary worker
• a projector can be left in the conference room and not be returned to its proper location for week
• a worker can use their laptop as their main system and pack away the PC at their desk

To avoid discrepancies between the electronic inventory and the real-world situation, many sites periodically survey their facility to note the location of assets and equipment.

Surveys can also be helpful when initially starting your electronic inventory of equipment items. You can survey your existing items, and then create the official electronic inventory from the survey results.

Facility Manager: Enable Mobile Users

To enable the Asset & Equipment mobile app for users, a facility must do the following for each user (the field auditor who will be performing the field survey) :

• Enable the user to use the mobile app by running the System Administration / ARCHIBUS Administrators - Users and Security / Edit Users task and setting the Mobile Enabled? field for to "Yes."
• Assign the user to a role that is assigned to the ASSET-MOB security group. See Configuring ARCHIBUS Mobile Applications - ARCHIBUS Administrator.
• Make sure that the field auditors exist in the ARCHIBUS Users table and in the Employees table, and both the ARCHIBUS Users table and the Employees table record the same email address for this employee.
• Control the fields that the facility manager can choose to include in the survey by setting the AbAssetManagement-EquipmentFieldsToSurvey application parameter. To do so, you run the System Administration / ARCHIBUS System Administration / ARCHIBUS Administrator - Application Configuration / Configure Application Parameters task.

Facility Manager: Prepare the Asset Inventory for Download

In order to provide the device owner with a complete data set, the facility manager must develop the equipment data, as well as basic facility information.

1. Using ARCHIBUS Web Central and the ARCHIBUS Asset Management/Asset Portal application, develop an equipment inventory and the necessary background data.
2. If you wish to provide auditors with floor plans so that they can easily locate the rooms to visit, you must: 

• Use the Space Inventory & Performance application and your CAD program to develop a room inventory with floor plan drawings
• Use the Smart Client for AutoCAD or the DWG Editor to publish enterprise graphics for the floor plans and store these on the Web Central server.

The app also requires that survey projects be established and assigned to auditors so that they are available to the auditor on the mobile device.

Mobile Device Owner: Sync the Mobile Device to Obtain the Survey Item List and Background Facility Data

To use the Asset & Equipment Survey app, the device owner must have on their mobile device:

• the survey listing the equipment items to examine
• basic facility data (floor plan drawings, lists of buildings, floors, rooms, equipments standards) so that this is available to choose when completing the audit.

To obtain this data, the mobile device user runs the Sync action. Syncing:

• downloads to the mobile device your assigned surveys and the list of items to audit
• uploads to the server any changes you have made to audit records
• downloads to the mobile device facility background data (if necessary).

For information on syncing, see ARCHIBUS Mobile Apps: Overview.

Managing Asset Surveys

Although field auditors performing an asset and equipment survey will find the interface intuitive and will not need documentation on using the mobile app, it is helpful for facility managers to understand the complete process, as described below.

Inventory and Audit Tables

When working with the survey feature, remember that the actual equipment inventory is stored in inventory tables on the server. When you create a survey, the system creates audit records based on the official inventory; these are located on the server. When the mobile user syncs, they actually download to the mobile device the audit records and then enter their changes in these records. When the auditor completes the survey, the auditor uploads the survey data from the device to the audit tables on the server. The facility manager can then review the audit tables and explicitly update the official inventory records.

To the Web Central user managing the survey, the audit records are labeled "Asset & Equipment Survey Items." On the mobile device, the audit records are labeled "Equipment Items." The table name is eq_audit.

Tracking Missing Items

There are two ways to track items that are listed as audit items but which the auditor does not find in the field.

• Make sure that the Marked for Deletion? field is visible on the auditor's mobile device. When the auditor finds that an audit item does not exist in the field, they can check the Marked for Deletion? field. When the data is uploaded, the manager will know that when they close the survey, the system will delete this record from the inventory table.
• Some sites have a process in which they never delete old Equipment records so that they maintain a complete history for financial tracking and maintenance. In this case, the manager would not display Marked for Deletion? field on the auditor's device. Instead, when the auditor encounters an audit record for an item that does not exist in the field, they would set the Equipment Status field to Salvaged or Sold to indicate that the equipment item is missing and has been salvaged or sold.