Tracking Asset Inventory using Thresholds

Thresholds in Oomnitza are powerful tools that allow users to direct workflow behavior based on quantities of a given asset as determined by filters. In this article, we'll go through how these workflows can be used to keep IT Managers aware of the quantities of a certain device, in order to order more.

Workflow 1: The Less Than Operator

The basic layout of this workflow is as follows. When Macbooks Pros are moved out of inventory, the quantity in inventory is checked, and if it's below 10, IT is notified.

This is a fairly sensitive version of this workflow. The advantage of this is that Oomnitza will always recognize low asset count and notify IT, but depending on the volume of changes being made to assets, it may trigger multiple times, sending IT a number of emails.

If you're looking to avoid sending a high volume of emails to IT, we'll be running through a different version later.

Begin

We begin when a specific device has been moved out of inventory. In this case, I've chosen MacBook Pro 15-inch. This block can be refined to trigger based on a variety of criteria, but the important part is that the filters line up with those in the subsequent block.

The Threshold Block

In this threshold block, we're using the Less Than operator and creating filters to look at devices in Inventory and Model. This returns a count of assets that meet those criteria, which we're comparing to the threshold set at the bottom.

When that threshold is set, we follow the positive path to the notification step. If the threshold is not met, the workflow will skip straight to the End block.

The Notify Block

Here, we've just included a simple notification to email IT Help Desk members letting them know they should order more Macbook pros. This block will likely be much different based on your organization.

Workflow 2: The Equals Operator

Here's a far more advanced version of the Inventory workflow. In this example, we use the Equals operator to provide different notifications when the Asset meets certain thresholds. We're using regular, email notifications when we hit 15, 10, and 5 Macbooks, then sending an urgent email and a slack notification when we hit 0 Macbooks.

The benefit of this workflow is that it will produce less "noise" than the previous example, as it's less sensitive. It only gets "Noisy" when the inventory is totally drained, encouraging IT Teams to avoid that state.

The caveat of this workflow is that Bulk Operations won't trigger it. Essentially, the threshold blocks are looking for an exact match at that volume. If the quantity of an asset goes from 20 to 13, for example, it will skip the alert at 15. Be wary of this, and make sure you have a fail-safe (like the alert at 0) to avoid this.

The Threshold Block

These threshold blocks look pretty similar to our last example, however for each block we're using the equals operator:

Conclusion

There's a huge amount of flexibility in what can be done with Threshold workflows, which will need to be tailored to meet your organization's needs. For any questions or for help setting these up, don't hesitate to reach out to [e-mail] or to your organization's Customer Success Manager.