Asset Owner vs Asset User

When we launched TD for asset management, we assigned central IT as the Owner since we purchase most of the assets for the organization, and listed the customer using a device as the User. In hindsight, it appears that the Owner field has a lot more functionality - on person records the Owned assets are listed on their Asset tab, we can filter and report on Previous Owners but not previous Users, and on ticketing forms the Owned assets are the default search results. Consequently we are considering listing the customer as the Owner instead of central IT. How are you using Owners and Users? Has anyone made this change?

Tags user asset-management assets owner ownership
Asked by William Morrison on Tue 12/6/22 12:00 PM
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Answer (1)

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Mark Sayers Tue 12/6/22 1:03 PM

Hello William,

The Owner is typically the person/group currently primarily utilizing, or responsible for, the asset, whereas a User could be just anyone who may use that asset on a somewhat frequent basis or who has used/owned it in the past (think auditing purposes).

 

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Thank you, Mark. In our use case - with central IT purchasing devices and issuing them to employees - it sounds like it would add more utility to record the employee as the Owner.

I'm struggling to understand the value of the User field in our use case. If I understand your response correctly, one scenario might be that a department Owner loans a device to an individual employee who ought to be recorded as the User. However, our customers cannot update Asset records so the User couldn't be recorded on the asset unless reported to central IT. For auditing purposes, although past Users appear in the asset feed and would turn up in a search, am I correct in concluding that Past Users cannot be selected or filtered in Asset Reports?
- William Morrison Wed 12/7/22 3:17 PM
Hello William,
As long as they are still on an asset's Users tab you could filter by User is one of and select their name and see devices a person was a user on.
- Mark Sayers Fri 12/9/22 12:14 PM