what's the point...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

this isn't a stupid user story but rather a stupid department story. since i probably haven't properly intro'd myself... i'm employed as a Client Computing Manager for UPenn Law ITS in Philly...

let me ask you all this... what's the point of having a tracking system such as Track-IT! when you don't fully use the damn program?

i ask this question because i just recently (as in i'm taking a break from it now) of verifying our department tags with the service tags on some old machines that'll be trashed. i'm supposed to do said task via the TrackIT! software. first of all the interface isn't the greatest and it's slow as f#$@ and web based. -_- THEN not only is it slow but when it finds the machine most of the damn machines don't even have an entry for the service tag! what's the point of tracking via any tag if you don't use the original service tag?! or, what's the point of having ME verify this information if you're only going to keep it in a separate set of horribly formatted excel spreadsheets that after 2 months on the job you still haven't given me access to update properly?!

-_-

there are things about this place i like about my job and there are things i hate, but i guess that's the way jobs are. but dammit, if you're going to use tracking software to keep your inventory straight... use the damn software. don't tell me to have people sign hardware in and out of a giant unwieldy binder, don't have me update a bazillion and one spreadsheets i don't have write access to and don't make me look up information that wasn't kept prior to my hiring...



cross posted to my own journal.

Comments

[indigo-max.livejournal.com]

We have been working on a process similiar to the one you are talking about. Before my manager got deployed to Iraq in 2003, we had a plan to barcode all the PC's in this building and take the resulting information from each and put it into Track-IT. Never completed mainly due to a co-worker of mine never giving me information about the most recent PC's deployed into the field. We also have the service tag info fields in HEAT but do we do anything with it? NO

Max...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

hehe, i was talking to my "she who hires" boss this morning about making a simple access database that the web guys here could put a web front on. simple and effective for searching, adding and tracking all incoming and outgoing equipment. her response "well isn't that in track-it?"... had i had this assignment yesterday i could have said no. i'll just have to bring it up in the supposed meeting me and my coworker are supposed to have with her. -_-

[jecook]

I concur.

The inventory for the reigon I'm resopnsible for has been kept on a spreadsheet.

At one point, I put most of it into the tracking system I'm using ( I use a nifty program called IRM.)

Then boss died, and things got a little strange. Boss kept his stuff in a pair of filing cabinets, and in his brain, unfortunately.

Needless to say, I will be visiting each any every one of my sites in the next month or so to put all the inventory information into our shiny new web remady based system (if it even HAS that capability). I've also suggested barcoding. It's really is not that expensive to implement anymore. The readers cost under $100 each, and act as USB keyboards ( or they wedge into a standard PS2 keyboard). You can buy asset tags with codes on them (or software to roll your own) for not a whole lot of money as well (one place was $200 for 1000 labels)

The cheap P-touch label machine I have (it's a PT-2610) can roll barcodes.

I'll stop now, because I'm preaching to the choir. (and frothing at the mouth)


::reaches for towel::

[residentgeek.livejournal.com]

The first thing I did when I got to my current campus was do an inventory of all the machines. Luckily, we have unique numbers for each machine, and they even have campus designators. I found at least 6 machines that were on inventory but not in the building. Took me months to track those down (two had been stolen before I got there and the rest had been removed). Inventory sucks. It just sucks.

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

all of our tags have bar codes on them however... is there a bar code reader to be found? not that i'm aware of. -_- the old tags were just pieces of adhesive-backed paper with the bar code and tag number on it... but on all of the old machines either those tags have fallen off or are so badly worn away that it's hard to read some of the numbers. they have these newer tags that are almost metallic in nature but they're raised off of the piece of equipment more and easier to pull off in my opinion. same format with the bar code and number though. it'd be nice to actually have a system and bar code reader... would make some of the inventory woes easier...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

yea, when me and my coworker were hired, we were greeted by an office filled with old white dell dimensions and given a project dealing with sorting them amongst like 3-4 other projects which kept morphing. plus, we only have two real labs in the building with a bunch of other public machines scattered about. but apparently i get to be on some committee to improve our department's useage of Track-IT so maybe i can knock some sense into these people. especially in the sense of... why pay for something we could create in-house... sheesh