OpenBoxes as WMS for IT Asset Management

[jmiranda]

WMS for IT Asset

A few days ago we received this great suggestion posted to our Tutorials page in response to the following prompt.

Let us know if you’d like to see a tutorial for a specific topic. Provide your email so we can contact you when the tutorial is ready.

We had a similar question about OpenBoxes being used for asset management about a year ago

Openboxes as Asset Management - Possible?

So hear me out first before you blow my head. I am trying to see if OB will be a fit for this use case. So we have assets, mostly medical equipment that we loan out to other medical facilities. Sort of Like a library that has books and loans them out. Does OB have the capacity to see some outbounds as loans that will be due for returns? Think of a hospital temporarily loaning out some equipment that will be returned. Can OB handle this out of the box?

We’ve had the idea to expand our knowledge base documentation to include industry-specific use cases but haven’t made any progress with that to date.

So I’m going to post this here to start a discussion about asset management.

1. Is anyone using OpenBoxes for asset management?
2. Does anyone have suggestions on how to use OpenBoxes for asset management?
3. Does anyone have an alternative solution they’ve adopted for asset management?
4. Would you be willing to explore potential integrations with other systems that handle the “asset” features better?
5. What are the most important features and requirements you’d need to see in order to adopt OpenBoxes for asset management?

There are definitely a few basic features within OpenBoxes that support the asset management use case, namely …

• Serial number tracking
• Product uploads to track maintenance schedules and user manuals
• Expiration dates to represent warranties
• Locations to represent virtual status like “in repair”

… but, at this moment, I probably would not recommend OpenBoxes for asset management, if that’s your primary concern.

I am hoping to add more functionality around asset management at some point in the near future.

Spoiler Alert: it’s included on our Roadmap

However, we’d need to gather more explicit requirements and some funding before we are able to implement any new features related to asset management.

In addition, there are plenty of great asset management systems (both open-source and commercial) out there like snipe-it.com, partkeepr.org, assetpanda.com, assettiger.com, just to name a few of the big ones. I would prefer to integrate with one of these systems before adding more features to OpenBoxes.

TL;DR: I would probably only recommend using OpenBoxes for this use case if you were also tracking consumables and needed a very simple solution for assets.

Let me know if you have any comments.

[David_Douma]

Yes, we do asset management. I will think about it and post some ideas back!