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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: ARCHIBUS uses the Equipment table to manage most facility assets including but not limited to: HVAC equipment, computers, artwork, fire extinguishers, copiers, printers, and window-washing equipment. Using the Equipment table facilitates cross-domain integration of the management of all facility assets, such as the depreciation features in the Asset Portal application and the maintenance features in Building Operations.

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
• Procedure for Performing an Audit on an Existing Inventory
• Procedure for Performing an Audit as a Starting Point for the Electronic Inventory

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a facility, the status of assets and equipment and its location can change such that the electronic inventory becomes out of date. One contributing factor to an out-of date inventory is employees moving or trading assets and equipment among themselves without notifying the facilities manager.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

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.
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.

When the user syncs the mobile device, the Sync action downloads the basic facility data--such as the lists of floors, rooms, equipment standards, and so forth--to the mobile device so that it is available for the auditor to choose when completing the screens presented by the mobile app. For information, see ARCHIBUS Mobile Apps: Overview.

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.

Procedure for Performing an Audit on an Existing Inventory

1. In Web Central, the supervisor uses the System Administration / ARCHIBUS System Administration / Mobile Apps Manager / Manage Asset & Equipment Surveys and invokes the Create New Survey action. This action assigns a survey and set of equipment audit records to a field auditor.
2. The auditors run the sync action to download the surveys assigned to them. This may include background data and floor plan drawings.
3. The auditors consult the task list on the mobile device to determine the items they should audit. The audit user can choose to view these as items as:

• a list of equipment items sorted by equipment ID
• a list of equipment items sorted by room number
• a floor plan drawing in which the rooms to visit are highlighted (requires that you run the mobile app on a tablet)

4. Consulting the list on the mobile device, the auditors travel throughout the facility and compare the assets they find with what is listed on the mobile device. They record any discrepancies that they find using the interface of the mobile device.

• If an item has different properties that what is listed on the mobile device, they can use the mobile device interface to update the properties. For example, they can update the Equipment Status field to show that an item needs repair.
• If an item listed on the device does not exist in the field, they can update the Equipment Status field to indicate that it is salvaged, out of service, or sold. If the mobile device displays the Marked for Deletion? field, the user can complete this field. See the above discussion about missing items.
• If the auditor finds an item that is not listed on the device, they can create a record for it. They will choose the "+" icon in the upper right corner to access a form for entering the new record. They will need to assign an identifying value for this item.

5. At any time during the survey, auditors can run the Sync action to upload to the audit tables on the server the changed records to date. Syncing does the following:

• Uploads back to the server any changes that the auditor made to the audit records. These records will have "Changed by Mobil User?" set to Yes.
• If new surveys have been assigned to the auditor since the last sync, downloads the list of surveys assigned to the auditor and each survey's audit items.
• Removes from the mobile device any surveys that the supervisor has closed.
• If necessary, downloads background data.

6. When auditors have completed the field audit they can complete the survey by choosing the Complete Survey button.

• For any records that have not yet been uploaded, the action syncs the data in the mobile device with the server-side audit records; this is the same action as running the Sync action.
• The action marks the survey as complete by completing the survey's Survey Status field with "Audit Complete."
• The device still lists the survey, but the auditor can no longer make changes to its audit records.
• If the auditor now runs Sync, the system will remove the completed survey and audit records from the device.

7. Using Web Central's Asset Management / Asset Portal / Equipment / Manage Equipment Survey task, the facility manager reviews the uploaded audit records.

• For items that they question, facility managers can investigate the situation and change the survey results before posting them. For example, if an auditor created a new record in the field, they might not have known the cost center for this item. The facility manager can enter the cost center now.

8. When satisfied with the survey results, the facility manager closes out the survey, which does the following:

• In the Equipment table, creates new records for all new audit records.
• Updates the existing Equipment records with the values from the audit records.
• Deletes from the Equipment table all items that are Marked for Deletion? in the audit table.

Procedure for Performing an Audit as a Starting Point for the Electronic Inventory

The Asset & Equipment Survey app is also handy for generating your electronic equipment inventory. Suppose your company has just acquired another company and you need to enter this organization's equipment into the system.

1. In Web Central, the supervisor uses the System Administration / ARCHIBUS System Administration / Mobile Apps Manager / Manage Asset & Equipment Surveys and invokes the Create New Survey action. This action assigns a survey to a field auditor. Since you do not yet have an equipment inventory, there will be no tasks for the auditor.
2. The auditors run the sync action to download the survey assigned to them. This sync includes background data and floor plan drawings.
3. Since the device will not present a task list of items to audit, the manager must instruct the auditor on the areas within the building to visit.

4. The auditors travel throughout the specified area, and for each equipment item that they find, they choose the "+" icon in the upper right corner to access a form for entering a new record for this item. They will need to assign an identifying value for each item.

5. At any time during the survey, auditors can run the Sync action to upload to the audit tables on the server the new records to date. Syncing does the following:

• Uploads back to the server the new records that the auditor has created. These records will have "Changed by Mobil User?" set to Yes.
• If new surveys have been assigned to the auditor since the last sync, downloads the list of surveys assigned to the auditor and each survey's audit items.
• Removes from the mobile device any surveys that the supervisor has closed.
• If necessary, downloads background data.

6. When auditors have completed the field audit, they can complete the survey by choosing the Complete Survey button.

• For any records that have not yet been uploaded, the action syncs the data in the mobile device with the server-side audit records; this is the same action as running the Sync action.
• The action marks the survey as complete by completing the survey's Survey Status field with "Audit Complete."
• The device still lists the survey, but the auditor can no longer make changes to the audit records.
• If the auditor now runs Sync, the system will remove the completed survey from the device.

7. Using Web Central's Asset Management / Asset Portal / Equipment / Manage Equipment Survey task, the facility manager reviews the audit records.

• For items that they question, facility managers can investigate the situation and change the survey results before posting them.For example, if an auditor created a new record in the field, they might not have known the cost center for this item. The manager can enter the cost center now.

8. When satisfied with the survey results, the facility manager can close out the survey, which creates new records in the Equipment table for all audit records that the auditor created.