Welcome to Ralph Assets’s documentation!¶

Searching and Filtering of Assets¶

Let’s start with the main screen. Here you find all your hardware assets which are in the database. Use the left column for filtering of the assets.

There are two types of assets – devices and parts. A device could be a blade server, and a part is a component of this server, for example memory or hard disk drive. A part can be assigned to a single device at a time. You can move parts from one device to another when you need it.

Adding Assets¶

data center¶

If you want add data center asset you need to fill a few required fields. Look at the screen below (you can zoom-in the image in your browser if you want) The fields in bold are required. Rest of fields are optional.

Let’s describe each of the fields:

• Basic info:

  • Type - a read only field for data center
  • Model - choose a model for asset, (you can type a couple of letters to search for a given model. If no result is found, just click “Add” button to add it)
  • Inventory number - an alphanumeric value in your stock
  • Warehouse - the place where the asset is located
  • Location - a more exact location of the device in the building/room
  • Status - an asset’s lifetime indicator. Newly bought assets has status “new”. You can change it as required according to your own work flow
  • Task url - url to task in ticket system
  • Additional remarks - field for various data
  • Service name - service name to which this asset belongs
  • Property of - company to which this asset belongs
  • Hostname - read-only field telling the name of host (from Ralph-core device)
  • Service catalog - points to service catalog which asset belongs to
  • Environment - points to environment which asset belongs to
  • Region - set region for this asset (see region page for details)

• Financial Info:

  • Order number - number of the order where this asset is included
  • Invoice date - date of the invoice where this asset is included
  • Invoice number - number of the invoice where this asset is included
  • Price - unit price of this asset
  • Provider - name of the provider of this asset
  • Depreciation rate - number of months in which asset depreciates
  • Source - asset was purchased or salvaged
  • Request date - date of submission of the demand for this asset
  • Provider order date - date when order of this asset was provided
  • Delivery date - date of asset delivery
  • Depreciation end date - the end day of the depreciation
  • Budget info - name of budget which funds this asset
  • Force depreciation - force depreciation for this asset despite of depreciation end date value

• User info:

  • User - points to user of this asset
  • Owner - points to a owner of this asset

• Aditional info:

  • Data center - points to a data center which contains this asset

  • Server room - points to a server room which contains this asset

  • Rack - points to a rack which contains this asset

  • Position - points to position in rack from 0 to ‘max u’

  • Orientation - a side of rack, depends on position

    if position = 0 options are: left, right

    if position > 0 options are: front, back, middle

  • Slot number - points to slot number in blade when asset model is blade

  • Ralph device id - points to to Ralph-Core device

  • Force unlink - if picked and "ralph device id" is already linked to other asset, this option forces to unlink it and link this asset to newly unlinked device

  • Create stock device - create a Ralph-core device

back office¶

Now, let’s add some devices and parts. Click the “Add device” option from the top of submenu.

The serial number or barcode field is required for assets. You can paste serial numbers and barcodes in series, thus allowing you to batch-add many devices of the same type.

Adding Parts¶

In the same way you can add parts to the database, and then bind the parts to devices. To do this, choose “Add part” from the menu.

• When a part is marked as salvaged, you can enter the old barcode data here.

Fields¶

Asset fields has been split into sections in forms:

• Basic info:

  • Type - a read only field for data center, back office or administration for back offic. Administration is used for assets like buildings etc.
  • Model - type a couple of letters to search for a given model. If no result is found, just click “Add” button to add it.
  • Inventory number -
  • Warehouse - the place where the asset is located.
  • Location - a more exact location of the device in the building/room.
  • Status - an asset’s lifetime indicator. Newly bought assets has status “new”. You can change it as required according to your own work flow.
  • Task url - url to task in ticket system
  • Additional remarks - additional info.
  • Service name - service name to which the asset belongs
  • Property of - to which the company belongs asset

• Financial Info:

  • Price - the unit price of the asset.
  • Provider - the name of the provider of the asset.
  • Depreciation rate - number of months this device deprecates
  • Source - if this device was purchased or salvaged
  • Request date - date of submission of the demand for the device.
  • Delivery date - date of device delivery.
  • Deprecation end date - the end day of the depreciation
  • Order number, Invoice date, Invoice no, Provider order date, Budget info.

• User info:

  • User - device user.
  • Owner - device owner.

• Aditional info:

  • U level - “U” level of installation device.
  • U height - how large the device is, in “U”.
  • Ralph device id - ID device detected by Ralph Scan.

Bulk Editing¶

It is often required to edit multiple assets at once. For example, when you want to move them from one warehouse to another. There is a special mode called “bulk edit” for this case.

To activate this mode, go to the search screen, and select multiple assets using check marks on the left side.

When ready, choose “Edit selected” from the bulk edit actions.

On the next screen you can edit those records all at once by changing the appropriate fields. When you fill one field with the desired value, you can propagate this value to all records by clicking on the “plus” mark near the current cell.

Work Flow and Statues¶

In this version there are no limits for moving assets from one status to another. You can freely change statuses. All changes will be recorded, allowing you to inspect the flow later.

Adding License¶

To add a license, click the “Add support” option from the top of submenu.

Fields¶

Licence fields are split into 2 section: Basic info and Financial info. Financial info contains very important field, Number of purchased items. This field ability to store Multi-Seat licence.

Relations¶

Licenses may be related to the relationship with the user or device. In asset and user form, during the search are shown only unassigned license, that is, those that have still free slots.

Adding Support¶

To add a support, click the “Add support” option from the top of submenu.

Relations¶

Support can be assigned to a device. On the asset form page, there is the option of marking device that requires a support. This is valuable information that helps you better manage supports.

User Page¶

User page contains all information about user. User’s devices, licenses, personal information and transition history.

Autogenerated domain hostname (disabled)¶

One optional information about assets is a domain hostname. This information can be autogenerated by Ralph Assets. To achieve that you need to set a few settings (in the Django’s standard way), like:

ASSETS_AUTO_ASSIGN_HOSTNAME = True

This action cause that all assets:

• edited in Edit form or Bulk form,
• having set Asset Owner & Asset Model & Asset model category code (according to: Asset.can_generate_hostname property),
• and changed Asset status from any (except in progress) status to in progress,

will have autogenerated hostname domain.

Autogenerated format is described by this setting variable ASSET_HOSTNAME_TEMPLATE:

Default value is

ASSET_HOSTNAME_TEMPLATE = {
    'prefix': '{{ object.country_code|upper }}'
            '{{ object.model.category.code|upper }}',
    'postfix': '',
    'counter_length': 5,
}

where prefix and postfix options takes template string (rendered by Django’s template engine so you can use standard (or custom) template tags and filters). Template context contains object variable which is an asset instance. The counter_length variable describes constant length of counter.

There is also another related option:

HOSTNAME_FIELD_HELP_TIP = 'Autogenerated if owner & model are set.'

This setting shows help tip next to hostname field in form.

Transition configurations is described here

Reports¶

To generate reports files, report template should be uploaded into ‘Report odt source’ model. Created model’s slug should be specified. or Created model should have specified slug. And configure INKPY module.

Slug definition per report may be overridden in settings file eg.:

ASSETS_REPORTS['RELEASE-ASSET']['SLUG'] = 'your-slug'

You can use predefined slugs:

• release-asset - for release asset transition
• loan-asset - for loan asset transition
• return-asset - for return asset transition
• change-hostname - for manually change hostname country

Reports locale¶

Reports generation uses Django’s LANGUAGE_CODE setting, however there is an option to changed that. You can force locale only for reports by setting GENERATED_DOCS_LOCALE in django’s settings, eg:

GENERATED_DOCS_LOCALE = ‘pl’

If so, all generated reports will have polish locale.

Multilanguage support¶

For transition:

• release-asset
• loan-asset
• return-asset

you can attach diffrent template for configured language. Configuration is very simple, see the structure below:

REPORT_LANGUAGES = {
    'choices': (
        ('en', 'English'),
        ('pl', 'Polish'),
    ),
    'default': 'en',
}

Values choices and default are mandatory.

Now in Change report odt source (admin section) you can upload ODT templates for each predefined language.

Post transition signal¶

The transition feature sends post transition signal. Arguments defined by the signal are:

• user - signed in user executing transition,
• assets - assets used in transition,
• transition - tranistion which is executed.

This is an example of the signal receiver:

import django.dispatch
from ralph_assets import signals

@django.dispatch.receiver(signals.post_transition)
def post_transition_handler(sender, user, assets, transition, **kwargs):
    pass

Assigning region to asset¶

Region can be assigned to asset by regular asset’s form, like:

Assigning region to user¶

Region can be assigned to user by admin form, like:

Adding new region¶

If you would like to add new region, you can do it by admin form, like:

To avoid necessity of setting region on each user. There is a default region, called: “Default region”. You can easily change it by Ralph settings, like:

DEFAULT_REGION_NAME = 'my-custom-name-for-default-region'

The above description is about using regions with assets. This is not the only option. Regions also can be used with Supports and Licences as well. The way of using it is analogical to assets described above.

post_transition¶

Arguments sent with this signal:

user

A user which run transition.

assets

A list of assets which undergo transition.

transition

A transition object.

post_customize_fields¶

This signal is useful if you want customize form from external application. Arguments sent with this signal:

sender

The form instance.

mode

A string. Possible values: bo or back_office.

For example:

from django import forms

from ralph_assets.signals import post_customize_fields


@receiver(post_customize_fields)
def my_awesome_customizer(sender, mode, **kwargs):
    if(len(sender['barcode'].value) < 50)
        sender.fields['barcode'].widget = forms.widgets.TextInput()

New features¶

• Added versioning to static files
• Added configuration-url and visualization-url to edit asset view.
• Small forms improvments. Added help texts to some fields.
• Changed look and feel for support listing (Djid)
• Change message in bulk edit location

New features¶

• Added Region feature to assets, liceces and supports.
• Added location fields to data center asset: data-center, server-room, rack, position, slot, orientation, slot-number.
• Added data center visualization.
• Added support for Accessories.
• Removed Ralph from requirements. Now Ralph requires ralph_assets.
• Added quantity to assigned licences.
• Added bulk edition for blade servers.
• Added redirecting button to return-asset transition from backoffice bulk-edit and single edit.
• Added datacenter filter to asset reports.

Minor improvements¶

• Improved history mechanism.

• Reduced SQL queries about 50% in Licence and Hardware list view,

• Made AssetModel’s Category required.

• Added purchase_order field to Asset model.

• Seperated assets statuses for data center and back office.

• Added department to DC’s search form.

• Removed office info field from bulk edit.

• Skip liquidated assets in Scrooge API.

• API for supports for Scrooge.

• Renamed rack field to rack_old.

• Added new status ‘to deploy’ for Assets.

• Changes in form fields:

  • New fields were added: hostname, service catalog name and management IP address. Now these fields can be displayed on Rack Visualisation view.
  • Added Region to assets bulk edit form & admin form.
  • Added Licence field to back-office bulkedit.

• Mobile responsive version for asset editing.

Fix¶

• Fixed soft-deleting feature on Licenses and Supports.
• Sync parent also for blade servers - use slote_no instead position.
• Fixed counting in ‘status - model’ report
• Show Full history even when the object have empty history.
• Running post_transition as an non-blocking.