The Service Manager console and the Provance IT Asset Management Pack integrated into it share a common interface. The main items of the interface are as follows:
a navigation pane
a view pane
a tasks pane
The left-hand area of the interface is called the navigation pane. The navigation pane is used to move between the following items:
Workspaces: the largest categorization of your work in Service Manager contains items such as the IT Asset Management Pack, the Data Management Pack, and Administration (where you can configure items such as the Provance license, notifications, and settings affecting Provance management packs).
Folders: smaller containers for items such as Contract Management, Hardware Asset Management, and Software Asset Management.
Views: click on a view inside a folder to display the items associated with it in the center View pane. A view can either be a tabular listing of data or a graphical representation of items and their relationship to one another. For example, the Software Titles Tracked by Installation view displays all of your software titles in a tabular format, with columns showing their Licensing Status, the Installed Quantity, and the Entitlements you have.
The right-hand area of the interface is called the Tasks pane. It is used to perform tasks associated with the item selected in the View pane. It is also used to launch help associated with the selected item or folder. The tasks are context sensitive, i.e., they change depending on the type of item selected, as well as the number of items selected in the View pane.
Depending on your network’s speed, the Tasks pane may take a few seconds to refresh. Before you apply a task to one or more items in the view, ensure that the last item selected in the view appears at the top of the Tasks pane. The item appearing at the top of the Tasks pane is the item that the task will be applied to.
A view is a summary of your data, either arranged into a tabular format with columns and rows, or arranged visually showing the parent-child relationship between items. A view can include hardware or software asset management, contractual, financial or organizational data. Select a view in the IT Asset Management Pack workspace to have it appear in the center View pane of the Service Manager console.
Select an item in the View pane (tabular format only), to show a preview of it in the bottom portion of the View pane. The preview contains a summary of the item’s contents. For example, the preview of a software title contains a break down of its licensing status on a version by version basis.
Views provide different ways of representing your hardware or software assets and important information related to them. Views with columnar data can be sorted, grouped, filtered and their columns changed. Views can also be created and customized to suit your requirements. For more details about creating custom views, refer to the Service Manager online help.
To open an asset management view:
>> In the IT Asset Management Pack workspace, open Hardware Asset Management or Software Asset Management, select a folder and then a view within the folder.