Workstations, units, and components

Workstations and units represent operational assets, such as an office station, computer, machine, or field device. Their components keep their identity and history as their location changes.

Availability: everyone can view assets assigned to them; asset administration requires the independent Manage assets permission. Level: Intermediate.

Purpose

It shows which assets exist, which company they are serviced for, who they are assigned to, which configuration created them, which components they contain, and which installations or replacements took place.

Requirements

A published template must exist before an asset can be created.
To create, edit, assign, archive, or adopt a revision: be an owner, administrator, or have Manage assets.
A user without that permission sees assets assigned to them and authorized context within reports.
Managing assets does not automatically grant inventory management or access to every report.

Step by step

Open Workstations and units to see assigned or manageable assets. In General you may search by customer name and filter All, Own, Symbolic only, or a grouped company without changing global context.
A manager creates the asset by choosing a published template, a customer company or Own asset, a name, and an operational code. When a specific context exists, the company is shown as inherited; Customize changes it for this creation only, and Reset restores inheritance without clearing other information. Context identifies where service is delivered and does not assert legal ownership. The icon uses the same inheritance pattern from its template.
The manager defines the operational code. Activation generates a unique internal code that follows the asset's company; its UUID preserves the physical device's permanent identity.
Open the detail to review current configuration, assignments, and history.
Update responsible users through assignments; earlier assignments remain in history. Assignments chosen on a draft are saved but do not grant access until the asset is activated.
Install or replace components from a report when an available delivery or consumption exists.

Rules and effects

A workstation and a unit use the same traceability behavior; the class describes the asset.
A local company filter in General does not change navigation or the accent. Work in this context is the deliberate action that applies a customer across compatible areas.
An operational code is unique within each context: own assets share one namespace and each customer company has its own. Internal codes are globally unique. Equipment for business customers, symbolic or linked, uses its reserved prefix, such as ACME-PT-000001 or ACME-UN-000001; own assets and individual customers keep the current organization's format. Renaming a company preserves its prefix. Earlier codes remain available internally for search and auditing.
Change company requires a reason and creates history. Saving automatically aligns the asset and its installed components with the selected company, preserving UUIDs, data and history. A code whose prefix already matches stays the same. Changes are blocked while reports, work orders, custody, parts, transfers, or authorizations are active.
An asset can move from Active to Inactive and be reactivated. Draft and inactive assets can be archived.
Archival is terminal for the asset identity: it blocks new installations and general editing, while still allowing traceable removal of existing components.
Each physical component preserves its identity through installations, replacements, returns, and retirement.
Every installed component uses the prefix corresponding to the equipment's current context and its type prefix, such as ACME-RAM-000001. This includes own-inventory pieces and pieces with an earlier prefix from another company. Returning to Own asset or an individual customer uses the current organization's format. Corrections keep earlier codes internally and record an audit without changing UUIDs or installation history. Removed pieces retain their historical association: a later company change does not reassign them.
Asset search accepts current or earlier codes of installed components. Inventory recognizes codes of instances in stock at the selected warehouse. Operational screens show only the current code; earlier codes stay internal for compatible searches and auditing, without expanding permissions or changing history.
An applied discovery result shows the current identity of the equipment and authorized components. Its historical copy stays intact. If a component no longer belongs to the organization or its link to the equipment cannot be verified, Resource unavailable appears without revealing its earlier code or another organization's identity.
Components can form a tree up to five levels below the asset.
An asset supports up to 500 active installations; a template position may allow from zero to 50 occurrences.
Asset and inventory permissions are independent: an asset manager designs and administers equipment, while an inventory manager controls stock and delivery.

Required and optional information

Required at creation: published template, operational code, and name. Optional: initial assignments, template structure, components, customization of the inherited icon, manufacturer serial, external identifiers, notes, customer, and descriptive data allowed by the template.

Practical example

The company creates a “Duty notebook” unit using a notebook template and assigns it to Ana. Identified memory and storage components are installed. Months later, the device is reassigned to Bruno: its detail shows the current assignment while preserving the earlier one and the history of every component.

Linked companies, transfers, and remote service

Shared lets the owning company grant a linked provider a sanitized technical view per asset. The view omits assignments, inventory, internal notes, customer identifiers, and audit data.
Transfers moves an asset registered for a symbolic company into that company's linked ReportArea Company account. The receiver accepts the final operational code; technical codes for the equipment and its installed components align with the receiver's own context. UUIDs, tree and history remain, and replaced codes become internal references. An accepted transfer is not reversed: a later move creates another transfer.
On acceptance, the receiver may keep revocable technical access for the former provider.
Before work begins from a provider report, the owner decides per asset whether technical data, identifiers, installation, removal, or replacement are allowed. Some capabilities may be approved while others are rejected.
When installation uses provider inventory, ownership of the physical component transfers to the asset owner. A removed customer-owned part remains customer property in provider custody until the owner chooses a return, warehouse, or another traceable disposition.
At completion, the provider submits a technical summary from the report and the owner accepts it or responds. Acceptance closes the authorization while preserving the summary and every decision as history.
Revocation blocks new mutations while preserving snapshots, decisions, and the work summary. The provider report keeps its independent lifecycle and does not create automatic billing.
An inactive customer preserves history and continuity for open work, but is unavailable for new assets and reports.

From New report, an asset manager can create a minimal asset without leaving the form: template, code, and name in the report’s fixed context. It is activated and selected without components or automatic assignment.

Current limits

Labels and QR codes cannot be printed.
A serial number may repeat; the system warns rather than absolutely forbidding it.
Asset management permission alone does not grant stock access or access to unrelated reports.
Archived assets are not offered for new normal operations.

Discoveries and archival

In Equipment discoveries, confirm the company inherited from context or the local filter and generate a code. Connection lasts five minutes; after connecting, the tool has ten minutes to send data.
Run the tool on the equipment. Once useful information exists, discovery can be turned into equipment: connection expiration no longer affects those data.
Open the result from In progress. The captured company stays saved even if general context changes. During conversion, Customize chooses another company and Reset returns to the source without clearing fields or mappings. Suggested or searched equipment belongs to that company.
If you will not apply it yet, choose Archive. Pending results are automatically archived after seven days. Archived keeps data and draft for thirty days from the actual archival time, whether manual or automatic.
Choose Restore before purging to recover the complete result and open another seven days before the next archival. To apply it, confirm company, template, and mappings; equipment history receives a permanent copy.

Delete performs a logical deletion only for attempts that never produced useful data, including failed attempts, and preserves an audit trace. After thirty days archived, temporary content is purged; dates and status remain, but restoration and conversion are unavailable. Applied discoveries keep their copy with the equipment.

Earlier expired discoveries with useful content are recovered in the archive with thirty days of retention from the update. Previously purged content displays the earlier loss. When no evidence identifies the original company, use Customize, choose a company or Own asset, and press Save to confirm the selection. This decision is audited; the discoverer's account company is never assumed.

Downloadable technical reports

Asset managers find Generate report on each equipment item or workstation, both in the list and detail. The document presents the latest applied discovery and its date, including configuration, components and applications. The language comes from the customer and organisation; every PDF contains one language.

Generation runs in the background. Once ready, Download PDF returns the stored file; requesting the same information again reuses that document. The detail offers earlier versions and indicates when a newer discovery exists.

If generation does not complete successfully, Generate again requests a new attempt without repeating the previous error message. Earlier attempts remain in history. While generation is pending or in progress, the button shows Generating…; repeated requests for the same information reuse the active attempt. Available documents keep their download.

If a discovery is missing, use Discover equipment and apply its results. Generation is enabled per language: when the customer's language does not yet have a published template, the person responsible for configuration must enable it. The system keeps the selected language to avoid mixed-language documents.

Capacity depends on the published template. The earlier four-page presentation has fixed areas and may reject workstations with several components. New templates organize information into distinct sections and tables with dedicated columns. Their sheet has variable height: growing tables move later content and the closing section down. Large collections continue in other blocks within the same section, and long text spans consecutive rows, preserving all records. The person responsible for configuration must publish and enable the new series to use this presentation. DOCS global budgets still apply; when exceeded, the system preserves evidence and explains that generation needs review. Archived assets keep their available downloads.