Navigate Assets in Jira Service Management
20 min
Advanced
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Describe an object schema, object type, object, and attribute and how they are related
- Navigate the Assets user interface
- Configure object attributes
- List the Assets' roles and their capabilities
- Explain how permissions are applied in Assets
How does Assets work?
To understand how to use Assets, you must know how data is structured. The main building blocks of Assets include:
Object schemas
Assets represents business asset information as a hierarchical collection of objects and object types, along with their attributes and relationships. These elements collectively make up an object schema, the actual configuration management database (CMDB) containing object types and objects. A single instance of Assets can contain multiple object schemas, each created for its own dedicated purpose.
When deciding how to organize data in Assets, consider how it is used and who will need to update it, and group it into logical object schemas accordingly.
Objects and object types
Objects are your actual assets. Every object is a digital representation of anything you're mapping in Assets: a computer, an employee, an office building they work at, or even a license for your software. In a service project, agents would add objects to their requests to reference or track relevant information about them. You can create as many objects as you like and group them according to objects types that represent their characteristics. Object types can be whatever you want them to be, and you can create as many different object types as you need.
Every object is associated with one object type and populates the object type’s attributes with values. An object is essentially an instance of an object type.
👉 For example: In Jira, objects would be your work items or requests. Just like you wouldn't mix epics with bugs, you shouldn't put employees into hardware. Common object types include business services, hosts, laptops, software, and non-IT items like vendors, locations, and employees.
There are many ways to create objects in Assets. You can create them manually or automatically using our integrations, imports, synchronization, or automation features.
Object types can have both parents and children, which allows you to structure different object types in a hierarchical tree and even inherit some information from parent object types.
The hierarchy is primarily a visual aid with little impact on actual functionality. However, child object types can be configured to inherit some information from their parent object types, and when searching, you can choose to include child object types in the results.
Attributes
Objects of the same object type contain similar kinds of information. These are all attributes of an object. Each object type has multiple attributes customized for that object type and listed here once the object is opened. Attributes configure references and dependencies between object types.
👉 For example: A Computer might have a manufacturer, serial number, and operating system.
In this example, all computer objects will contain these fields, but each object’s values may be unique.
Asset dependencies and relationships
Business and IT assets typically have relationships with other assets.
👉 For example: A computer has references to its installed software, to its user, to its vendor, to its cost center, etc. These relationships can be modeled in the Assets schema.
Creating custom fields in Assets whose values depend on other fields is also possible.
Assets enables you to map dependencies to manage all levels of references between your assets. You can preserve these references even when importing data from external sources.
Assets provides three levels of visualizations to help you better understand the relationships and dependencies between assets. You can view the entire object schema and focus on a single object type or object.
👇Here, you can see a visualization showing an object’s relationships
Let's explore an example:
You have an HR object schema that captures all relevant HR data that adds value to your HR Jira project. This object schema contains information about employees, workplaces, and business areas, as well as information about employee assets, such as keyboards, monitors, and laptops. These object types are linked through references so that when you click on an employee, you immediately find the object containing information about their office, personally assigned laptop, or keyboard.
Putting it all together
For technical users, a database metaphor can describe basic concepts in Assets.
In a database | In Assets |
|---|---|
Database | Object Schema |
Table | Object Type |
Table column | Attribute |
Table row | Object |
👇Watch this video to learn how to view a single object.
Navigate Assets
👇 Click the icons below to learn how to navigate assets.
Object schema related actions
Actions that affect the entire object schema are available across the top of the main view. You can:
- Search the entire schema.
- Open the graph view that shows all references between all object types in the schema.
- Select Reports from the side menu (this is only visible to Jira or site Admins).
- Access configuration options for the schema.
👇 Watch this video to learn more about the object schema.
Asset attributes and references
An attribute is a specific piece of information attached to an object.
👉 For example: A description of an object, its model number, another associated object, or a user assigned as the object’s owner are all attributes.
Every object type must contain four default attributes.
👇 Click the boxes below to learn more about each of these attributes.
Beyond these four, any number of custom attributes can be configured for an object type.
Attribute types
Every attribute is assigned a particular type when it is created.
👇 Click each tab to learn more about each attribute type.
The Default type is the most common and is used for general text, numeric data, and select lists.
Other attribute types:
- User
- Confluence
- Group
- Version
- Project
- Status
- Bitbucket repository
You can change the type as long as no objects have populated a value for a particular attribute. However, you can't set attributes to read-only.
What are attribute references?
Assets objects can reference other Assets objects using attributes set to the Object type.
👉 For example: Creating custom fields whose value depends on another field or setting an attribute value from a list of available choices.
References can be outbound or inbound depending on which object type owns the attribute that connects the object type.
Permissions and roles in Assets
Assets permissions are configured at three different levels.
👇Click the boxes below to learn more about permissions in Assets.
Object type permissions have higher priority over object schema permissions, so if there is a difference between the two, the object type permissions take precedence. In this way, you can restrict a user from modifying the object schema but give them permission to modify a single object type. This can become difficult to maintain, so creating a separate schema is often better.
Certain object and attribute types, including icons, statuses, and reference types, use special values configured globally in Assets.
👉 For example: When creating an object type, you must pick an icon to represent it. The available icon choices were configured globally by an admin and are available to all schemas in Assets.
How do different roles use Assets?
Assets roles determine what users can do in Assets. Except for the global roles of Jira admin and Assets admin, users are assigned to Assets roles within a schema.
You need to be a Jira admin or Assets admin to assign users and groups on the global level and an Assets Manager to assign users on the schema level.
👇 Click the boxes below to learn more about the different roles in Assets.
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next lesson
Create Assets object types and attributes
- Where do you start using Assets?
- How do you create an object schema?
- Create and configure attributes
- How do you create objects?