Assign Equipment
Assignment keeps track of who is responsible for the equipment. If your sales reps have βtrunk stockβ then the equipment should be assigned to the sales rep user; if the equipment is in a warehouse, the assignment will usually be to an account that is your warehouse location.
Equipment must be assigned before loaning or reserving it and can only be assigned to a single object at a time.
Assignments have no predictable end date, so they stay in effect until a new assignment is set. ELTON puts the return date on the assignment when the new assignment is created.
- On the Equipment tab, click on the equipment you want to assign.
- On the action bar, click Assign.
- An Assign window will pop up asking you to provide details from the assignment.
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Assigned Date (Required) | The date the assignment is effective. |
Assigned Type (Required) | Available types are User, Contact, Account, and Opportunity. |
Tracking Number | The Carrier Tracking Number of the Assignment. |
Note | The Notes for this Assignment. |
Assigned Type (Required): | If an equipment assignment is to a user, contact, account, or opportunity, this is the lookup relationship to that User. |
4. Click the Save button to finish and save changes.
You can use Salesforce Data Import Wizard to import equipment assignment data. Depending on your business preferences, you can choose to assign all equipment to a single record to utilize the Loan functionality or enforce more granular control and assign it to a different record.
Chatter will create a posting with each assignment and loan if left turned on. This is usually highly undesirable. Turn off Chatter before you process assignments and loans. Re-enable Chatter when complete.
Loading Assignment data begins by exporting the Equipment records you will be assigning. This is required to obtain the Equipment ID, a unique identifier used by Salesforce.
- Go to Reports and click the New Report button.
- Select Equipment as the report type and click Create.
- Drag the Equipment: ID field into the report alongside any other fields you may wish to use to assist in identifying the record into the report and click Run Report.
- From the report page click Export.
- Change the export file format to .csv and click Export.
- Open the file in a spreadsheet editor program and save the worksheet.
- In that worksheet, add additional columns to provide the Assignment data.
- Assigned Type = User, Contact, Account, or Opportunity.
- Assign Date = yyyy-mm-dd.
- Assigned ID = The SFDC ID of the record. This is used to associate the record with the Equipment Assignment. You may need to export all your associated records and use the Vlookup function to find the Salesforce ID. For Contact and Account you can use the Name field and do not need to obtain the SFDC ID for those types of records.
- Save the file to finish.
Loading assignment data must be done based on the Assigned Type field. If you are only assigning to one type, then you can work with a single file. If you have assignments to Users, Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities, you may have as many as 4 files to load. Save each file filtered on Assigned Type (User, Contact, Account and Opportunity) as a separate CSV.
- On Salesforce, go to Setup > Data > Data Import Wizard.
- Scroll down and click the Launch Wizard! button. The Data Import Wizard will open.
- Select the following for each pane:
- What kind of data are you importing? Custom objects - Equipment Assignments.
- What do you want to do? Add new records. A series of questions will be revealed. Based on the Assigned Type you are loading you will answer the appropriate question.
- Where is your data located? Drag the CSV file you saved earlier onto the drop spot.
Click the Next button.
ο»ΏOn this Field Map, you will need to make some changes:
ο»Ώ- Click Map next to Equipment: ID and select Equipment.
- Click Map next to Assigned ID and select User (Or Contact, Account, or Opportunity based on which Assigned Type you are currently loading)
- Click Next. The field map summary will be presented. Click Previous to edit or click Start Import to proceed.
- You will be directed to the Bulk Data Load Jobs page. Here you can monitor your job and review results as necessary. Repeat the steps above for each Assigned type you are loading (User, Contact, Account, or Opportunity) as required.
While this is possible, assignments must be loaded in chronological order from oldest to newest. Each assignment ends only when a new assignment begins. The Assignment return date must be equal to or past the Assignment Date. So as you load a series of chronological assignments for a single piece of equipment, ELTON will set the Assignment Return Date automatically to the next assignment records Assignment Date.
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