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I keep finding new & useful ways to use Eramba, but something I’d like to be able to do is eluding me. We would like to use the ‘Support Contracts’ module to track contracts and SLA as they relate to our assets. My thought was to create the Contract, then create a new tab that would track the Assets, related SLA’s and probably a tab for tracking maintenances or service requests. My challenge is I am not able to figure out how to add a custom field that links the assets. I can add fields. but am limited to the standard fields.
From a custom field functionality perspective, it’s not designed to work like that. Fields you add will all be free from and generally not lookup relationships from other related modules (except for people).
If you mash the “Help” button on each screen, you’ll be able to see the relationships - support contracts are associated as follows:
Liberally translated, you could say you have external third parties (vendors) and internal third parties (different departments).
Controls can also associate to Support Contracts and I would argue that monitoring SLAs is a control that you do. Controls do not relate directly to assets, but rather to Asset Risks, so to perform the full linkage, you’ve got to get a bit creative - consider this →
Asset A has SLA Risk. SLA Risk is mitigated by the control SLA Monitoring, which is associated to whatever support contract/commitments you have done. That control will have a maintenance that say to review the coversheet of a TPS report on a monthly basis and declare victory. The linked contract can be used as a reference in performing the maintenance to confirm the TPS report meets it.
Now, where it gets more fun is trying to do reporting on which Assets have Support contracts. This is where custom statuses will be helpful since the standard relationships don’t apply - essentially, you’ll need to chain the custom statuses off each other to allow you to report on the relationship back in the assets tab. The basic logic would be → Create a custom status for a control that triggers on “Greater than 0 associated support contracts” → Asset Risk custom status would trigger on a related control has the status has contract → Asset would have a custom status for any related asset risks with the status. Then you could do a Filter on Assets to show Assets with Support contracts (but, you will NOT be able to pull in the information about the contract there - just list).
correct, this is in the roadmap but we know it will lead to many problems (long story to explain) so we are for now not considering it. it is still on the backlog.
Thanks all!