Loaning IT Equipment System

[SoyCanalla]

Hi there,

 

Is there an effective way of loaning IT equipment that you can think of?

 

Rather than writing down on a piece of paper who borrowed what,

 

Can anyone suggest an electronic form version of this procedure?

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

SoyCanalla

[jthompson]

Google Forms would be the simplest way.

[lmrogers]

Snipe IT allows for full asset management and checking in and out assets. You can also get them to digital sign and agreement.

[FN-GM]

Could you add them to your library system? Many systems accomodate for resources that are not books.

[strawberry]

Polaroid Picture of the person holding the equipment. When they hand it back they get their photo taken off the wall.

[kennysarmy]

Hi there,

 

Is there an effective way of loaning IT equipment that you can think of?

 

Rather than writing down on a piece of paper who borrowed what,

 

Can anyone suggest an electronic form version of this procedure?

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

SoyCanalla

 

A whiteboard in the office works for us, keeps it simple.

[FishCustard]

In a previous school we used the whiteboard system until one of the techies helpfully converted it to a spreadsheet, which also worked well.

[PotNoodleTech]

We use Google Sheets it works very well.

[CHiLL]

We use OneNote for that, our documentation and a whole range of other stuff.

[jthompson]

We use Google Sheets it works very well.

 

We have some scripting on the associated Sheets spreadsheet that emails us when unreturned items are overdue.

[Danp]

We have our Chromebooks on our room booking system and other items such as cameras are written down on whiteboard.

[owen-senso]

This is a cool idea! Will take this away!

[keyboards]

Google forms exports to a spreadsheet, then just add a column saying, collected, returned etc,

[neonetman]

We have developed a PHP system with a MySQL backend that allows staff to book resources (whilst checking for overlaps). Technical staff then issue and return it on the system so there is an audit trail

[sloughman]

I always find it's not the system but the physical process of lending....I used to have to lend out only 13 laptops and 8 ipads at one point but it was a complete pain. You are just walking out of your office and teacher/student wants x number of laptops/ipads...then something always interrupts you phone/another customer whilst logging what laptop with whom.....student/teacher returns 5 mins later and meets you in corridor "this laptop/ipad is not logging in/needs charging" ...can I have a charger....back you walk to your office...give replacement or charger.....then some time later 6 laptops are handed to you whilst you are once again heading off to somewhere else....or they are sub lent to another teacher and you have to track them down, and the chargers are missing even though you have told SLT that this shouldn't happen.... and this happening throughout the day everyday....and then being told...its so easy to keep track just jot it down.....hmmm.....Lending is best avoided in my opinion.

[jthompson]

I always find it's not the system but the physical process of lending....I used to have to lend out only 13 laptops and 8 ipads at one point but it was a complete pain. You are just walking out of your office and teacher/student wants x number of laptops/ipads...then something always interrupts you phone/another customer whilst logging what laptop with whom.....student/teacher returns 5 mins later and meets you in corridor "this laptop/ipad is not logging in/needs charging" ...can I have a charger....back you walk to your office...give replacement or charger.....then some time later 6 laptops are handed to you whilst you are once again heading off to somewhere else....or they are sub lent to another teacher and you have to track them down, and the chargers are missing even though you have told SLT that this shouldn't happen.... and this happening throughout the day everyday....and then being told...its so easy to keep track just jot it down.....hmmm.....Lending is best avoided in my opinion.

 

I get this. Most equipment loans here are not pre-arranged but needed as and when someone breathlessly turns up at the door in a hurry. Some technical issue or other that can distract you from recording the loan.

[strawberry]

I always find it's not the system but the physical process of lending....I used to have to lend out only 13 laptops and 8 ipads at one point but it was a complete pain. You are just walking out of your office and teacher/student wants x number of laptops/ipads...then something always interrupts you phone/another customer whilst logging what laptop with whom.....student/teacher returns 5 mins later and meets you in corridor "this laptop/ipad is not logging in/needs charging" ...can I have a charger....back you walk to your office...give replacement or charger.....then some time later 6 laptops are handed to you whilst you are once again heading off to somewhere else....or they are sub lent to another teacher and you have to track them down, and the chargers are missing even though you have told SLT that this shouldn't happen.... and this happening throughout the day everyday....and then being told...its so easy to keep track just jot it down.....hmmm.....Lending is best avoided in my opinion.

 

Photos. If they leave the office with something you tke a photo. When they return it they take the photo off the wall.

 

If the photo is still there then they have the equipment and you have the photo to prove it.

[ajg]

This is one of those things that I’ve tried different methods but ended up reverting back to the good old clipboard and pen on the wall next to items to be loaned. Teacher signs and dates for item then gets ticked back in when returned. That said we only have half a dozen laptops and a couple of cameras and iPads that can be loaned out.

[psydii]

Staff have to book banks of devices 24hrs in advance through a booking “Request” ticket.

 

Help desk check the booking calendar and attach a resource (asset) to the ticket and add it to the calendar (or decline the request if the facility is not available). The status of the ticket tells us where the booking is in the process lifecycle.

 

 

For 1:1 loans of more than a day we again use request tickets, but this time define it through assigning a category of “asset allocation”, ticket is linked to the person who will have the device and to the device itself. Again we use the status to record where it is in the process lifecycle.

 

 

 

For short term 1:1 loans we have a list of legible students and the record the loan on the whiteboard.

 

The service desk software (and nowadays MECM) record who has logged onto a device. If any manage to get out the door having bypassed the process we know who had/has it. Tracking iPads is a little more tricky but we know our wireless well enough that we can usually locate a device within a four classroom limit, or use the MDM if we need it to make a sound.

 

We report on loans to provide evidence on the utilisation of resources to ensure we remain sufficiently funded to maintain them. (Or to make sure management understand they have to change the way people work because the assets are no longer funded)

 

....

In the first sentence I said “have to”. In practice we are a lot more flexible but we alway make sure there is a ticket even if we have to make it ourselves.

[talksr]

Google Forms would be the simplest way.

 

Hi, I have been reading this with interest as I am sick of all of the paperwork generated by loaning of equipment.

 

I have made a quick Google form for staff to fill in...name...email... device type...asset number.

I would quite like to embed into the form our agreement document which says what they are agreeing to i.e.. I won't use device for non-work stuff, I won't drop it in the toilet etc.

 

Has anyone found a way to embed a Google doc into a form or any other way to display this info so that when they click submit, they are effectively confirming that they agree to what has been shown to them on the form?

 

Thanks in advance.

[paulkerton]

Has anyone found a way to embed a Google doc into a form or any other way to display this info so that when they click submit, they are effectively confirming that they agree to what has been shown to them on the form?

 

That'd best be achieved with a Google Site with the Doc and Form embedded into it

[Garacesh]

Our asset register has a 'notes' field where we put in who has what. Staff also have to sign for it, the usual rigmarole, so there's a paper record too.

[DrBeaker]

Should be a ticket and ALWAYS a ticket for it

 

Opened on request.

Closed when equipment returned.

Depending on the equipment if it's not returned, I'l lock it out or disable accounts etc.

[jthompson]

Hi, I have been reading this with interest as I am sick of all of the paperwork generated by loaning of equipment.

 

I have made a quick Google form for staff to fill in...name...email... device type...asset number.

I would quite like to embed into the form our agreement document which says what they are agreeing to i.e.. I won't use device for non-work stuff, I won't drop it in the toilet etc.

 

Has anyone found a way to embed a Google doc into a form or any other way to display this info so that when they click submit, they are effectively confirming that they agree to what has been shown to them on the form?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Our Google Form is pretty minimal and not intended for the end user to be filling in. It's filled in by one of us each time we lend something out. This could be for a spare laptop whilst one is in for repairs, it could be a VGA dongle being borrowed for a lesson, or a USB DVD Drive for the next couple of weeks, etc. The expected loan duration is often a bit of an estimate and not necessarily needing to be exact. Nobody's going to want the bother of filling in an online form in order to borrow a presentation clicker for their assembly. They're just going to ask if there's one that they can borrow.

 

 

The accompanying Google Sheet has an extra column that we've added to it, which is a tickbox to be ticked when the item is returned. The sheet has some scripts added to it which automatically hide rows where items have been ticked as returned (i.e. leaving only current loans being shown for ease of use) and to trigger emails to IT staff when an item has reached its expected return date but is still not marked as returned. We will then chase up the item and/or update the expected return date as required.

 

As others have said, we often find that these types of loans are in the spur of the moment and quite informal. Sometimes it's a student who's been sent up to collect/return a piece of equipment for their teacher. For more formal or semi-permanent loans, such as teacher laptops, we'll have staff member's names against things in our inventory.

Edited June 9, 2022 by jthompson

[DrBeaker]

Our Google Form is pretty minimal and not intended for the end user to be filling in. It's filled in by one of us each time we lend something out. This could be for a spare laptop whilst one is in for repairs, it could be a VGA dongle being borrowed for a lesson, or a USB DVD Drive for the next couple of weeks, etc. The expected loan duration is often a bit of an estimate and not necessarily needing to be exact. Nobody's going to want the bother of filling in an online form in order to borrow a presentation clicker for their assembly. They're just going to ask if there's one that they can borrow.

 

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The accompanying Google Sheet has an extra column that we've added to it, which is a tickbox to be ticked when the item is returned. The sheet has some scripts added to it which automatically hide rows where items have been ticked as returned (i.e. leaving only current loans being shown for ease of use) and to trigger emails to IT staff when an item has reached its expected return date but is still not marked as returned. We will then chase up the item and/or update the expected return date as required.

 

As others have said, we often find that these types of loans are in the spur of the moment and quite informal. Sometimes it's a student who's been sent up to collect/return a piece of equipment for their teacher. For more formal or semi-permanent loans, such as teacher laptops, we'll have staff member's names against things in our inventory.

I'd recommend simply putting a dedicated one in each location.

 

That's what I've done at every place. The cost of the clicker simply isn't worth my time and solved a big headache.

 

We have 3x dedicated locations/clickers for those areas and if staff lose them I simply charge them for another one.