Asset Usage System

[Martinwonder]

I'm looking for a system to track how desktops and laptops are being used in terms of activity.

 

 

The main goal is to make better use of underused devices by reallocating them to areas where they're actually needed.

 

 

Basically, I want to have solid data to respond to teachers who claim they need more laptops but aren’t really using the ones they already have.

 

 

Does anyone already use something like this?

[psydii]

That is pretty much the only thing I've ever missed since ditching RM Connect some time in the 1990's.

For a while a bit of creativity with a report from our Managed Service Desk software could get us that too.

 

These days I might be looking at starting here: https://theposhwolf.com/howtos/Get-LoginEvents/ and smacking it a bit with stackexchange, guesswork, copilot or chatgpt until it did what I needed.

(you'll want to look out for device unlock vs interactive logon - if the device has seen the user recently, it seems to pick it up as an unlock event rather than an interactive logon event)

 

Probably easier if your devices are all on-prem.

[TheHyperTechie]

Depending on how many endpoints you want to monitor, you could use something like Action1 which is free for up to 100 devices.

 

It would allow you to see when a device is online/was last online. Also tells you how many updates are pending on the device (good way of knowing if it was turned on recently!)

 

You could setup email alerts for when a device becomes online/goes offline so you can gauge how long their session time is.

[GeneMoody-Action1]

Thank you for the mention there, and yes we are free for the first 100 endpoints. We are a patch management solution but we do have other features such as scripting & automation, reporting & alerting, etc.

It is the latter you would want here, since it is highly extensible, you can create custom data sources out of anything you can script.

 

If I were going at this, I would create a custom data source where I check the last modified time on the ntuser.dat file (User registry hive) for each profile on the system.

This would be worlds faster than gathering windows events.

 

Using logic like if this date is greater than the last date make the reference date this date, etc. Ending basically at the *newest* last time any user logged in.

 

You could either store that date/time, or for more utility equate it to True/False by doing a comparison like is it > than x amount of days before current date.

And put that into a custom attribute.

 

Then create a report that displays computer name, and that attribute.

You could then set an alert on that report based on the value being true/false.

 

End result, any computer not logged into in X will generate an alert.

 

Pretty simple to do and if you want to give it a go, just let me know, I would be happy to assist.