Create Monitor Assets and Associate with Computer

Inventory will collect information about the monitor that is attached to the desktop. Why not take that information and create a Monitor asset and then associate it with the computer that it is attached to.

This article uses the following solutions:

• Connector Solution
• CMDB Solution

Here is the high level of what we'll do:

• query the Altiris database (Inv_Aex_HW_Monitor table) for monitor entries
• create an asset for the Monitor found, namely using the serial number as the identifier
• associate the newly created monitor with the computer it was found on

First you need to define your Data Source in the Connector Solution. To do this create a System DSN for the Altiris database. You will need this for the data source definition.

Click to view.

Next define the data source. Navigate to Configuraiton-->Solution Settings-->Connectors-->Data Sources-->(right click, new ODBC data source). The query should be:

select * from Inv_AeX_HW_Monitor where [serial number] <> ''

Click to view.

This will give you a list of all monitors that Inventory has colleted.

Next you need to create the import rule. Right click on Import/Export Rules and select Resource Import Export Rule. Enter the following information:

Data Source: the data source you created in the first step

Replication Direction: import

Resource Type: Monitor

• check "Allow Resource Creation"
• check "Allow Resource Update"

Column Mappings

• Resource Lookup Key - Serial Number and Serial Number (from both drop down boxes)
• Manufacturer-->Manufacturer Name (from drop down)
• Model-->Product Code (from drop down)
• Comment-->Feature Support (from drop down)

Association Mapping --> Associated Assets

• Lookup Key --> Resource Guid (from drop down)
• Key Column Mappings --> _ResourceGuid (from drop down)

Here is the screen shot that shows it all:

Click to view.

The data classes that I used aren't too important for the creation of the Monitor asset except for Serial Number. Feel free to add/remove dataclasses as you see fit.

And that's it.