The Service Request application can reference multiple assets, locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More, and configuration items (CIs). This article reviews this feature, and what you can do with the records once they have been added.

Using the New Row on the Multiple Asset, Location and CIs table

For this scenario I have created a new Service Request 1301 with a Summary description of “Conference Room Whiteboard Clean/Replace”

In the Details I entered “The whiteboards in the conference rooms will be cleaned and three whiteboards with the poorest condition will be replaced.”. We will be doing the whiteboard cleaning throughout the OFFICE block, it is urgent, and so I have entered an Internal Priority of 2. The Service Group (FACILITY) and Service (CLEANING) were also entered. 

Notice, that you do not need to enter a Classification. The Classification field is great for services that can be predicted and where you may wish to ask additional questions (Specification attributes), or issues where you may need to relate multiple tickets together, as the action Show Similar Tickets uses the Classification field. The Classification field is also good for matching to a Ticket Template. The Service Group and Service field are great for collecting management information that will be used with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and I would recommend that these fields are always populated especially if you are just starting out.

We will come back to it but notice in the bottom right of the screen the field “Create WO Options”.

Towards the bottom of the main tab of the Service Requests application is the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table. This is based on the object MULTIASSETLOCCI. While I have used the New Row button so that you can see the details section there was already one record in the object, a hidden record, one that related to location OFFICE and marked with the attribute ISPRIMARY (=1). This record is tied to the header fields. 

The MULTIASSETLOCCI table is important as it is used to find the work order or ticket history of assets, locations, and configuration items (CIs). So, it does not matter whether you are using the header location and asset fields or those in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table they will all go towards the history.

I’ve selected OFF401 – Office #401 and added the Comment “Don’t forget my office, it has some sticky marks from rogue masking tape”. The comment field has a long description.

The Asset, Location, Configuration Item and Target Description can all have a value on the same record. Two or more records can reference the same combination of these fields. When you enter an Asset if it exists at an operating location then the Location field will be populated if it has an associated CI the Configuration Item field will also be populated.

If you were going to monitor progress on the Service Request, then the Mark Progress field can be checked when the whiteboard in the location has been cleaned.

The Clear All button will pop-up a message “BMXAA4490I – Do you want to remove all entries from the table?”. If you answer with the “Yes” button, it does exactly as you would expect.

The Select Button provides plenty of choices for how you can add multiple records to the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table.

Select From Assets, Locations and CIs

There is a submenu for each of the Assets, Locations and CIs under the Select button. The Classification Search and Attribute Search are similar for all three and is beyond the scope of this article.

The Select Locations dialog provides a set of fields in the header with a Refine button for modifying your search. Notice the table window shows locations from multiple Sites. As a Service Request is defined at the System level it does allow you to select locations, assets or CIs that belong to different sites. We will use the table window filter to search for Conference rooms.

I’ve selected four conference rooms CONF100, CONF200, CONF300, CONF400. Notice that conference room CONF400 has one asset, and that asset has been added to the asset field, the same behaviour as you would have for the primary fields in the Service Request Details section. Asset 1005 is not a whiteboard, and so I will just blank this field.

I have also added a sequence to the records. The table window is not sorted by the sequence number, but you can sort it. Let’s hope the CLEANING team do the whiteboard cleaning in the order of the Sequence as the one in my office (OFF401) will then be done first.

For completeness I’ve shown the Select Assets dialog. The Search Location HierarchyA location system where the operating locations are formed into a hierarchy. More field will be useful, as it will find the assets that belong to locations that are descendants of the location that you select for that field.

The Select CIs dialog follows a similar format for these three dialogs and has both a Search Asset Hierarchy and a Search Location Hierarchy.

A Configuration Item is something where you want to record the configuration, normally something with a version number, for example, important documents and software/firmware. It is used by Maximo clients who perform Configuration Management, and outside of the IT industry this may be used by clients in highly regulated industries. A Configuration Item does not exist in a SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More it is something that operates outside of a specific site.

Select From Routes and Collections

A Route and a Collection are both examples where each has a list of assets and locations, except a Collection also has a Configuration Items field. A Route is used with maintenance inspections, or rounds. A Collection is used in IT to build the set of records that will be impacted by a Change. When you need to create a long list of locations and assets to add to a Service Request you might find it is quicker to build a Collection because you can use the Add Assets to Collections action from the List tab of the Assets application and similarly the action Add Locations to Collections in the Locations application. This allows you to take advantage of the Advanced Search of those applications. Collections also have the advantage that they allow records to exist across multiple Sites, where as a Route is defined for a single Site. A Collection can easily be used to restrict user access to sets of Locations and Assets (or CIs).

The Select From Routes dialog initially shows all the route stops for all Routes but you can refine your search to a specific Route as I did in the screenshot, Route 1005.

The Select From Collections dialog also shows all assets, locations and CIs from all Collections. I only have the one Collection set-up with the four collection details that you can see.

Select From Relationships

All straightforward up to now, the selection dialogs all do what you might expect them to do. The Select From Relationships will need explaining, it has nothing to do with the Relationships application that you find in the Assets module or the Relationships tab in the Assets application. 

When you use the Select From Relationships action you may find two empty table windows. The first table window shows the related tickets and related work orders of the current record, in this case Service Request 1301. At the start of this article, we created Service Request 1301 and we haven’t yet added any related records, hence why the top table window is empty. The bottom table window shows the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table of these records and the two table windows are linked.

To illustrate I’ve created a new Service Request 1302 and related SR 1301 to it. I’ve also related work order 5002 to the SR as well.

On Service Request 1302 you can see that the Select From Relationships dialog shows the two related tickets and work orders. Service Request 1301 is the highlighted row, and the second table window shows its five locations from its Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table. There is a multi-select checkbox on the lower table window.

Notice that the records shown in the lower table window do not include the record from the MULTIASSETLOCCI table where ISPRIMARY=1. This was location OFFICE for SR 1301.

I selected locations CONF100 and CONF400 and when I pressed the OK button these were transferred into the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table of SR 1302. Asset 1005 is shown because this is the only asset at location CONF400.

Create WO Options

I’ve returned to Service Request 1301 and this section will focus on what happens if you create another ticket or a work order from the Service Request. It will examine the possible setting of the field Create WO Options.

Create Incident

When you create an Incident from SR 1301 using the Create Incident action, then the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table are copied to the Incident. This is irrespective of the setting of the field Create WO Options, which only has an effect when creating a work order from a ticket. The Progress and Comments fields are not copied.

Create WO Options – NONE

When using the Create Work Order action from Service Request 1301 and the setting for Create WO Options is NONE, then a work order is created with no records in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table window.

Create WO Options – MULTI

When using the Create Work Order action from Service Request 1301 and the setting for Create WO Options is MULTI, then the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table are copied to the Work Order. The Progress and Comments fields are not copied.

The setting of MULTI is the default.

Create WO Options – TASK

When using the Create Work Order action from Service Request 1301 and the setting for Create WO Options is TASK, then the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table are copied as tasks to a new Work Order. 

Work Order 1330 was created as a FOLLOWUP to SR 1301. It has five tasks each referencing the location from the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table of SR 1301. The picture shows the first task referencing location OFF401 – Office #401.

Create WO Options – CHILD

When using the Create Work Order action from Service Request 1301 and the setting for Create WO Options is CHILD, then the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table are copied as children of a new Work Order. 

Work Order 1331 was created as a FOLLOWUP to SR 1301. It has five child work orders each referencing the location from the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table of SR 1301. The work order created for location CONF400 then defaulted asset 1005, as this is the only asset for location CONF400. 

Create WO Options – TOPLEVEL

When using the Create Work Order action from Service Request 1301 and the setting for Create WO Options is TOPLEVEL, then the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table will create a set of new Work Orders.

The next statement may surprise you. A work order is created for each the Multiple Asset, Location and CI records including the one where ISPRIMARY=1. Therefore, using our example we will find that 6 work orders were created, not 5. The screenshot shows the first record which is the one where ISPRIMARY=1 on the Service Request, the record relating to location OFFICE. All 6 work orders will be found in the Related Records tab and Related Work Orders subtab with a relationship type of FOLLOWUP.

Considering Multiple Organizations and Sites

A Service Request can reference locations and assets that exist in multiple sites that belong to different organizations. This is because a Service Request exists at the System level in Maximo. So, what happens when work orders or tasks are created?

The main thing to remember is that a work order at a site can only reference a primary asset or location that belongs to the same site, but the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs of a work order can reference assets or locations from different sites. Also, a work order hierarchy can only exist for the same site, no mixed site work order hierarchies exist in Maximo.

• If Create WO Options is MULTI then the same assets and locations from different sites will be copied to the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table on the work order.
• If Create WO Options is TASK then the same number of tasks will be created as there are records that you see in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table. However, the location and asset fields will be null for tasks whose site identifier was not the same as that for the work order. 
• If Create WO Options is CHILD then the same number of child work orders will be created as there are records that you see in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table. However, the location and asset fields will be null for child work orders whose site identifier was not the same as that for the work order.
• If Create WO Options is TOPLEVEL then each work order created is independent of each other and so can exist in different sites to the others that were created at the same time. 

When the Service Request has a mixed set of assets and locations from different sites, then both the TASK and CHILD options will create some records in the work order table without either a location or an asset. Therefore, my preference would be to use TOPLEVEL and then if required use the Create Work Package action in the Work Order Tracking application to create a hierarchy from those generated work orders that belong to the same site. 

In the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table the ORGID and SITEID fields are those related to the Asset or Location. The WORKORGID and WORKSITEID are the same as the ORGID and SITEID on the parent work order object. When joining from the WORKORDER table to the MULTIASSETLOCCI object you should make any subquery join to the WORKSITEID. 

Note. The Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table does not support the distribution of costs on either a Ticket or a Work Order.

Changing the Asset or Location

If a record in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table has a location and you enter an asset that does not belong in that location the following error message will be displayed “BMXAA4722E – The specified asset is not in the current location. Do you want to update the location with this asset’s location – REPAIR? If you do not want to apply changes to the location or asset, click Close.” There are buttons for Yes, No and Close.

If a record in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table has an asset and a location and you change to a location that has only one asset then the following error message will be displayed “BMXAA4720E – The specified location does not contain the current asset. Do you want to update the asset with the asset that is in this new location – A7804? If you do not want to apply changes to the location or asset, click Close.” There are buttons for Yes, No and Close, choosing Yes and both the location and asset have changed.

If a record in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table has an asset and a location and you change to a location that has no asset or multiple assets then the following error message will be displayed “BMXAA4721E – The specified location does not contain the current asset. Do you want to remove the current asset from the work order? If you do not want to apply changes to the location or asset, click Close.” There are buttons for Yes, No and Close.

If no Asset, Location, CI or Target Description exists for a record in the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table then you will receive the error message “An asset, location, configuration item or target description is required.”.

Duplicate Service Request

When using the Duplicate Service Request action, the records of the Multiple Assets, Locations and CIs table are also copied. The Progress and Comments fields are not copied to the duplicated service request.