AI Asset Assistant

The AI Asset Assistant answers plain-language questions using the records you are allowed to see. It can count and find assets, subscriptions, people and locations, summarize their status and assignments, use the record open on your screen, explain how to do something in AssetCenter, research public product information and turn results into a file.

The assistant is included with the Growth and Professional plans. If your organization has access, the sparkles button appears in the top-right navigation bar, between the notification bell and your avatar. Press it to open the assistant over the page you are using. See the plans for the current monthly allowances.

Ask about your inventory#

Ask the assistant the way you would ask a colleague. For example:

• “How many laptops do we have?”
• “Which skid steers are available, and where are they?”
• “How many Dell Latitude 5540s have we retired?”
• “List our deployed printers with their asset tags and assigned people.”
• “How many devices were damaged this year?”
• “Which assets have a warranty ending before June?”
• “Break down our vehicles by location.”

The assistant can search by asset tag, manufacturer, model, model number and asset category. It can filter assets by available, deployed or decommissioned status, and distinguish decommissioned dispositions such as retired, sold, lost, recycled and stolen.

For each matching asset, it can report the category, current status or disposition, assigned person and assigned location. Counts are calculated from all the assets you are authorized to see, even when the answer only needs to show a short list of examples.

You can also filter by who holds an asset or where it is assigned. Give the person's full name as it is recorded, because a first name on its own is ambiguous and the assistant will ask which person you mean rather than guess.

The assistant can also filter on recorded lifecycle events, warranty end dates, acquisition dates, purchase price ranges and your own custom fields. It can count matching events, count the distinct assets those events affected, and attribute events to the person recorded as responsible. Ask for a breakdown and it groups the result by status, category, manufacturer, model, person, location, condition, disposition or storage.

It does not search to-dos, notes or attachments. Use the record itself or the relevant report when the answer depends on those.

Ask about subscriptions, people and locations#

The assistant also searches the rest of your records directly:

• Subscriptions — by name, category, vendor, status, license count, billing, cost, contract dates, and the people or locations assigned. “Which subscriptions have a contract ending this quarter?” or “What do we spend on Microsoft each month?”
• People — by name, status, title, department, organization and whether they are external, along with how many records are assigned to each. “How many active people are in Sales?” or “Who has more than three assets?”
• Locations — by name, status, type, city and state, and how many records are assigned to each. “List our temporary job sites in Texas.”

Ask whether a person is active and the assistant reads the person's own record, not the assets they hold, so an inactive person with assets still assigned is reported correctly.

Ask how to use AssetCenter#

The assistant has read this manual. Ask it how to do something — “How do I pause a subscription?” or “How do I set up directory sync?” — and it answers from the relevant manual pages, with links to them under Sources.

Ask about the record on your screen#

When the assistant is opened from an asset details page, it understands that “this,” “this asset,” “this machine,” “it” and “its” mean the asset you are viewing. You can ask questions such as:

• “Who has this, and where is it assigned?”
• “When did we acquire it and what did it cost?”
• “What condition is it in?”
• “How old is it compared with this category's useful life?”

This context comes from the current asset's details, including its identity, category, status, condition, assignments, acquisition, manufacture date, configured useful life, custom fields and its recorded timeline. You do not have to repeat the asset tag, manufacturer or model in every follow-up.

Because the timeline is included, the assistant can answer from what was actually recorded against this asset:

• “When was the timing belt last replaced?”
• “What has this cost us in repairs?”
• “Who serviced it last, and what did they do?”

It reads the most recent events on the record. For a long history, open the timeline itself when you need an event further back than the assistant reports.

The same works on the other record pages. Opened on a person, “they” and “their” mean that person; on a location, “here” means that location; on a subscription, “it” means that subscription. Opened on a list such as Assets filtered to one category, questions are answered within that category unless you ask otherwise. The line at the top of the assistant, under its title, shows what it is currently using as context.

Conversations and history#

Each page gets its own conversation. Opening the assistant, or moving to another record while it is open, starts a new conversation, so “this asset” cannot accidentally refer to the previous record.

Earlier conversations are not lost. Conversation history lists your past chats, newest first, with the record each one was about and its first question. Open one to read it again or carry on where you left off. New chat starts a fresh conversation on the current page at any time.

Your history is your own: other users in the organization cannot see your conversations.

The minimize button tucks the assistant away without ending the conversation, so you can check something on the page and bring it back.

Save a chat to the timeline#

When a conversation about an asset, subscription, person or location is worth keeping — a troubleshooting session, a compatibility answer, research for a replacement — press Save to timeline at the top of the assistant, beside the context line. The transcript is added to that record's timeline as an Asset Assistant Chat entry, where everyone who can see the record can read it, comment on it and attach files, like any other timeline entry.

The button appears only when the assistant is open on a single record and has answered at least one question. Very long chats are shortened to fit on the timeline.

Research specifications and compatibility#

The assistant can look beyond your inventory for public product facts. This is useful for questions such as “What toner does this printer use?” or “Is this accessory compatible with this model?”

It first identifies the manufacturer, model and model number from your authorized asset records, then searches public sources for the product information your inventory does not contain. The answer favors official manufacturer product pages, manuals and compatibility documents. When web research is used, the supporting links appear under Sources in the reply; open them to review the original information.

Only public manufacturer and model information is used in a web search. Asset tags, serial numbers, people, locations, assignments, custom fields and other private inventory details are never included in the search query.

Compatibility information can change or be ambiguous, so confirm an important purchase against the linked manufacturer source before ordering.

Download an Excel or CSV file#

After the assistant finds the records you need, ask it to create or export a file. For example:

Export those laptops with asset tag, model, status, location and assigned person.

The default format is an Excel .xlsx workbook. Include “CSV” in the request when you need a .csv file instead. The finished file appears as an attachment in the assistant's reply; press its filename to download it. Describe the records and columns you need before requesting the export so the file contains the right result set.

Permissions, answers and monthly usage#

The assistant follows the same organization and category permissions as the rest of AssetCenter. A user restricted to particular asset or subscription categories receives answers and counts from those categories only. The assistant does not reveal records from another organization or from categories the user cannot access.

AI-generated answers can still misunderstand an unclear request. Name the asset type, model, status or disposition precisely, ask a follow-up when something looks incomplete, and check important decisions against the underlying AssetCenter record or a linked source.

Each question submitted to the assistant uses one chat from the organization's shared monthly allowance. Open Settings, then Plan & Billing, to see chats used, the total included with the plan, chats remaining and the reset date. The allowance resets each calendar month. When it has been used, AssetCenter keeps the question in the box and shows when the next allowance begins.