Assignment History Map report

The Asset Location Map answers where everything is right now. The Assignment History Map answers the other question: where has this asset been, and what happened to it while it was there.

Pick one asset and AssetCenter replays its assignments onto a map. Each place it has been becomes a pin, and each pin opens the part of the asset's timeline that happened while it was there. It is the report to reach for when a machine has come back from its third site with a fault, and you want to know which site it was at when the trouble started.

Choosing an asset#

Open Reports, then Assignment History Map, and use the Choose an asset selector in the top left. It searches as you type, matching on asset tag, manufacturer, model, model number and serial number, and lists the first hundred matches — so narrow the search rather than scrolling if you have a large inventory.

If you have been limited to specific asset categories on the users page, only assets in those categories appear here.

The chosen asset is kept in the page address, so a mapped history can be bookmarked or sent to a colleague and will open on the same asset.

Two badges under the title tell you the size of what you are looking at: how many locations the asset has been assigned to, and how many timeline events make up its history. In the top right, View asset opens the asset's own record, and GPS tracking appears alongside it when GPS is enabled for your organization and this asset has a tracker connected.

How the history is built#

The map is reconstructed from the asset's timeline, not from any separate location log. Two kinds of entry do different jobs.

Assignment events move the asset. Assigning it to a location, reassigning it to another, lending it to one, or putting it into a storage location all start a stay at that place. Unassigning it, or returning it from a loan, ends the stay.

Everything else inherits where the asset was. A maintenance event, a repair, a quick note, a to-do or a subscription change carries no location of its own, so AssetCenter files it under whichever location assignment was active at the moment it happened. That is what puts the work with the place: the inspection that was recorded in June sits under the yard the machine was standing in that June, without anyone having to say so.

Because the history is assembled from assignments you recorded, it is only as complete as those assignments. An asset that was moved between sites without the move being recorded will show the events at the location it was last assigned to.

Reading the map#

Every location the asset has been assigned to becomes a pin, and the number on the pin is how many timeline events happened there.

Select a pin and a bubble gives you the summary: the location's name, its event count and visit count, the span of dates those events cover, and the address. A pin matched to a general area rather than a street address is marked approximate location.

The visit count is what makes repeat trips readable. An asset that goes out to the same site four times does not produce four pins — it produces one pin that says four visits, so the map stays legible while still telling you the site is a regular destination.

The location panel#

Selecting a pin also opens that location beside the map, with:

• The location name and its address.
• The timeframe the asset was there, as arrival and departure dates. A location the asset is at now reads as Present rather than a closing date.
• The events recorded there, newest first, each with its event type icon and colour, the note written at the time, who recorded it, and when.

Timeline entries carrying comments or attachments are marked, so a repair with the invoice attached is identifiable without opening anything.

The timeframe in this panel and the dates in the pin's bubble answer slightly different questions, and they will often differ. The panel reports how long the asset was assigned there. The bubble reports the span of the events recorded there — which begins at the first thing that happened rather than at the arrival, and stops at the last.

Press the close button on the panel to go back to the whole map.

Not on the map#

Underneath the panel, a Not on the map section accounts for anything the map cannot show, so nothing is quietly dropped from the asset's history.

Locations without coordinates are listed by name with the reason and their event count — no address on file, not geocoded yet, or an address that could not be found. The Asset Location Map page explains what each reason means and how to clear it. Select one to read its events in the panel exactly as you would a mapped location.

No timeline location collects the events that happened when the asset was not assigned anywhere: before its first assignment, or during a period when it was unassigned. Receiving and tagging a new asset usually lands here, because it happens before anyone has said where the asset lives.

What this report is not#

It is not a GPS trail. The Assignment History Map draws the places you recorded, in the order you recorded them; it does not know the route between them and does not claim the asset travelled directly from one to the next. Two pins mean two assignments, not a journey.

If you need the actual reported positions of an asset that moves — a live location, a street address and a replayable route — that is GPS tracking, which uses a tracker fitted to the asset rather than the assignments in its timeline. An asset can have both, and the GPS tracking button in the top right moves between them.

For related tasks, see Managing assets for where assignments are recorded, Adding locations for the address that puts a location on the map, and Reports for the filtering, sorting and export that the other reports share.