TechFlash

The Sage FAS Asset Inventory Group Manager—a powerful and easy-to-use feature that can expedite your ability to pull detailed information on reports—allows you to create custom groups, which then can be used to select or sort assets on reports.

There are three steps to creating and using groups in Sage FAS Asset Inventory. The first is setting up the group’s selection criteria, which specifies the assets the group should pull on reports or in the group view.

The second step is creating the group’s sorting criteria. This criteria tells the group which order to show the assets on reports or in the group view.

The final step is using the group on reports or in the group view of Sage FAS Asset Inventory. We’ve outlined these steps in more detail below.

Step 1: Creating the group’s criteria

To use the grouping and sorting features within Sage FAS Asset Inventory, you must first create the custom group. Once it’s created, it then can be used on various reports or to change the group view within Sage FAS Asset Inventory.

For example, let’s create a group using the sample company “Westfields Bakery-Demo” to pull assets from the “Bakery” location. To do this, please follow the steps below:

In Sage FAS Asset Inventory, choose Assets from the menu bar, and select the Group Manager option.

From the Group Manager Dialog box, click the New Group button on the right to create a new custom group. We’ll discuss the various option boxes on this screen after we create the new group.

In the New Group box, enter Bakery Assets as the name of our custom group, and then click the OK button.

Choose Location from the drop-down menu list under the Pick all assets where this data field heading.

The box to the right of Location sets the purpose of your criteria. Using the drop-down menu list to the right of Location, you could reverse your selection by simply selecting is not rather than is. This would cause the group to pull all assets that are not at the Bakery location. However, for our example we will go with is as the default.

Next, select Bakery from the drop-down menu list for the this value field.

Click the Add Criteria button to add the new criteria to our group.

At this point we could add additional criteria by using the various drop-down menu boxes. In addition, the Delete, Delete All, and Replace buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to easily remove or change existing group criteria.

The buttons on the right: New Group, Rename, Copy, and Delete allow you to quickly add or delete existing groups. The Copy feature is helpful when you wish to create several groups with similar criteria. You can create the initial group and then adjust the copied groups to your needs.

Step 2: Setting up the group’s sort criteria.

The second step is creating the group’s sorting criteria. This tells the group which order to display the assets on reports or in the group view.

For our example, we will continue modifying the new group that pulls assets for the Bakery location. However, now we will want to also sort those Bakery assets by department.

To create a sort, click on the Sort Criteria tab while still in the Group Manager Dialog screen.

Select Department in the Sort the group by this field drop-down menu list. On the right, in the In this order field, we will keep the default in ascending order to keep the listing in alphabetical order. To finalize the criteria, click on the Add Sort button to move the criteria to the Sort group by the following criteria box.

At this point, we are done creating our example group to pull Bakery assets sorted by department. Click the OK button at the bottom to create the Bakery Assets group.

Step 3: Using groups on reports or to change group view.

The Group Manager can expedite your ability to pull detailed information on reports or to change the group view within Sage FAS Asset Inventory.

Using a group on a report can allow you to pull specific assets and display them in various orders.

To use a group on a report, select a report under the reports menu. For our example, let’s select the Asset Listing Report.

After selecting Asset Listing from the Reports drop-down menu, the next screen will ask which group you would like to run the report with.

Selecting our example group Bakery Assets and clicking the Preview button will now display the report with assets only from the Bakery and sorted by Department.

As you can see, the report only shows assets from the Bakery location, and the assets are sorted by the various departments shown in the department column.

Using groups in group view

Another good use for custom groups is to change the views in the New Group View screen. In Sage FAS Asset Inventory, select View from the menu bar and select New Group View.

Choose Bakery Assets in the Select Groups box.

Click OK to use the group in group view. You will now see only assets from the Bakery sorted by the department.

In summary, creating groups is a powerful and easy-to-use feature that enables you to customize and pull specific assets on reports or in group view. For more detailed information on creating and using groups, please refer to your electronic user’s guide available by selecting START -> Programs -> FAS Solutions -> FAS Asset Inventory -> User’s Guide. The user’s guide is also available by selecting User’s Guide from the Help menu.