History of hardware connected to a machine
During covid we relaxed our rules a bit and of course that led to certain amount of our hardware being out of sync with inventory. I have run a few SQL reports that show me laptops with multiple monitors but I don't think this is a history (more of a current status). If a user connects (ex) from two different offices can I get a report that shows the four (or whatever the number is) of monitors they have connected with or is it just the currently connected monitors (same for docks)?
Thank you
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Comments
There isn't a builtin way to keep track of that historical info.
Rafael,
There isn't a built in way to do it, but here's what I do. I have a weekly report that exports the full configuration of all of my devices and emails it to me as a CSV and drops it in a secure folder on my network.
Since my emails are archived with a long hold time, I have a snapshot of the configuration of my devices, at any week, for years.
You can also use an automation routine (not via PDQ) to ingest the CSV files into a database of your choosing, along with some additional data (like current date/time, etc) so that you can report on the history of devices
For me, the email thing was very useful as there have been a few times I needed to see what the device configuration looked like on a given week.
Obviously, you can set the report to daily, if you need higher frequency. It's not a perfect solution, but it's far better than nothing.
-Avi
I like that approach, Avi. Using Email to store the reports is an option, you can also point the report to a file share and make the file name contain the date. This allows you to have them stored on your network and you are able to easily use the .csv in PowerShell if you'd like.
Sure, but in all honesty, the file is date/time stamped when it's written, so you already have that data. On ingestion, it's easier to pull the date/time and insert into a database than to parse the file name and grab the last 'n' characters or before a break character. Doable, sure, but why make work.
Might be easier to leverage the data as a CSV, instead of Excel, as well. Just my 2 cents.
The purpose of putting the date in the filename is so that there is a uniquely named .csv so you can have a history, which may be good for some use cases. It's not so that the date is useful/parseable. I also totally agree on using .csv instead of .xlsx, which I didn't have selected in the above screenshot (whoopsie). Import-csv for the win.
Great thoughts, Avi!