In order to get the most out of Lifecycle Insights, you’ll want to make sure that the data you’re working with is complete and accurate.  The following guide will help you identify and remediate common problems with data quality.  

Step 1 - Asset Type Policies

Navigate to [Account Settings] - [Asset Type Policies] and review the default settings for asset lifecycle management.  In this section, set the price that you want to show on the client’s budget for the default replacement class for each asset type.  

• The column labeled “Approaching Time Period EOL (In Months)” represents the remaining number of months in the lifecycle of a device when it’s color changes from green to yellow on the asset list.  

• The column labeled “Approaching Time Period Warranty (In Months)” represents the remaining number of months in the warranty of a device when it’s color changes from green to yellow on the asset list.  

Step 2 - Asset Mapping

Navigate to the Asset Mapping screen:  Click [Integrations] in the left side panel and then select your company’s primary integration from the list.  Then select [Asset Mapping] from the tabs in the center of the screen.  

From this screen you’ll want to map the Asset Types from your primary data source to the asset types in Lifecycle Insights.  

Best Practice - If an Asset Type from your primary data source is informational only, or has no replacement value to be accounted for in the budget then it should probably be set to ignore.  This will keep these Asset Types from being displayed in Lifecycle Insights.  

Pro Tip - If your PSA/RMM combination identifies laptops separately from desktops, then navigate to [Account Settings] - [Asset Type Policies] and click the green button [+Add New] at the top right of the screen.  Add an asset type for Laptops and configure the asset type in accordance with your MSPs best practice recommendations.  Then map Laptops to Laptops in the Asset Mapping section.  

Step 3 - Asset List

In order to locate and solve for assets that won’t show up on the client’s budget you’ll need to use a feature we call swatching.  This feature can be found in many places within Lifecycle Insights, and it works by wiping away the colors that you don’t want to see on a report.  Navigate to [Asset List] from the left hand column and then click on the Red, Yellow, and Green squares at the top of the End of Life column to swatch those colors away, leaving only the blue (Unknown) fields showing.   

The assets left showing on the screen will be those that have no set end of life date, which is the date we use to place the replacement cost of the device into the budget.  Items with no EoL date will not be reflected on the client’s budget.  There are 2 ways to resolve these items.

1. Research the items to determine their purchase date and enter that into LCI.  This resolution method will cause LCI to apply Asset Type Policies to the devices and extrapolate an EoL date at which to place the Replacement Cost on the budget.  

2. Apply a static EoL date for the asset (click into the asset itself and update the End of Life field OR multiselect assets that all will have the same EoL date and select “Update End of Life Date” from the dropdown to [Choose an Action]).  The Replacement Cost will be entered into the budget on the EoL date.  

Step 4 - Cleanup by Category

At the top right corner of the Asset List, you will see 3 dropdown boxes used to filter the Asset List.  Using the middle dropdown box, select the following Asset Types one at a time to resolve common problems.   

Servers - Most RMM tools do not differentiate between virtual and physical servers, but their costs and lifecycles are very different.  Once you have filtered to show only Servers, you should be able to use the “Search” box at the top left of the asset list to further filter down to only show virtual servers.  This is normally achieved by using VM or Virtual as search words.  

Once you have a list of only virtual servers, multi-select all of the assets.  You should notice a new dropdown appear at the top of the asset list.  Click [Choose an Action] and then [Update Asset Type].  Change the Asset Type to Virtual Server - this changes the replacement cost for all your virtual servers according to the settings in your Asset Type Policies.  

Pro Tip - MSPs should determine their own internal best practice around the EOL policy for virtual servers.  Most MSPs will opt to set the EoL date for Virtual Servers to match the EoL date for the host server, while the other option is to match the EoL date with that of the VM’s Operating System.  Whichever method you decide to use, multi-select your VM’s one more time and click {Choose an Action] and then [Update End of Life Date] and enter the date you have determined for the selected VMs.  

Network devices - This list often includes firewalls, switches, access points, camera systems, and other IoT devices.  Our APIs typically do not fill in purchase and EoL for these devices so you will need to estimate purchase and EoL manually unless you had a purchase date already documented in your primary data source.  

These devices also have varying replacement costs.  It can be helpful to use the “Type to Filter” box to multi-select assets one model at a time and enter their replacement costs in bulk.  

Other & Software - Items in the Asset Type of Other often do not belong on the budget in the first place.  You’ll need to look at these devices individually to determine if they have a replacement cost that needs to be represented on the client’s budget.  If they do not, check your primary data source to determine if there is an entire configuration type that you need to Ignore from the [Integrations] - [Asset Mapping] screen.  If other items of this configuration type need to be on the budget, but a small number should be excluded, multi-select the items you wish to exclude and click [Hide in Reporting] from the [Choose an Action] dropdown.  This removes the devices from ALL reports and from the budget.  

*Hidden assets can be recovered by selecting [Show Only Hidden Assets] from this dropdown.  

Step 5 - Duplicate Assets

The Duplicate Assets indicator will show up at the top of the Asset List when multiple configurations exist in your primary data source with the same serial number.  To quickly get a list of your duplicate assets, click the dropdown next to the “Duplicate Assets Found!” indicator and select [Show Only DUPLICATE NON Hidden Assets] and then sort the results by serial number.  In most cases the correct resolution is to eliminate the duplicate configurations in your primary data source.  

*Note - Deletions from your primary data source only sync into Lifecycle Insights during nightly maintenance, so you may need to hide the duplicates until the maintenance tasks run.  

Alternatively, you can delete the assets in LCI.  Deleted assets will flag as deleted, however if these are still active in your PSA, they will sync back as active in Lifecycle Insights.  You should mark these assets as inactive or remove from your PSA. 

Conclusion - These 5 steps will leave your data in a much better place than you found it.  You may still need to check replacement cost on some Assets that do not conform with your default Asset Type Policies.  Examples could include a high-end server or an Apple laptop that are more expensive than most other assets of the same Asset Type.  At this stage we recommend printing the report and viewing it broken out as your customer will see it.  Irregularities seem to stand out when the document is formatted for consumption by a customer.  

If you have questions about the data cleanup process or any part of this document, please reach out to support at https://help.lifecycleinsights.io/hc/en-us/requests/new or create a support case through [Help] - [Contact Us] at the bottom right of any page inside the Lifecycle Insights application.