Warranty Sync

Warranty Sync fetches warranty start and end dates for your hardware directly from the manufacturer, so you no longer have to look them up by hand or trust whatever was typed in when the device was entered.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Licensing
• How It Works
• Sync Status
• What Is Sent to au2mator
• Retries and Limits
• If Nothing Happens
• Related Articles

Overview

A sync can be started for a single asset or for all assets at once. au2mator identifies a device by its serial number and its manufacturer – the Company record set as the asset's manufacturer – asks that manufacturer for the warranty period, and writes the result back to the asset.

Only devices with a serial number whose manufacturer short name is on the supported list are picked up. Everything else is skipped silently – see Supported Manufacturers.

Licensing

Warranty Sync is a separate paid add-on that sits on top of Asset Management. A licensed Asset Management installation is not enough on its own – the Warranty Sync add-on has to be licensed as well.

The licence is checked in two places. The portal only offers Warranty Sync when a matching add-on licence is present, and the au2mator warranty service verifies the licence again with every request it receives.

Warranty lookups are a service au2mator pays for on your behalf. That is why an installation without the add-on is stopped before a request ever reaches the manufacturer, rather than failing later with an error.

How It Works

The sync is asynchronous. Nothing is answered in the moment you start it:

• You start a sync. au2mator hands the device details to its warranty service and immediately gets back a job reference.
• au2mator works through the list against the manufacturer interfaces in the background. This takes as long as the manufacturer takes.
• On a later check the result arrives. au2mator asks for the finished job, reads the warranty dates and stores them on the asset.

This is why a large sync does not finish while you watch it. Start it, leave the page, and come back – the status panel shows how many jobs are still open.

Sync Status

Every asset carries one of four states:

• Not run – the asset has never been synced.
• Pending – a job is on its way, no answer yet.
• Success, matching – the manufacturer confirms the dates stored on the asset.
• Success, mismatch – the lookup worked, but the manufacturer reports different dates than the ones on the asset, or reports none at all.

Success, mismatch is not an error – it is the result you ran the sync for. It tells you the warranty data in your inventory does not agree with the manufacturer, which is exactly what you want to know.

What Is Sent to au2mator

Warranty data is not retrieved by your installation directly. The lookup runs through an au2mator service, and the following leaves your installation:

• the serial number of the device
• the manufacturer short name, taken from the Company set as the asset’s manufacturer
• the Product ID of the asset, where one is set
• your licence identifier – the licensed domain or tenant id

The licence identifier is sent so au2mator can verify that the installation is entitled to the add-on. No other asset data – no user, no location, no cost centre – is transmitted.

Retries and Limits

A device is retried a limited number of times. After five attempts without a usable answer, au2mator stops picking that asset up again and it drops out of the queue.

The Warranty Tab on the Asset shows how many Attempts have been used, written as 1 of 5. The Counter starts at 1 with the first Job and counts every Check of that Job — a Check that returns nothing usable counts as well. Once it passes 5, the Asset is no longer picked up.

An asset stuck at Pending that never resolves has usually exhausted its attempts. Correcting the serial number or the manufacturer short name and starting a fresh sync is the way forward.

If Nothing Happens

If a sync produces no results at all, work through these in order:

• Is the Warranty Sync add-on licensed? Asset Management alone does not include it.
• Is the short name of the manufacturer Company exactly one of the supported values?
• Does the asset have a serial number?
• Does the asset have a Product ID? Some manufacturers – HP in particular – cannot resolve a warranty from the serial number alone.
• Are jobs still pending? Large runs take time – check the status panel before assuming failure.

Related Articles

• Supported Manufacturers – every accepted manufacturer spelling.
• Hardware Asset – where serial number and warranty dates live.
• Company – where the manufacturer short name is defined.