Device Warranty Information Reporting Overview

Device Warranty reports within Endpoint Insights empower organizations with rapid, powerful warranty data across OEMs, device types, and models. The data arrives in clear, actionable charts, which then quickly enables teams to plan accurately. 

Device Warranty Information reports function by collecting computer warranty status details from every computer found within Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr). It determines the computer’s manufacturer, model, and serial number. It then sends these details to our endpoint management software web service which in turn collects the warranty details from each manufacturer. The results (manufacturer name, model name, warranty details, etc.) are normalized and finally returned to the client. This process only requires a few seconds to complete! 

In-Depth Insight with Device Warranty Information Reports

Device Warranty Information Reports offer a seamless integration with Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) and provides a comprehensive list of over 20 insightful reports. Companies can use these reports to streamline their budget planning, especially in multi-manufacturer environments with varying warranty terms. 

The value of WIRs normalized, user-friendly charts cannot be overstated. The amount of extra work, on your part, of normalizing warranty results would theoretically be manageable if all computers had the exact same entries. But they don’t.  

Thankfully, you can be assured that the Recast team works with each computer vendor to give you the cleanest and clearest results possible. It doesn’t matter if it is Dell, Lenovo, HP, or one of hundreds of other OEMS, Endpoint Insights automatically removes the unnecessary data and gives you the most precise warranty service level and end date information you need about each computer! 

What You Need to Get Started with Device Warranty Information Reporting

Device Warranty Information Reports pulls the Make, BIOS date, Models, and Serial Numbers from your devices.  

What If My Manufacturer Isn’t Supported? First, we support hundreds of OEMs, so this is atypical. However, if your devices are managed within Configuration Manager, there’s no need to fret if your manufacturer isn’t on our supported list. Endpoint Insights is designed to be proactive. When we encounter a new manufacturer through our API, we reach out directly to the vendor to gather the necessary details, ensuring your data is always up-to-date. 

We also have a plan B for uber rare instances when warranty data isn’t available. The WIR within Endpoint Insights still has you covered. The system defaults to using the BIOS date to give you an approximate service term, so you’re never left in the dark. 

Privacy Note: Your privacy is paramount to us. No identifying information like IP addresses, usernames, or computer names are ever sent to the Recast API. 

The Future of Warranty Reporting

Our commitment to expanding our product capabilities has been relentless. The Device Warranty Information Reporting API is not only compatible with Microsoft Intune, but also features extended support for a broader range of mobile devices. Our development team is tirelessly working to keep expanding our list of supported mobile devices and related reports. 

Additional Warranty Reporting Resources

• You Need Normalized Warranty Results 
• Dell Warranty Status Woes 
• How Old Are Our Computers? 
• Get Your Hardware Refresh Budget Right
• Cost Effective Computer Replacement Plans

Quickly see device warranty status and device age.

Proactively budget and minimize risk by seeing how old your computers are as well as their warranty status. Then make smarter decisions on which ones to replace.

Get Custom Pricing

The post How to Improve Device Warranty Information Reporting appeared first on Recast Software.

Warranty Information Reporting: A Game Changer  

Many organizations struggle to accurately track all of their hardware’s warranty statuses. Many teams spend hours manually tracking devices in a spreadsheet, entering service tags one by one into multiple OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer) websites to hunt down the warranty status. At best, some OEMs enable batch inputs of service tags. However, the batches are often constrained by number and OEM.  

Endpoint Insights takes this challenge head-on with the Warranty Information Reporting feature. This innovative tool collects computer warranty status details from every device within your Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr), including the computer’s manufacturer, model, and serial number. These details are sent to our endpoint management software web service, which collects the warranty details from each manufacturer. This process, while extensive, is lightning quick – only taking a few seconds per device.  

The result? You get a normalized report featuring manufacturer name, model name, warranty details, and more on entire collections of devices. Additionally, this data only adds a few megabytes of data per device, so it is not bloating the database in the process. The warranty data capture workload changes from hours to a few automated seconds. Armed with this information, you can anticipate when computers are nearing the end of their warranty period, allowing for precise budget planning. 

Computer Replacement Costs Calculator

Plan Your Hardware Refresh Budget with Confidence  

Adding to the power of Warranty Information Reporting, Endpoint Insights offers a powerful Computer Replacement Costs Calculator. This feature displays projected computer replacement costs over the current year and upcoming years based on the total number of machines in your ConfigMgr’s hardware inventory and your custom replacement cost data. 

With this tool, you can evaluate costs for computers based on their remaining warranty periods—be it expired or 1 to 3+ years left. This tool powerfully projects your device replacement budget, allowing you to prepare financially while minimizing the impact of unexpected costs. 

With most organizations operating on a three, four, or five-year refresh cycle for their computers, the ability to accurately list computers by age based on warranty status is profoundly helpful. Endpoint Insights provides this key information, enabling your organization to optimize the refresh cycle and allocate budget more efficiently. 

Read here for a step-by-step guide into how to find the replacement cost on a specific collection of computers, as well as an explanation of how Endpoint Insights uncovers this data.

Say goodbye to spreadsheets for software and hardware tracking.

Endpoint Insights can instantly and effortlessly provide full software and hardware inventories for you so you can make educated decisions about your next moves.

Learn More

Get Your Hardware Refresh Budget Right 

Harness the Power of Endpoint Insights 

With Endpoint Insights, organizations can confidently predict their hardware refresh budget with accuracy. The combination of Warranty Information Reporting and the Computer Replacement Costs Calculator empowers organizations to reduce budget uncertainties and proactively make decisions. 

Plan next year’s budget now and get ahead of the curve. Reach out to our team to learn more.

Learn more about Endpoint Insights:

• Read how customer Carr, Riggs & Ingram implemented Endpoint Insights and the Warranty Information Reporting tool to improve their efficiency
• Cost Effective Computer Replacement Plans
• How to Find the Replacement Cost for a Collection of Computers
• Endpoint Insights is Information

The post Get Your Hardware Refresh Budget Right  appeared first on Recast Software.

1. Which computers have reached the age where they need to be replaced?
2. What is the breakdown of laptop to desktop (or even servers) in this group of computers?
3. Which computers need to be replaced in subsequent years?

Using Endpoint Insights answers these questions quickly.

Computer Replacement Costs: Getting Started

First, you will want to create a collection with the devices in question. I am going to use the Hardware and Firmware Audit dashboard in Right Click Tools to select all the Dell computers in my environment.

I’ve selected only the manufacturer, and then when I click on the Dell pie wedge, I can select all the devices and use Right Click Tools to add them to a collection (see below).

After the collection is created, I head over to Endpoint Insights and check out the Computer Replacement Costs report.

When the report opens, you’ll notice that there are some configurable values. These are based on how long you would like to keep a computer in your environment and how much it will cost to replace. Values can be specified separately for a Laptop, Desktop, Server, or Virtual Machine.

After you’ve updated the times and costs with values that make sense for your organization, select a collection, and click on View Report. You will see a report that shows when your collection of computers will need to be replaced, and how much it’s going to cost (based on the time and cost that you entered above).

Computer Replacement Costs

As you can see, the report is showing that we are a bit behind our normal schedule when replacing Dell computers. 607 of the Dell laptops are already beyond our designated useful life and are showing as expired. Additionally, 141 of the laptops will be expiring in the next year. Total cost to replace, based on the cost we selected, will be $364,200.00 (for the expired laptops) and $88,830.00 (for the laptops that are expiring next year) respectively. We also have 7 Dell servers that are beyond our normal expected lifetime and will cost $35,000.00 to replace.

While looking at the report, you can click on any of the underlined links and see which computers make up that group, or you can export the report, or print it, whichever will be more useful for your workflow.

How Does Endpoint Insights Know the Ages of My Devices?

Endpoint Insights adds additional information to the ConfigMgr database such as the warranty start date. It uses this information by communicating with the computer manufacturers to see when a computer warranty originally started. If it can’t communicate with the manufacturer for some reason, it can also make some educated guesses about the age of the computer, such as firmware date.

With this additional information and more from Endpoint Insights, you can access the data you need.

Learn more about Endpoint Insights:

• Read how customer Carr, Riggs & Ingram implemented Endpoint Insights and the Warranty Information Reporting tool to improve their efficiency
• Cost Effective Computer Replacement Plans
• How to Find the Replacement Cost for a Collection of Computers
• Endpoint Insights is Information

Say goodbye to spreadsheets for software and hardware tracking.

Endpoint Insights can instantly and effortlessly provide full software and hardware inventories for you so you can make educated decisions about your next moves.

Learn More

The post How to Find the Replacement Cost for a Collection of Computers appeared first on Recast Software.

What is Endpoint Insights?

Endpoint Insights captures all those difficult (to impossible) details from your devices that ConfigMgr and other ITSMs do not collect natively, such as device age and warranty, network drives, and what peripherals such as monitors, docking stations and printers are attached. We then display the results in easy-to-interpret ways that help to quickly pinpoint issue areas and gain significant insights into your endpoints.

Budget with Confidence

Often as a ConfigMgr Administrator, management comes to you when they want to know the ages of devices when they are budgeting for computer replacements. Sometimes teams are asked to prepare a report every year. It gets tiresome manually looking up device models and trying to determine their ages. Some models exist for years, so how accurate can you be? This is where Endpoint Insights shines. Once deployed you can see the warranty details and the ages of each computer, along with replacement costs. With these details, you can plan which computers need to be replaced in the coming years. As a bonus, you can import the warranty details to your CMDB, such as ServiceNow, or any other ITSM solution that works with ConfigMgr.

Gain Asset Insights

At one point or another, we’ve all put in our time working at the service desk. Not all end users are tech savvy, so when you are troubleshooting computer issues or if you want to replace their computer, wouldn’t it be beneficial to know what computer they are using? This question has plagued administrators for years. Well, no more, with Endpoint Insights! In addition to computer details, you can see network drives, printers, ODBC settings, and user installed software (i.e., no UAC needed) such as Zoom, Firefox and Grammarly, that you can’t get with ConfigMgr. First line service desk technicians can efficiently assist end users because they’ll know what computer they are on and they can answer questions like, “My S: drive is missing, help!”

Stay Ahead of Issues

With Endpoint Insights you can see network drives and printer details, so replacing these and other shared assets can be smooth and seamless. There are no more surprises when you have this visibility. Endpoint Insights helps other administrators (and you) by leveraging ConfigMgr to provide security details, MECM health details, and more. Identifying and understanding potential problems is critical to staying ahead of issues.

Want to Learn More?

Endpoint Insights helps you budget with confidence, gain asset insights, and stay ahead of issues. Reach out to our team to take a tour or peruse more product features here.

Other Endpoint Insights Posts:

• Endpoint Insights is Information
• Endpoint Insights: Create a Collection of Computers with a Specific Docking Station

Webinars

• Endpoint Insights Webinar Series

The post Use Endpoint Insights to Budget with Confidence, Gain Asset Insights, and Stay Ahead of Issues appeared first on Recast Software.

Let’s face it, most IT people are not finance-savvy. However, they deal with financial issues on a daily basis. What do I mean? It’s the IT pros who generally are the ones seeing old computers and recommending when they get replaced. But, in most organizations, just because you want to replace a computer, it doesn’t mean you can! That’s why I’m going to discuss what you need to know about a computer’s life-cycle costs in order to create a comprehensive computer replacement plan.

Total Cost of Ownership

First, I’m going to share with you my insights about Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in relationship to computers. The TCO of a computer is not just the cost of the computer itself. It is much more than that. Here’s a partial list of items that I’m talking about:

• Service Desk Costs
• Infrastructure Costs
• Application Testing Costs
• Out-of-Warranty Support Costs

A quick search of the internet reveals lots of articles/blog posts on the topic of TCO, computer refresh cycles and even minimum hardware standards. Below are a few articles I found:

• Computer Replacement Cycle (2019)
• Replacing Enterprise PCs: The Fallacy of the 3-4 Year Upgrade Cycle
• Why You Need a Computer Replacement Schedule

Hidden Costs

At this point you might be asking yourself, “Why not keep a computer until it breaks?” Well, this is when more of what I call, “hidden costs,” come into play. Such as:

• Unexpected Service Desk Costs
• End-user Downtime; Overtime/Extra Employees Required Because of Downtime
• Increased Operational Costs

Below are more details about some of the factors that contribute to a computer’s overall TCO.

Service Desk Costs

There are hundreds of ways where keeping aging computers or multiple types of computer models are a financial burden on your organization. Here are some of the more common ways:

Troubleshooting Time Increases

It goes without saying that the more computer types you have, the more troubleshooting you have to do. Using a current example, Lenovo computers crash when Windows 10 2004 is installed. If you have a few of these computers, it takes longer to determine what the problem is and how to solve it. Whereas if you have a large number of these computers, then you are more likely to notice the problem when the first few Lenovo computers are rolled out with Windows 10 2004. At which time, you can stop the rollout.

Locating Drivers

This occurs frequently when moving from one version of Windows 10 to another.

Conflict Resolution Between Drivers

The time spent troubleshooting this item continually increases the older the computer.

Image Sizes

Increases in image size occurs due to the number of drivers that need to be supported. This includes:

• Increases in bandwidth used by image deployment.
• Backup costs for larger images.

Out-of-Warranty

Once a computer is out-of-warranty, there could be costs associated with stocking parts such as hard drives, RAM, monitors, etc.

Wages

Each company is different, but using the benchmarking cost for support (see Metric of the Month: Service Desk Cost per Ticket for more details) you are looking at between $0.76 to $2.50 a minute for the service desk to troubleshoot anything. A simple 15-minute ticket costs between $11.40 – $37.50, so you can see that those costs can really add up quickly!

Client Performance

Hidden costs effecting client performance can range from:

• Downtime due to hardware failure.
• Costs of overtime to recover from data loss.
• Increases in costs due to out-of-band computer replacements.
• Inability to run needed software.
• Newer software runs slower on older computers.

Wages

Can you put a price tag on these “hidden costs” when it comes to salaries? Taking the average hourly earnings of an information worker, provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Professional and business services section, you are looking at $35.15 (June 2020) an hour. Or, $8.79 for that same 15-minute troubleshooting timeframe where the service desk is trying to determine the problems that I discussed earlier. Again, costs start adding-up with each passing minute.

Application Testing

The number of workstations needed for any application rollout is based on the number of different computer configurations. Let’s say your organization replaces computers once they reach 5-years of age. If you replace 1/5 of your workstations each year, at a minimum, there are five different configurations. More likely, though, there are 10 different configurations (five desktops and five laptops). If you are a multinational company, the number of different configurations is even greater because of multiple OS languages and regional procurements.

Reducing a computer refresh cycle to every three years, reduces the number of workstations significantly. However, if you don’t have a consistent computer replacement plan in place, then application testing costs soar.

Increased Costs in Operation

In this section, I’m giving you two examples of how older computers can have a negative impact on operational costs.

Take these two Intel processors: i7-920 (2008) and i7-10700 (2020). Between the two, there is a difference of 65W based on thermal design power (TDP). If you replaced 10,000 of the older processors, you would see a 650 KW/H savings (65*10000 = 650 000W). What does this amount to? At $0.10 KW/H, that is $65/hour in savings between the two processors. If you assume that they are on 7.5 hours a day, and there are 200 working days a year, that’s $97,500K in savings. This is what I mean: $65*7.5*200 =$97,500. You can definitely see the money saved by picking the right (newer) processor.

Here’s the second example. We all know that if you lock a running computer away in a closed room all day, that room gets hot. Now take several hundred or thousands of computers in a building. They certainly increase the air conditioning (AC) costs in the building and decrease the heating costs. At the end of the day, though, it’s the AC costs that outweigh any savings from the heat generated by these computers.

As you look at processor specs, you see that some computers run hotter than others, so there is a trade-off. But, without a doubt, upgrading to a newer CPU from a 10-year-old machine, gives you not only better performance, but it’s more cost effective when it comes to AC and power-consumed savings.

Computer Replacement Plan

I’m sure by now you understand that there is a lot more to a computer’s cost than just the initial capital cost of the computer. Looking at the total cost of ownership, including what I described above, will help you to come up with the right course of action for your organization. Here’s a link TCO.xlsx to a simple spreadsheet that you can use to help determine what is the appropriate computer replacement plan for your company.

Once you know the TCO, or computer life-cycle cost, you can use the Computer Replacement Costs report in Endpoint Insights to help with budget planning. It identifies which computers need replacing and when they need to be replaced.

Additional Information

Check out our post on Warranty Information Reporting within Endpoint Insights for more information:

• Did You Know: Warranty Information Reporting

If you have any questions about computer replacement plans or want to see a demo of Warranty Information Reporting, please contact me @GarthMJ.

The post Cost Effective Computer Replacement Plans appeared first on Recast Software.

I was recently asked, “How does Recast’s Endpoint Insights tool differ from some of the other solutions out there?” There are several ways that this tool is different from other solutions. For one, Endpoint Insights has a fully automated setup (a “set it” and “forget it” deployment), built-in reports (both Power BI and SSRS), and it works with any vendor (Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc.).

I think, though, that its most valuable feature is that it gives you normalized warranty results. This means that you don’t have to manually review each computer’s warranty expiry date or compare results from different vendors because Endpoint Insights automatically gives you the clear answers you need.

Normalized Warranty Results

What do I mean by, “Normalized Warranty Results?” As an example, let’s look at the warranty for this Dell Latitude 5400 (above screenshot). On the Dell Warranty Status look-up page, it says that the warranty expires on January 29, 2023. This is the normalized warranty result, and it is exactly what you would expect to see. When you click on the View Warranty Details link, however, you see something very different. 

There are four different warranty service levels for this one computer. These are:

• ProSupport Plus for PCs and Tablets
• Complete Care / Accidental Damage
• Keep Your Hard Drive Service
• Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis (Consumer Customer)/ Next Business Day Onsite After Remote Diagnosis (Commercial Customer)

Dell normalizes all these warranty service levels on their warranty status look-up page and tells you upfront that the warranty for this computer expires on January 29, 2023.

API Results

All the warranty reporting tools that I know about, including Endpoint Insights, rely on the Dell Warranty Status API. The API results are different from what appears on the warranty status look-up page.

If you parse the Dell API results, you see just about the same details as the information on the Warranty Details page (see above), but herein lies the problem with most solutions. They return all warranty states (I highlighted each of the states in the API results below) leaving it up to you to determine what results you want to see, and worse yet, you now have to adjust your reports to filter out all of the unwanted details for each computer.

This is what the API results look like:

[{“id”:xxxxxxxxx,”serviceTag”:”xxxxxxx”,”orderBuid”:11,”shipDate”:”2020-01-28T06:00:00Z”,”productCode”:”>/030″,”localChannel”:”42″,”productId”:”latitude-14-5400-laptop”,”productLineDescription”:”LATITUDE 5400″,”productFamily”:”Unknown”,”systemDescription”:”Latitude 5400″,”productLobDescription”:”Latitude”,”countryCode”:”US”,”duplicated”:false,”invalid”:false,”entitlements”:[{“itemNumber”:”997-8366″,”startDate”:”2020-01-28T06:00:00.651Z”,”endDate”:”2021-01-29T05:59:59.652Z”,”entitlementType”:”INITIAL”,”serviceLevelCode”:”ND”,”serviceLevelDescription”:”Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis (Consumer Customer)/ Next Business Day Onsite After Remote Diagnosis (Commercial Customer)”,”serviceLevelGroup”:5},{“itemNumber”:”997-8382″,”startDate”:”2020-01-28T06:00:00.098Z”,”endDate”:”2023-01-29T05:59:59.1Z”,”entitlementType”:”INITIAL”,”serviceLevelCode”:”KK”,”serviceLevelDescription”:”Keep Your Hard Drive Service”,”serviceLevelGroup”:11},{“itemNumber”:”997-8380″,”startDate”:”2020-01-28T06:00:00.267Z”,”endDate”:”2023-01-29T05:59:59.269Z”,”entitlementType”:”INITIAL”,”serviceLevelCode”:”PY”,”serviceLevelDescription”:”ProSupport Plus for PCs and Tablets”,”serviceLevelGroup”:8},{“itemNumber”:”997-8383″,”startDate”:”2020-01-28T06:00:00.891Z”,”endDate”:”2023-01-29T05:59:59.893Z”,”entitlementType”:”INITIAL”,”serviceLevelCode”:”CC”,”serviceLevelDescription”:”Complete Care / Accidental Damage”,”serviceLevelGroup”:11},{“itemNumber”:”997-8381″,”startDate”:”2021-01-29T06:00:00.497Z”,”endDate”:”2023-01-30T05:59:59.498Z”,”entitlementType”:”EXTENDED”,”serviceLevelCode”:”ND”,”serviceLevelDescription”:”Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis (Consumer Customer)/ Next Business Day Onsite After Remote Diagnosis (Commercial Customer)”,”serviceLevelGroup”:5}]}]

In the table below, you can see how I extracted the relevant details from the API.

Each result, for the most part, is for a different warranty service level. They also happen to have similar start and end dates. Pay close attention, however, to the first and last results. The first result is for the standard one-year warranty (yellow) and the last result shows the extended 2-year warranty (red) for the same service level. If you look at the Warranty Details, again, you can see that both results were combined in the last service level.

In reporting, it is possible to filter out the second, third and fourth API results (Keep Your Hard Drive Service, ProSupport Plus for PCs and Tablets and Complete Care / Accidental Damage). This leaves you with the first and last results for Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis (Consumer Customer)/ Next Business Day Onsite After Remote Diagnosis (Commercial Customer). If you only list the last result, the warranty start date is in the future, Jan. 29, 2021, so that doesn’t work. Keeping both results, however, muddies-up your reports. The best option is to normalize the results by combining both the first and the last results.

A Clearer Warranty Picture

Now that you know how detailed the Dell API results are (this is also true of most computer vendors) you understand why this warranty information needs to be normalized. You must remove all the extra details to have a clear picture. This includes removing Dell Digital Delivery dates that are sometimes found in the API results. Not sure what I mean by digital delivery dates? Look at this post, Dell Warranty Status Woes.

The amount of extra work, on your part, of normalizing warranty results would be manageable if all computers had the exact same entries, but they don’t. On the bright side, you can be assured that the Recast team works with each computer vendor to give you the best results possible. It doesn’t matter if it is Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. Endpoint Insights automatically removes the unnecessary data and gives you the most precise warranty service level and end date information you need about each computer!

Dell Normalized Warranty Results

Lenovo Normalized Warranty Results

The above screenshots are reports for a Dell and a Lenovo computer from Endpoint Insights. See the normalized results? No matter the vendor, Endpoint Insights automatically gives you a clear and accurate understanding about your computers when the warranty status is checked. Having normalized warranty results means you have less work to do with reporting. By the way, Endpoint Insights comes with built-in Power BI and SSRS reports.

Please contact us to learn more about Endpoint Insights.

Additional Warranty Reporting Resources

• How to Improve Warranty Information Reporting
• Dell Warranty Status Woes 
• How Old Are Our Computers? 
• Get Your Hardware Refresh Budget Right
• Cost Effective Computer Replacement Plans

The post You Need Normalized Warranty Results appeared first on Recast Software.