Demo: Create your own asset system with Microsoft Lists

- [Instructor] Alright, let's talk about building your own asset management software. Now if you have a Microsoft 365 license, then chances are you have Microsoft Lists. If not, you can upgrade easily and be able to get it. But it's a great app for a lot of different things. So we'll go ahead and click Lists here and you can see I've already built a list. Now before I dig into this one, let me show you how easy it is to create this, 'cause there's a template for it. When I go here to new list and I go to Asset manager, it's going to create the majority of the content that you see there. You can see it as part of the default. It's Device photo and Asset tag, Status, Manufacturer, Model, Asset type, Color, Purchase date, Serial number, Current owner, Due date, even Condition, all of that is in there. I'm going to go to the one we've already created and edit it. So you can start blank, which is great. Or you can take one that maybe somebody's already started in Excel and you can import it in, which is also really great and very easy to be able to do. And we can see we have import export capabilities. So what's been important to me as I've looked at this is Location, Asset type and Tag status, Manufacturer, Model, Color, Serial number, Purchase price, a lot of the same things that you saw, and Condition. There's other ones that I've left off. So if I take a look here at add column, it'll ask me, "Hey, what would you like to add a column on? Do you want to put in a person or number? Make it a yes no, add a location, an image, maybe even an average rating." All of these are things we can drop in. We could also drop in a hyperlink if that is taking us to another site or something else we'd like to do. I also can very easily add new columns. So I'm going to go here to add a new item to this and it will say, "Okay, what is the asset type?" Now here's Laptop, Room Camera and Monitor. Let's say that's not enough. I'd like to have some more things in there. So I'm going to cancel. I'm going to go to Asset type, I'm going to go to Column settings and I'm going to go to Edit. Now if I take a look here on the right, here's Asset type, the Description, it is a Choice and that's what I've put in. But I also want to add things like a tablet. So I'm going to say choice number four, click. Let's put in a tablet, I think that's a great one. I could also add a cell phone and I can choose the color for that cell phone. Let's say I picked this nice sort of green, awesome. I can go through and I can add as many of the different choices that I would like to add here. I can also allow people to add values manually if I like. I'd rather not, I want to keep these categories 'cause it's going to make it a lot easier to manage this and do this later. I also have some additional options, like I can use a calculated value or allow multiple selections. I am requiring that this column contains information and I can also choose to enforce unique values, meaning I'm not going to allow people to type in their own stuff. It has to have the values that we see here. I'm going to leave that blank for now 'cause I'm going to show you if there isn't what I'm looking for, how I can add it, if you choose. The other nice thing is everything we see here, I can also turn into a form. So if I have a relatively new help desk, I can say Device Check in Form, we'll say actually Check In/Check Out form. Great. And this is a form that will be used for whenever people will go to check devices in or out. And we can see that our column here on the right matches the same things that we were asking earlier. We can even pick a cool theme if we'd like. We can create our own styles. I can do different settings, we can accept responses and with themes, I could even go here and say, "Hey, I want my own background," or things along that line. And then when I'm done I can preview it and take a look. This is what that form will look like. It'll say, "Hey, Steven Rose, when you submit this form, the owner will see your name and email address here," great. And somebody can go in and say, "Yes, my asset type is a brand new laptop that I got. My location is home." When I scan the asset tag, it can go in or I can drop in the number here. Its status is no longer going to be available. It is going to say not available because hey, I'm using it or in use or whatever it is you would like to do. And we're going to say under manufacturers, notice I've not forced a manufacturer here. So I could say maybe it's an Apple and it's going to say, "Hey, Apple's not there. Do you want to add this?" I absolutely do. And the model, it's going to be a MacBook Air 13 inch 2024 version, great. And it's going to say, "What's the color for it?" And I'm going to say that the color is the midnight blue. It's going to say, "Hey, that color's not there, you want to add it?" Great, I can add in my serial number here, we'll just make one up. Notice I forced it there and it's telling me only has to be X amount of numbers. So I'll have to go back and see what that is, but it is forcing it and what rule I put in there. I can put in my purchase price is two grand and I can pick the purchase date, which is today. PO number is number one, condition is brand new. And I will hit submit and it's going to tell me I can't leave that blank, so that's fine. So let's go take a look at serial number and see what we have in there. When I go to serial number and I go to the Column setting and I go to Edit, it's telling me that there has to be, ah, six digits after that first piece. Great. So let's put that in. So we'll do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Oh, I put it in the wrong place. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Awesome. There, see, now it's validated itself and I can go ahead and hit Submit. So really easy to go in and put in this. The key thing is just really figuring out what do I want in here? What are all the different asset types? If I'm using those sticky labels that you will then scan that you can't pull off to make putting in that asset tag number easier. What statuses make sense? Is it in use, available, requires repair? What manufacturers will we be working with? Once again, I can go here to Column settings, Edit. I can add a manufacturer, which is great. So I'm going to go ahead and add choices. I don't want people any more to add values automatically. So I'll say Apple is my first choice. And then I've also picked, Polycom was there earlier, great. So we'll say Poly and we will do Dell. These are all ones that were typed in manually that now I can force those. Lenovo and that should cover all of them, great. I can even give 'em all colors and say that one is blue and Apple is green, Polycom is red, and Dell is going to be that nice dark green, great. And we're not allowing people to add values manually, as we can see, awesome. They cannot pick multiple selections. The column does have to require data, great, and it's a series of dropdown buttons. I'm going to say save. And now when I refresh again, it's really important to refresh. When I go to create a new item and I go down to the Model and the Manufacturer, we're going to see all of those choices there. That is using Microsoft List to create your own. Finally, the last thing to be aware of is this automate functionality in which we can create rules around automation and integrate this into power apps, into Power Automate or Power BI to visualize the list for power automate, create a flow, see your flow or configure flows. And for power apps to see all the apps. Customize the form and create an app that can say as soon as somebody orders it, they get the form, it goes to purchasing, it gets approved, et cetera. There may be a variety of different things that you want to do to keep this simple. And then finally, I could even export this to Excel to a CSV, to a CSV with Schema or even export to Power BI. I'm going to choose to export it to Excel. I'm going to go ahead and open that file. I'm going to choose Enable, and boom, there it is. We can see, I can once again filter by any of these, I have it here in the spreadsheet. And this can become important because I want to take a look and see, hey, how much am I spending so far this year on all these devices? And I can see what my budget is. And very simply here, see that we've already spent $35,000 of that budget. 21,000 for a laptop, which seems a bit much, so I probably want to take a look at that number and see if that's correct. That sounds like it's an error. So I can go back and take a look and go, yeah, that should not be 21,000 at all. So let's go into this bad boy and let's go ahead and fix that and change that and edit that up. That's great, it helps us to figure out these issues and problems. Let's try $2,100. Yes, that's going to work much better and then we'll hit save. That's going to adjust itself and then when we re-export, we'll see those new numbers come up. That is building your own administrative system in Microsoft List.