Departments

If you've viewed the page on Managing Contacts then you already know that Departments are the true "owners" of assets within the data center. The reasoning behind this is that when John in Accounting sets up a server, and then gets a job somewhere else a year later, the server doesn't leave with him. It really belongs to Accounting. For that reason, Contacts are associated with a Department (and can even be listed for multiple departments) but the ownership itself goes to the Department.

Departments are represented in the fac_Department, and Contact associations to Departments are stored in fac_DeptContacts.

Following is a list of fields and their meanings:

• DeptID - Automatically assigned by the system, it is simply an auto_increment field within MySQL
• Name - The Display Name for the department. It can be as long as 255 characters, but if you make something really long then the canned reports won't line up very well. Basically stick to 40 characters or less and you won't have to rewrite your own reports.
• ExecSponsor - This is the "boss" for the department. It can be blank, but we typically use it to keep track of who to go to in a department if you need to escalate a business, rather than technical issue. For example, you are going to change your policies in the data center and need to communicate it on a business level.
• SDM / Service Delivery Manager - This is the account manager within your organization that would deal with this customer. It is still optional.
• Classification - An enumerated list that you specify in the Configuration screen - the default is "ITS", "Internal", "Customer". Some reports subtotal based upon these classifications.

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