Inventory allows management of 'Locations'. Locations are used two main reasons: 1. To allow
assignment of People, Computers and Hardware to a certain location. (i.e.: People in a department
or on a certain floor in your building, Servers and routers in the communications room, Hardware
belonging to the QA dept. and so on). 2. To allow delegation of permissions to the location heirarchy.
Locations are arranged in a heirarchy which you define. It's basically a tree-shaped structure that
represents your organization. This heirarchy allows to categorize hardware and persons by each location.
Further, it allows the admin to restrict a certain user to interaction with computers and all sub components
from a certain point in the tree and down. This is a user specific setting which defines where user permissions
start. If user 'Mike' is granted editor permissions for the location 'R&D' (and all sub locations), then
that user will only be able to view computers, OS and hardware that are assigned to those locations.
This is more elaborately explained in the "User Permissions" section.
The Locations menu allow management of the Locations tree heirarchy:
Locations List-
The locations list will show a tree of locations, with each sub-location indented under its
parent location. Other than that, the list acts as all other lists in Inventory, allowing
selection of items in the list for viewing, editing, and deletion.
Viewing a Location-
When clicking a location in the list you'll be presented with the location view on the right
side of the screen. The view shows basic information about the location, and also lists all
hardware associated with that location.
Adding a Location-
The add dialog is simple, you need to specify the new location name, and choose from the list of
defined locations if you wish to put it as a child to another location. If you chose not to assign
a parent location, the new location will appear as a root location. There is no limitation on the amount
of root locations you can have. Also, note that the locations listbox is also displayed as a heirarchy
indenting child locations under their parents. All location listboxes will be displayed in this manner.
Editing a Location-
You can edit a location by clicking it in the locations list, and clicking the 'Edit' button.
The dialog is similar to the 'Add Location' dialog. There is one limitation, you cannot move
a parent location to be a child of one of his own decendents (since this will effectively
create a loop).
Additionaly the edit dialog also allows to edit the hardware assigned to the current location.
Deleting a Location-
Deleting a location is done in the standard way using the top toolbar. Note, that
when deleting a parent location, all child locations will also be deleted in a
recursive manner - effectively deleting the whole branch from that location down. You need to
be wary of this operation, since if a user is limited by permission span to one of the locations
in the brach, that user will automatically be 'promoted' to unrestricted (span) access.
