Supplies Stock Management

🤦 🤦 🤦 Combodo's customers only from version 1.1.0 😎 😎 😎

This extension adds to iTop the capability to manage stock of various elements, which have no identifier or none that you want to handle.

Stock Management extension introduces the capability to manage stock of items for which you don't have or don't want to track any unique identifier.

• Such stock element can be of different type: stock of RJ45, stock of cables, stock of video cards… defined through a simple typology class “Stock Type”.
• A Stock follows a life cycle: once created, it can be supplied (ie available quantity can be increased) and quantity can be consumed.
  • Stock supply and consumption can be done either through a life cycle action, which keep track of stock movements,
  • Or through a Ticket which can consume or supply one or multiple stocks (quantity is specified on the link between the stock and the Ticket)

If the Stock falls below the user defined Warning level, the stock is moved to Empty state and a notification may be sent, if configured.

When listing the stocks, the empty ones are highlighted:

The stock moves back to the Restocked state if enough quantity is added to the stock.

• No control on consumption exceeding the Stock, the quantity can become negative
• If Ticket using Stocks are archived or deleted, the Stock current quantity can become wrong, especially before iTop 3.1.1 (See Q&A for more details)
• Do not modify StockMove quantity and stockelement_id as this is not handle for Stock computation. It's not allowed in the UI, so don't do it by REST or customization.
• Direct creation of a StockMove or an lnkStockElementToTicket on a Stock is not prevented if this consumption exceed the Stock remaining quantity, leading to a negative stock value. Consumption from the Stock itself or from a Ticket is protected.

• iTop version depends on extension version used, check history for this.

Use the Standard installation process for this extension.

No specific configuration parameter is required for the extension.

The “Stocks” menu available under the Configuration management section allows you to list, filter and search the stock element objects that have been created in iTop.

From a list or the detail screen of Stock, clicking on the “New” button displays the following form:

A stock element has the following attributes…

New	Restocked	Empty or nearly

New type of stock can be created on the fly while editing a stock, with the + button. The Configuration Manager can see all Stock types at once in the dashboard displayed by the menu Data administration / Typology configuration

It's possible to provision and consume elements in a stock without doing it though Tickets, this will be stored as Movements.

From a particular Stock, choose the action you want to perform:

• Allowed users (which includes the Configuration Manager) can supply the Stock through the “Add to stock” transition.
• The Quantity must be specified, by default 100 is displayed. It cannot be negative.
• A Comment can be entered.
• Once done, the Stock detail screen is displayed again with updated information:

• “Add to stock” action can be done any time.

• Allowed users can consume from any Stock, using the transition ““Consume from Stock”
• Action is only available when the Stock status is “Restocked”, meaning the Current quantity is higher than the Warning level

• The quantity must be specified, by default 1 is proposed.
• A comment can be entered.
• Once done, the Stock detail screen is displayed again with updated information

Another mean to use the Stocks, is to handle them through the “Stocks” tab available in the iTop console, on any Ticket class.

• From that Ticket, go to the Stocks tab and add applicable Stocks, in the link, specifies:
  • The required Quantity (can only be positive) - mandatory
  • Action is usually to Get from stock but Ticket can also be used to provision a Stock
  • An optional Comment

As soon as submitted, the stock current quantity is updated in background.

Current quantity is the difference between the sum of all quantities that have been added to the stock element and the sum of all quantities consumed. It is computed on the fly, as soon as a Stock Move or a link between a Ticket and a Stock, is created, modified or deleted.

The extension doesn't automatically create any notification. Should you wish to notify the stock owner or any other contact that the quantity in stock has fallen below the threshold, ask your iTop administrator to create the notification first.

For that purpose, a trigger on entering a state must be created, like:

The associated trigger action is standard. Only point to keep in mind: the owner of the stock element is defined by the attribute owner_id. Destination of the mail can be, therefore, defined like this:

SELECT Person WHERE id= :this->owner_id

Not displayed Stock fields

Those fields are not displayed by default. The Cumulated quantity attribute stores the global quantity of objects that have been added to the current stock element. This figure never decreases.

Quantity and Comment if displayed in a list, will show the last values which was entered for them, it's meaningless. They are just used temporarily to create a Stock Move from the Stock it-self, in a kind of more intuitive manner than through the Stock Moves tab and a manual creation.

Q: What if my stock current quantity is wrong?
A: If the Stock quantity displayed in iTop does not correspond to what is truly in your stock after an inventory, just “Add to Stock” or “Remove from Stock” the required quantity to align them again, and in the comment explain that this move correspond to a realignment after inventory

More background details

• Since version 1.1.0, computation of stock current quantity and status is done on the fly by adding or removing a quantity.
• It's a delta computation. Also we keep track of all moves, we don't compute their sum each time.
• It is supposed to be same as the sum of all Stock Movements on that Stock, to which iTop adds the sum of all Tickets usage of that Stock.
• The full computation is performed by the method ComputeStock, executed only when editing the Stock and its Ticket links together.
• From iTop 3.1.1, it is possible de deactivated the edition of Ticket links combined with the edition of the Stock itself, in which case ComputeStock would never be called.
• If a Ticket using the Stock is archived, a full computation would change the Stock current quantity and make it wrong.

Q: What if I want to display a image associated to each stock?
A: Add an image attribute to the Stock element class and make it the class image.