Technology Types are how Strategy Overview understands your data. When you map your configurations, the platform learns which of them are workstations, which are switches, which are firewalls, and so on across the things you support day to day.
Attach a group to a type and its columns, section, icon and budget classes are set in one step, instead of you configuring every group by hand for every client. Strategy Overview maintains the standard types and improves them over time, so an improvement we make reaches your groups without you doing anything.
Why this matters more than it looks
Types are what more of our automation and newer features are being built on. Auto-budgeting runs on them today, auto-grading and a set of standard reporting widgets come next, and more will follow.
We'd recommend mapping your standard asset groups onto Technology Types. It isn't compulsory, and a group that isn't attached to a type keeps working exactly as it does now. Types are simply where the lifecycle and asset management capability is going, so that's where you want your workstations, servers and network gear.
We're happy to do this with you, or for you. If you'd rather not work through it alone, get in touch and we'll go through your groups together.
Types and standalone groups
The two do different jobs, and most MSPs end up with both.
Technology Types handle the standard asset lifecycle work: workstations, servers, network gear, the things every MSP manages. They arrive with the columns and the automation you need to do lifecycle and asset management properly, they behave the same way for every client, and each sits in its own section of the Technology module.
Standalone groups are for the other data you want represented in Strategy Overview. A camera or DVR system, SSL certificates, anything else in your systems that belongs in a client conversation. You define their columns, you can move them between sections, and they work as related items on your Assessment and as data sources for Arya.
If you're setting Strategy Overview up for the first time, start with the types. Map your standard asset groups and get those working first. Standalone groups are the more advanced of the two, and they're easier to get right once you've seen how types behave, so bring them in later when you find data you want to carry that doesn't belong on a type.
On a typed group, budget classes take the place of the Class column. Class columns keep working exactly as they do on standalone groups.
Nothing changes until you attach a type. Your existing groups stay standalone until you deliberately move them, and completed Reports are never touched. There's no migration to run and no deadline.
Your budget figures are safe too. Items in a newly typed group arrive on the Custom class, which means nothing is calculated for them until you decide otherwise. Auto-Budgeting Technology Assets covers what to do from there.
Mapping your configuration types
Types are mapped in your integration settings, on the Configuration Types screen, not on the Technology Types screen in Settings.
Technology Types work with any integration that syncs Configurations, which covers your PSA and IT Glue. Hudu uses asset layouts rather than Configurations, so types don't apply to Hudu data.
Important: if you're already syncing configuration types, the suggestions don't appear on their own. Run Auto-Suggest, then review every suggestion before you save. This is the step that decides how each group behaves from then on.
Several configuration types can share one type. Laptops and managed workstations both belong on Workstation. You also don't have to map everything, and leaving an old or unused configuration type unmapped is a perfectly good decision.
Each Technology Type can only be fed from one source. If workstations reach you from both your PSA and IT Glue, you have to choose which of them maps to the Workstation type. You can't map both, so this is the same source of truth decision you make elsewhere in your integration settings, and it's worth making deliberately.
Purchase date and warranty are pre-selected for you on this screen. Purchase date is the one that matters most, because without it there is nothing for auto-budgeting to work a replacement year out from.
What happens with those starting class values depends on the account:
A new tenant: the values apply to devices straight away.
An existing tenant: your devices stay on the Custom class until you assign them to a budget class yourself, which is what we'd suggest doing. See Auto-Budgeting Technology Assets.
After you save, move on to field selection and populate as many fields as you can. New fields turn up from time to time, and anything mapped there shows up on your typed groups. Then choose your companies and statuses and import your configurations.
If you need something different
Columns are predefined on each type so the same data comes back in the same shape for every client, which is what the automation and the standard reporting are built on.
If you have a group that needs its own shape, there are two good ways to handle it. Leave it as a standalone group, which is exactly what those are for. Or duplicate a standard type into a Custom type and change your copy, which keeps full control on your own version. The one thing worth knowing about a Custom type is that our later improvements to the standard type won't reach it.
For most MSPs the standard types already cover workstations, servers and network gear, so the custom route comes up less often than you'd think.
Note: automatic grading from Technology Types isn't part of this release. Grades are still set by hand or by Arya.