Linked assets

Assets may be associated with other assets.

Example: A fire hydrant should be linked to the water lines that feed it. Telephone poles should be linked to the telephone wires that run across them. Manhole covers may be connected to the streets they lie in as well as the pipes beneath them. A building might be linked to the furniture and equipment within it. Trucks and other heavy equipment might be linked to the shop or garage where they are stored when not in use.

Agencies establish practices regarding which types of assets link to one another. Once an asset is linked, the relationships between them can be viewed to better track and manage changes and more easily find assets that relate to each other.

Parent-child relationships may be created between assets. A parent asset has dependent assets or children that would not exist without the parent. For example, a building is a parent asset to an HVAC unit. When a parent-child relationship is made, a child-parent relationship is established at the same time.

The combined relationship of assets to each other is called an asset hierarchy. This hierarchy is displayed in a tree view on the Linked asset tab of the asset record. This view shows the current asset record as the parent, as well as any child assets. Child assets are organized by asset type.

When a plus sign appears by an asset, you can select it to show the children of that asset. If you want to view a child asset as a the top-level parent in the hierarchy, right-click the asset and select Move up (you may need to select Move up more than once).

An asset that is a parent to one asset may be a child to another asset. For example, a traffic signal is a parent to a luminar and a child to a control box.