View Customer Assets

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Identify the key types of asset and where they apply.
  
• Locate and view assets.
  
• Group assets using Asset Viewer.
  

Assets and Asset Types

Brooks Bacher, customer service representative at Infiwave, knows that even when an order is complete, the work isn’t done. 

Customers often call to make changes to past orders, upgrade or downgrade their existing products and subscriptions, or move items to a different account. Brooks needs to adjust these assets in a timely, accurate way to keep customers happy. 

An asset is an item of value that somebody owns. You may know assets as products or services in a customer portfolio. In Salesforce, assets are basically the same thing. They’re products or subscribed services that a customer acquires during the order-capture process. Generally, assets are created when an order is submitted for an account or contact. 

Industries CPQ extends the standard Salesforce asset to support discounts, special pricing, and customer preferences. When you create a quote or order, the validation process takes into account any assets already owned by the customer. For example, if a customer requests a streaming service, the process determines if they already own the technology required for the service, such as a smart TV.

You can view assets on the Related tab of the customer account, which shows two lists of assets.

• Service Asset Management displays the assets allocated to a service account. For example, if a gas supply is delivered to the Dallas office, the service account for that office shows the asset in the Service Asset Management list.
  
• Billed Asset Management shows the assets for which a billing account is the same as the parent account. For example, although the Dallas office uses the gas supply, the asset is charged to the customer’s central billing account. So, the asset displays in the Billed Asset Management list.
  

To see which list an asset features in, check the associated service and billing accounts. 

In the example screen, the parent account for Acme is the billing account, so you see all the assets that are billed to Acme.

As the example shows, the billing and service accounts are the same. For this reason, you see the same asset in both lists. To view the service and billing accounts associated with the asset, along with any attributes set on the asset, click the blue information icon.

If you want to learn more about the different types of asset in Industries CPQ, refer to the Asset-Based Ordering Visualforce Pages link in Resources.

Active Assets

In the Industries CPQ Orders module, you learned that it’s possible to submit orders with a delayed start date. For instance, a customer might place an order for a new gas supply, but they only want to start the service when they move in a month later. Also, customers may request a service move or disconnection on a specific, future date. 

To check the planned activity for a specific date, use the active date filter on the asset lists. This filter shows only those assets active from the date you specify and onwards. Here’s an example screen.

By default, the active date shows today’s date. Change the date filter to automatically show only the active assets for that date.

Asset Viewer

Some customers, like large businesses with multiple branches, may have many assets. For these customers, you may find it easier to view their assets using Asset Viewer on the account. This allows you to search and group the customer assets. This screen shows Asset Viewer and multiple assets associated with an account.

You can group assets by service account, quantity, charges, total, or name. Your implementation team can extend the grouping options to suit your business needs.

Let’s take a look at another example screen. Here, Asset Viewer shows all the tablet assets for the Acme billing account. 

Notice the assets are grouped by branch or service account (1), and the list displays only those assets that contain the word “tablet” in their name or description, as specified in the search (2).

In Asset Viewer, you can also perform advanced searches for assets. Here’s an example of an advanced search that filters assets based on three conditions. 

This search finds all tablet assets with a recurring charge greater than $30 that were installed before July 1st 2022.

Once you’ve found the asset you’re looking for, view details like purchase and activation dates, price, and any specific configurations. You can also check the current provisioning status of the asset:

• New means the order is placed but the asset isn’t provisioned or activated yet.
  
• Active means the asset is activated for customer use.
  
• Deleted means the asset is no longer available to the customer.
  

The Related tab on the asset shows the change history. Here, you can view past amendments to the asset.

You’ve now learned the basics of assets in Industries CPQ. 

Brooks loves that she can track her customers’ existing products and services. She also knows that customer satisfaction depends on her ability to resolve their requests, even long after their order is complete. 

Next, you’ll explore asset amendments, which you use to make changes to the assets on a customer’s account.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Asset Viewer in Industries CPQ
• Salesforce Help: Asset-Based Ordering Visualforce Pages