New to Lansweeper/Questions

[cdawson]

I've been testing out Lansweeper and it looks good. I have a few questions that I haven't found the answer to in the manual or in the forum, at least for this version.

It looks like the scans base whether or not they've seen the Windows machine before based on its computer name. We often reimage and rename computers when they are reallocated to different offices and departments. Is there a way to change what it uses as the identifier during the scanning, perhaps the SMBIOSAssetTag or the serial/service tag of the machine so that if we rename a computer it uses the same record and will keep all the notes and custom fields already entered?

Also, is there a way to modify the "Search" bar so it also searches by SMBIOSAssetTag values?

Thanks.

[Susan_A · Accepted solution]

As someone contacted us via email about this forum topic, I'd like to post an update to it:

The forum topic you're referring to is from 2010 and no longer current. If you are referring to Windows computers specifically, there is a built-in Lansweeper feature now that tracks computer name changes. Information on it can be found here: https://www.lansweeper.com/knowledgebase/windows-rename-detection/

Rename detection uses a Windows computer's MAC address, model and serial number combination to determine whether the machine already has a Lansweeper asset. If a match is found with a machine that has a different computer or domain name, the existing Lansweeper webpage is updated with the new name and a comment about the rename is added to the client machine's Comments tab.

If you are referring to non-Windows instead: a non-Windows device's name is not used as part of its unique identifier. If a non-Windows device is renamed, its existing Lansweeper webpage is updated. For non-Windows devices, we don't log the name changes in comments though. More info on how Lansweeper uniquely identifies assets can be found in this article: https://www.lansweeper.com/knowledgebase/how-lansweeper-uniquely-identifies-assets/

[Hemoco]

I've been testing out Lansweeper and it looks good. I have a few questions that I haven't found the answer to in the manual or in the forum, at least for this version.

It looks like the scans base whether or not they've seen the Windows machine before based on its computer name. We often reimage and rename computers when they are reallocated to different offices and departments. Is there a way to change what it uses as the identifier during the scanning, perhaps the SMBIOSAssetTag or the serial/service tag of the machine so that if we rename a computer it uses the same record and will keep all the notes and custom fields already entered?

We recommend keeping the same name for the asset during it's entire lifetime.
To solve your problem you can rename the computer from the configuration tool BEFORE the re-image.

Also, is there a way to modify the "Search" bar so it also searches by SMBIOSAssetTag values?

I'll suggest to add this to the wishlist.