CC · Core Concepts
Hardware
Lifecycle, adding a device, assigning it to a person.
6 min read
Hardware covers any physical device — laptops, monitors, network equipment, printers, and anything else with a serial number. Each hardware record tracks its status, cost, warranty expiry, purchase date, the people it's assigned to, and which folder it lives in. A device is either added by hand or synced in from Intune/Entra when Microsoft 365 is connected; synced devices are read-only for the fields Microsoft owns.
- 01
Open Hardware → Add Hardware
The Hardware list has tabs for In service, All, Active, Nearing end of life, Past end of life and Retired. You can filter by type, by management (Intune-managed or registered only) and by tag, and search by name, serial number, vendor, model or tag. Spares live on their own Spares page, not here.
- 02
Fill in Identity, Details and Purchase & warranty
Name, serial number/asset tag and folder go under Identity; type, vendor and model under Details; cost, purchase date and warranty expiry under Purchase & warranty. Required: name, serial number, type and purchase date, plus any custom field your organisation has made required. Cost, vendor, model, folder and warranty expiry are optional. The type list includes any hardware types your organisation has added in Settings → Custom Data → Types. A new device starts as Active — there's no status to pick.
- 03
Add purchase and warranty info
The purchase date (which can't be in the future) drives a device's lifecycle — it reaches end of life at purchase date plus your organisation's device lifecycle (Settings → Organization → Defaults, owner only; default 3 years, adjustable from 1 to 20). Change that setting and every device's end-of-life date is recalculated across the org — it is also the age at which the end-of-life alert fires and the Hardware Lifecycle report flags a device. Warranty expiry never changes a device's status or its end of life, but AssetSort warns you as a warranty approaches its end. Leave it blank for items that don't have one.
- 04
Assign it, attach documents, then save
You can assign people straight away in the form's Assignment section — a device can be shared, with no limit — or later from the device's Assignments tab. A device synced from Intune takes its assignee from Microsoft and can't be reassigned here. Invoices and warranty cards can be uploaded with the record — up to 25 files, 5MB each (PDF, JPEG, PNG or WebP on the form; the Documents tab also takes text and Word files).
- 05
Find your way around the device page
A device's page has four tabs: Overview (its details, "Replace by" — the end-of-life date — the licences and certificates linked to it, and device health for Microsoft 365 devices), Assignments, Documents, and History (its alert history and activity log). A Microsoft 365 device's Overview also lists the Entra groups it's a member of (and the licences they grant), and Source data → View raw data shows the raw Intune and Entra records behind it. The side panel shows who it's assigned to (Manage) and its tags (Manage tags). Edit hardware sits in the page header, with Plan retirement beside it until a plan exists or the device is retired.
- 06
Plan and record a retirement
Retirement is a decision, not just something that happens when a device disappears. Choose Plan retirement from the device page's header, the device's ⋯ menu in the list, or Bulk Actions: pick a reason (refresh, lease return, replaced under warranty, scrapped or recycled, sold, lost, stolen, or other), and optionally where it is going and when. Opened from the device page, the dialog also warns you if retiring it frees licences or breaks a certificate deployment. The device stays in service and appears on the Hardware page's Retiring tab until you retire it — or, for a Microsoft 365 device, until the sync sees it leave the tenant, at which point the retirement completes on its own. A plan can be changed or cancelled from the device's ⋯ menu (Change retirement plan…, Cancel retirement plan), from the Retirement planned banner on its page (Change plan, Cancel plan), or in bulk with Cancel retirement plan. Retire (Retire now on the device page, or Confirm retirement for a device the sync has flagged as gone) takes it out of service and keeps the reason and destination as the disposal record; the Hardware Lifecycle report lists everything retired in the last twelve months with both. A flagged device that was wiped for the next person can go Back to spares instead, when spares tracking is on.