Understanding and turning on IT asset management in Zendesk

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Enable IT asset management to manage IT assets throughout their lifecycle, providing agents with access to the latest asset data. When activated, you can create and manage asset types, fields, and locations, with limits on the number of each. Monitor usage through the Asset overview page. For more information, explore related resources on configuring asset types and using assets in ticket workflows.

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IT asset management (ITAM) is the process of managing IT assets through their lifecycle, designed specifically for employee services. By managing your IT assets in Zendesk, you can ensure agents have access to view and manage the latest asset data without having to switch tools.

This article contains the following topics:

Understanding assets and how they work
Turning IT asset management on
Turning off IT asset management
Monitoring your IT asset management usage
Related resources

Understanding assets and how they work

IT asset management in Zendesk is composed of the following parts:

Asset type: Asset types define the different types of assets you manage. Each asset type becomes an object in Zendesk. In addition to the standard asset types defined by Zendesk, admins can create custom asset types. Each asset type definition consists of standard and custom fields that describe the data you need to store for this type of asset. This could be anything from text and drop-down fields to relationship fields that define how the asset type is related to object objects in your Zendesk account.
To save you the effort of recreating the same fields for many asset types, they're created with a hierarchical structure that makes it possible for child asset types to inherit the parent asset type's fields. For example, Zendesk predefines a Hardware asset type with three predefined children asset types: Mobile, Desktop, and Laptop. The children asset types' records automatically have all of the Hardware fields.
Assets: Also referred to as asset records. An asset is a physical or digital thing that you procure, allocate, maintain, and retire. For IT teams, assets are often hardware, such as laptops and monitors, and software licenses.
After an asset type is created and configured with fields, admins can use the data importer to bulk import their asset data, and agents can view and manage the asset records in Zendesk Support.

Considerations for managing IT assets in Zendesk

The following limits apply:

You can create a maximum of 50 asset types.
You can have up to 100 asset fields, counting standard and custom fields.
You can add up to 1 million assets and locations.

Note: If you used the EAP action flow templates for Jamf Pro or Microsoft Intune, you must deactivate or delete the EAP action flows and replace them with the new data sync templated action flows by June 8, 2026.

Turning IT asset management on

To manage IT assets in Zendesk, you must turn on the feature. When you turn on IT asset management for the first time, the following changes occur in your account:

The Asset types, Asset fields, and Asset Locations pages are added to Admin Center.
Four predefined asset types are created: Hardware, Mobile, Desktop, and Laptop. The name and asset type for Hardware can't be changed, and the asset can't be deleted. However, Mobile, Desktop, and Laptop can be edited or deleted as needed.
Standard asset fields are created. These can't be edited or deleted.
Two ticket lookup relationship fields are created, but they aren't automatically added to your ticket forms. One with Asset as the target object in which you'd select a specific IT asset record related to the ticket, and the other with Asset type as the target object in which you'd select the asset type related to the ticket.

If you are turning IT asset management back on after turning it off, the standard ITAM ticket fields are reactivated, but services in the service catalog, triggers, and action flows that reference assets and asset types will remain deactivated until you manually re-activate or re-publish them.

To turn on IT asset management

In Admin Center, click IT assets in the sidebar, then select Assets > Overview.
Select Turn on IT asset management.
After you turn on IT asset management, you can create and configure asset types, import asset data, and train agents on how to work with assets in the Agent Workspace.

Turning off IT asset management

If you need to turn off IT asset management in your account, you can do so at any time. Your asset types, asset fields, locations, and asset records are preserved. However, the standard ITAM ticket fields will be hidden, and no new asset records can be created. If there are services in the service catalog associated with IT assets, those services are deactivated.

To turn off IT asset management

In Admin Center, click IT assets in the sidebar, then select Assets > Overview.
Deselect Turn on IT asset management.

Monitoring your IT asset management usage

Admins can use the Asset overview page to monitor how many asset types, locations, and fields they have in the account.

To monitor your usage of assets, asset types, and locations

In Admin Center, click IT assets in the sidebar, then select Assets > Overview.
If you are exceeding the maximum number of asset records, you can delete asset records that are no longer needed.

Related resources

To learn more about using IT asset management, see: