Explicit EOL flag

[qay21]

I just updated our prod instance to 6.2.3 and since then 3 of my assets have been automatically updated and are now displaying a small warning flag with tooltip "Explicit EOL" beside the end of life date. I'm struggling to understand what this mean.

Apparently there is something called "EOL rate" (but the unit is "months" ?) displayed on an asset when its model has the "EOL" (no "rate" here ?) field set at any value other than 0 (which seems to be the default, the field cannot stay unfilled).

None of the 3 assets now displaying the warning had their model's EOL field set after the update, but the flag was still displayed. While trying to understand, I've been trying to add various values to the model's EOL field as well as the "EOL Date" field of the asset itself. Sometimes the warning is displayed, sometimes it is not, and I can't understand what is the trigger for it and what it means.

Strangely, other assets of the same model, having the exact same initial configuration (no model's "EOL" field set, no "EOL Date" set on the asset) did not display any warning at all.

Is there somewhere a documentation of what this system does and how it works ? I guess everything is working fine here, doesn't look like a bug. I'm just not familiar with any of these concepts, but the warning flag let me think that I'm doing something wrong (or at least, not doing something the way SnipeIT is expecting it).

Thanks

[qay21]

Okay so after a couple of hours digging through PRs and code I answered some of my questions. Here is what I understand :

• The EOL (months) field on a model is the amount of time a new asset of this given model is expected to last once bought.

• If no purchase date is set on an asset, no EOL Date is calculated.

• If a purchase date is set, then the EOL Date is automatically set to purchase_date + model_eol.
  ❓ Here is the first strange thing : when no EOL is set on the model, the default value is 0, meaning that a lot of assets now have an automatically calculated EOL Date equal to the purchase date. That is strange. I'd rather have the field not calculated if there is no model EOL set.

• If a purchase date is set and an EOL Date is manually set on the asset, the "Explicit EOL" warning will appear, indicating that the manually chosen date does likely not correspond to the expected, calculated EOL Date
  ❓ This kinda make sense ONLY IF the model EOL is set. If it is 0 (or better, None) this sign should not be displayed IMHO

• If a purchase date is set, an EOL of, lets say, 60 months is set on the asset, and the asset has a warranty of 24 months (pretty typical use case here in Europe), then the "Explicit EOL" will be displayed due to purchase_date+model_eol != purchase_date+warranty.
  ❓ This is frankly confusing. Warranties are almost always lower than life expectancy of any device. This design choice of EOL==warranty ? fine ! warning is making warning signs pop all over our asset management tool, since most of our assets have 2 or 3 years of warranty, but are expected to work properly for 5 years before being eligible to a replacement.

On top of all that (which seems to be normal operation, despite not being very helpful), I may have spotted a bug : when setting an EOL date manually, we get the warning sign, which is understandable, and the manual date is correctly saved. But if at any time, I edit the asset (like, say, I want to change its name or notes), if I don't pay attention, the "EOL Date" field seems to be automatically re-set at the purchase_date+model_eol value, causing potential information loss. I'll have to experiment a bit more with our dev environment before filling a proper issue on this matter though.

[qay21]

@Robert-Azelis I'd really like your input on all this, since it seems you have done a lot of work on EOL stuff recently. There might be a logical path I'm not following here.

Once I'm confident on having the good explanation, I'll probably propose some documentation on these concepts, since I personally was left very confused with it and didn't find explanations on https://snipe-it.readme.io/docs

[qay21]

I just spotted #13846, I think this is a much clearer way of handling EOL date. I still need some clarification on the warranty vs model EOL stuff though

[Robert-Azelis]

Hi, just for clarify EOL date improvement by add eol_explicit indicator was develop in #13585 by spencerrlongg. Yes, logic policy for migration database also for me created some explicit markers for assets and calculated EOL date for set 0 period. That was a reason why I decided to provide some improvements and propose change of concept for set eol_explocit from autoset to leave user decision by set manually via checkbox #13846.
In case "I still need some clarification on the warranty vs model EOL" there is no relation between warranty and model EOL. Simply say, warranty relate to real date when warrant will end (for some assets can be different), so need to be set directly on asset.
EOL date, relates more to end of use date, when we decide that asset of model should be replaced on new, eg. HP laptops EliteBook have warranty 36 months (some other models can have 12 or 24 months or Care Pack with extended warranty), but we replace this kind of devices every 48 months (as battery condition and technology changes), so in this reason we set EOL date for 48 months.
For other category or asset models EOL date can be different, depends on company asset policy.
I hope you catch a difference between warranty and EOL date :-)

[qay21]

Thanks for this quick reply !

I mistakenly understood something was going on with EOL Date being partially dependent of warranty somehow, but thank you for clarifying it is not. I indeed share your understanding of EOL/warranty differences.

I also welcome your change for a manual checkbox setting hiding the date field on the edit screen. This will be a lot clearer and might fix the potential bug I was talking about in the end of #13910 (comment) (again, I have not properly validated this is really a bug on a proper dev env yet)