On-boarding and record keeping - there must be a better way!
Posted by phjils@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 30 comments
Morning everyone,
I work in an org where change is glacial and sometimes partial. We're still using and archiving paper forms.
When a new staffer comes in, they get an on-boarding session via HR, and then come to us to collect a laptop.
- We produce a paper form for the device, with the machine creds on it (serial number, asset number, machine name, etc) they sign it.
- We scan and save the paper copy.
- The scan gets uploaded to a network share.
- The details are added to a shared spreadsheet that's accessed by someone in user training.
- The details are manually added to the asset database.
There's got to be a more efficient method to all this. Five steps just to hand out a laptop is nonsense. How are others doing it? We're a M365 house... I'm thinking there's got to be way of automating at least some of this process, and disregarding the paper forms, somehow?
Thoughts are, as always, very appreciated.
Spraggle@reddit
Have you looked at Microsoft Forms, Power Automate and SharePoint Lists at all?
I can build that process in a paperless way in about an hour and I'm not very good with Power Automate.
Flabbergasted98@reddit
but it will still take you 2 years to convince that one staffer to do it without paper.
Spraggle@reddit
Then it's likely you've not made it easier... If I get users who aren't interested in removing paper work, it's because they're 75 and about to retire....
Flabbergasted98@reddit
Taking the time to learn a new process introduces more incertainty than the trusted old process. They have the old process committed to rote. The new process may be faster, but learning it is slower than not learning it.
Spraggle@reddit
Mostly when I offer faster paperless processes, they are pleased - especially when I produce the Paper cut report to show them the cost of printing.
Flabbergasted98@reddit
Good for you.
phjils@reddit (OP)
Sounds like a plan - I’ll have a look at this today. Thank you!🙏
Spraggle@reddit
The basic plan is to act on the trigger of the form being filled, then get the results and write them to a SharePoint list.
Write the form first, then fill it in once, export the excel and import in to a new list, since that does a lot of the donkey work for you, by populating the columns in the List.
Once you're writing things to the list, you can do extra processes that happen as part of the trigger, if certain conditions are met.
MightBeDownstairs@reddit
Why are you not using a ticketing system?
CeC-P@reddit
This seems completely backwards. We prep the laptop, assign it to the user in our asset management system before they start, and HR does all the electronic sigs in a PDF form about "you won't use your computer to do anything stupid and here's what happens when you lose it." Then our IT training is just anti-phishing and explaining our UAC elevation system.
phjils@reddit (OP)
Welcome to the Education sector, everything's backawards and based on systems that went out with Windows 3.1
Turbojelly@reddit
I work in schools, we constantly have new starters and leavers.
There are programs like Locker Connect or Salamander that link HR MIS systems to AD. So that accounts are automatcially created/disabled during an overnight sync. It also produces reports with said information and sends it to the relevant people. Much better than running MIS reports and then copy pasting into excel, to run some formulas to create a .cvs to import into AD.
Embarrassed_Leg3910@reddit
At my previous job, we had a system built on top of a SharePoint list and InfoPath. When an admin created a record, it triggered a flow that sent data to IT. It tracked what equipment was assigned to whom, created records in Azure, and so on. The process then moved through HR and HSE, creating a complete onboarding workflow involving several departments. It worked pretty awesome for 2014 😅
It now can be build even better. Infopath is retiring, but where are alternatives from power apps to third party tool like Plumsail forms
omglazrgunpewpew@reddit
Omfg, I feeeel this so hard. I've been in this spot before and told the company we were going to die in the paperwork swamp if we didn’t evolve. The biggest unlock was making onboarding primarily HR-driven.
Once HR had the new hire fully entered in the ERP and a manager assigned, that became the trigger. Not “hopefully someone remembered to email IT,” not “a ticket appeared with half the fields missing,” not “surprise, they start Monday” on a Friday afternoon. The HR record was the source of truth, and everything else flowed from that.
We tapped Dell lifecycle services, so a new hire event could trigger Dell to prep a laptop with our image and ship it either directly to the remote employee or to the nearest office branch. That alone removed an ungodly amount of bench work. We'd keep a few on hand for those "Surprise last min new hire is here!" moments.
The real time save though, was centralizing account lifecycle management. AD/Entra, email, printer software, all those department specific apps that one director makes all their employees use for some reason, all got provisioned from the same process and SSO slapped on top of it (if possible). This included the physical access control system which programmed a fob, app on their phone, and uploaded their employee picture to the facial recognition system (if they opted in) to trigger an initial onboarding scan when they first arrived at the office.
Deprovisioning became the same idea in reverse. One clean termination event kicked off account disablement, access removal, device return tracking, the whole thing. Truly magic one-click button energy, minus the part where magic tends to mean a script nobody understands living in the head of someone who you think is asleep most of the time at their desk.
For your setup, I wouldn’t start by automating the paper form. I’d start by deciding what system gets to be the source of truth for employee status and device assignment. HRIS/ERP for the person, asset system for the hardware, workflow layer in between. Once that’s clear, paper starts looking less like compliance and more like a part of the awful duty of managing printers. They're never a good time.
Even if you don’t go full Dell lifecycle/zero-touch right away, getting HR to own the starting signal and IT to own the downstream automation will save you from a lot of “whose laptop is this and why is it on the bench?” moments.
phjils@reddit (OP)
Thank you for this! Honestly, I might just copy and paste this to my director... "Look... this can be done, and for the love of hours lost to a paper-trail that goes cold because someone forgot to put it in the archive and it's just in someone's in-tray, we need to modernise this whole system."
Lots to take on here. Good idea to hook it into the HR system. This is another big fall-over point, but that's a discussion for my therapist.
omglazrgunpewpew@reddit
Absolutely. And “that paper trail went cold in someone’s in-tray” is the exact business case.
The thing that helped me sell it was framing it less as “IT wants shiny beep boop automation” and more as “right now we have no reliable chain of custody.” Paper feels official, but if the process depends on someone scanning it, naming it correctly, putting it in the right share, updating a spreadsheet, and then manually updating the asset DB, that’s the opposite of control. More of a scavenger hunt with toner.
I’d turn it into a business case. Count the touches. Count the minutes. Count the mistakes. If onboarding a laptop takes five manual steps across three people, multiply that by every new hire, role change, leaver, lost device, audit request, and “who TF has this laptop?” moment. Suddenly it isn’t “IT wants to automate a form,” it’s “we are spending X hours a month doing clerical work badly and creating audit risk while we do it.”
Show the ROI in CFO language. They eat that stuff for breakfast. Fewer lost assets, faster onboarding, less idle new-hire time, fewer manual errors, cleaner audit evidence, fewer emergency hunts through network shares, and less IT time spent being a paper powered detective agency.
IT gets treated like a cost sink way too often, when really it’s the machinery that lets everyone else make money without falling over. If you can show that this saves hours, reduces risk, and gets employees productive faster, it becomes a profit/enabler conversation instead of a “buy us a toy” conversation.
Build one ugly but clear flowchart of the current process showing every manual touch and every failure point. Really make it brutally detailed. Then put the modern version next to it: HR record triggers workflow, laptop/asset assignment updates one system, user acknowledgement is stored with the asset record, training gets notified automatically.
Directors tend to respond better to reducing risk and recovering hours. And if you can get the CFO nodding along, suddenly doors open. CFO bestie status is the real enterprise unlock.
And yeah, HR being a fall-over point is paaaainfully familiar. Half of onboarding automation is technology. The other half is politely convincing departments that source of truth does not mean whatever spreadsheet someone named ACTUAL_FINAL_v8_FOR_REAL_THIS_TIME.xlsx.
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
Yeah… that workflow sounds painfully familiar
A lot of places end up there just because things get added over time and no one steps back to clean it up.
Honestly, the biggest win isn’t even “automation” at first—it’s just removing duplication. Right now you’re entering the same data what, 3–4 times?In most setups I’ve seen improve this, they:
If you’re already in M365, even a basic flow with Forms + Power Automate can cut out a lot of those steps.
And if you’re managing more than a handful of devices, this is usually where some kind of endpoint/asset management tool helps—mainly because it keeps the user ↔ device mapping and audit trail in one place instead of scattered everywhere.The paper part is annoying, but the real issue is that your process doesn’t have a single source of truth yet.Out of curiosity—roughly how many devices are you handling? That usually decides whether it’s worth going lightweight or more structured.
phjils@reddit (OP)
\~ 2000 laptops across several sites - issued 1:1
\~ 300 shared devices in scan-to-open lockers
Yes, there's a paper form for each and every one, and when a unit is returned, they're processes manually into a returned file, and the process of re-assigning them in the asset tracking database is manual.
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
yeah… at that scale that process must be a pain... 2k+ devices and still doing paper + manual updates everywhere… that’s rough feels like the main issue isn’t even the paper itself, it’s that everything is disconnected like issue a device → write it down → scan it → update spreadsheet → update DB… same info over and over especially with returns and reassignments, I can imagine that getting messy fast usually what helps is just having one place where the device + user + status lives, and then it just updates there instead of bouncing between systems you’ve already got Microsoft Intune and M365, so you’re halfway there, but yeah they don’t really solve that full lifecycle piece cleanly on their own sounds like you guys are spending more time keeping the process in sync than actually managing devices is the return/reassign side the worst part, or is it just the whole flow that’s painful?
phjils@reddit (OP)
It's a bloody mess!
No unified methodology between offices, the returns process usually ends up with a laptop on the bench, no notes, no one knows where it came from, "who's is this laptop?" etc and a scrabble for a new or re-assignable device when we get a surprise new hire.
Your comment of "A lot of places end up there just because things get added over time and no one steps back to clean it up." hits hard. I'm guitly of it, but want to change the current situation... it's a massive time suck.
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
yeah that sounds like a proper mess.. and honestly super common once things grow without a clear system the “who’s laptop is this?” situation is basically a sign there’s no single place tracking devices properly ...don’t beat yourself up about it, most teams end up here over time the fact you want to fix it is the important part at your scale I wouldn’t try to fix everything at once, that just gets overwhelming usually the easiest way is to pick one thing first, like returns, and make that clean so every device coming back is logged properly with who had it and its status
once that part is sorted, everything else gets easier to fix after
sounds like the biggest pain right now is just not knowing where devices are or who they belong to
if you could fix one thing first, would you start with returns or onboarding?
phjils@reddit (OP)
How do you eat an elephant? one spoonful at a time.
I think getting onboarding sorted first would be a good step to take. Having a searchable system to find a device by owner or owner by device would be a start!
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
yeah makes sense.. have you guys looked at moving this to something digital yet or is it just been stuck with the current process?
phjils@reddit (OP)
"We've always done it this way".
- a most dangerous phrase.
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
have you looked at any asset management tools yet or has it just been hard to move away from the current process?
Zlayr@reddit
gpt account with a removed marketing post, surprise surprise
Technical_Gas_752@reddit
nopee just the comment is rephrased to correct the phrasing....not intended to do any marketing.I hope you understand...
Curious201@reddit
five steps for one laptop handoff is usually a sign that the paper form became the system instead of just evidence of the system. if you are already on M365, i would probably move this into a SharePoint list or Microsoft Lists with Power Automate around it: asset tag, serial number, assigned user, issue date, condition, charger/accessories, manager approval if needed, and a signed acknowledgment. the form can generate a PDF copy for audit if someone still needs that comfort, but the source of truth should be the asset list, not a scanned paper sitting in a folder. the important part is preserving the audit trail and signatures while removing the double entry, because otherwise you just digitize the same bad process.
bUSHwACKEr85@reddit
I use Snipe-It for my asset manament and historical assigning. It is possible to assign a device to someone and have them electronically sign for the device. https://snipe-it.readme.io/docs/general-settings#:\~:text=If%20this%20box%20is%20checked,on%20any%20touch-enabled%20device.
We personally use this for assigning devices and its history but do paper copy for HR purposes. ISO auditors wanted proof that devices had been signed back in by leavers etc...
rack_and_stack_42@reddit
yeah five steps to hand out a laptop is at least three too many. we had a similar paper-heavy process and the fix was collapsing it into one digital form that does everything the paper form did but feeds the data downstream automatically.
what we ended up with: new hire gets a form (we use a workflow tool, not just a google form because we needed signatures and conditional steps). they fill in their details, sign digitally, the asset info gets attached by whoever preps the laptop. when the form is submitted it triggers the entry into the asset database and notifies the training person automatically. no scanning, no spreadsheet, no manual upload to a network share.
the whole thing takes about 3 minutes instead of the back and forth you described. M365 house means you could probably get partway there with power automate and a sharepoint list if you want to stay in-stack. but honestly the form-to-workflow approach worked better for us because power automate flows get messy fast once you add signatures and conditional logic.
the paper forms were the hardest part to kill politically. management liked having "a signed document." had to show them that a digital signature with a timestamp and an audit trail is actually better evidence than a scanned piece of paper in a network folder.