Hello ARSListers,

We have a home-made ARS4.5.1 application used by our Help-Desk and experts to support our users.
We want to purchase the Remedy Asset Management 4.0.3 and integrate it with this application :
- firstly, we want to replace our home-made (and limited) asset and people forms & worflow with AM4 ones, but we are considering the need to change some fields to better suit our needs (for example : the "location" fields (region, site, dpt...) are not appropriate), or to add some fields (for example, we need a "service" field to hold the service of each person, under a specific format and with a menu holding the whole company service structure). Obviously, these changes will have to be made in all forms where a location or a people is managed...
- secondly, we want to make the most of the AM4 part dedicated to financial & contract data (we do not manage this part inside our home-made application, it is managed in another (and separate) asset application)

We are currently installing AM4 on our test server, and we are discovering the User & Admin Guide.

We have the following questions :
1) is such an integration simple ? Can you give some information on the required time for an experienced ARS Administrator / Programmer ?
2) what will happen when we will migrate AM4.0.3 to the next version ? Will we have to modify again the AM application (forms, active links, filters, escalations...) ?
3a) how are AM licenses used ?? We think that every user with an ARS Fixed, Floatting or Read license will be able to read AM data, and that a user who wants to modify an AM data must have a AM Fixed or Floating license. But we do not understand how the access to AM forms is restricted (that is, how the ARS Server "knows" that a user is accessing an asset form).
3b) the BIG "license" question : WHEN is the AM FLOATING license given to a user : when he/she logs into the UserTool, or when she/he first tries to modify an asset record ??? The difference is HUGE : in the first case, you need more AM floating licenses (and some affected licenses will perhaps never be used, if the user do not modify any asset record), in the second case the license is affected only when necessary, which is better.
4) also, we want to be able to relate help-desk cases with asset records (this is obvious), and we are wondering if we will be authorized by ARS/AM to create table fields (with their associated supporting forms), for example, to store relations between help-desk home-made forms and AM4 "proprietary" forms ; since creating the record in the supporting table field form only requires a read-access to the AM4 record, we think that every ARS user of our help-desk application will be able to create such a link. Can you confirm this ??
5) finally, we have questions regarding the AM Server part : what does this server do ?? Why the AM module is not made solely of ARS objects (forms, active links, filters, Crystal reports...) like any other ARS application ? We think it exists mainly for licensing purposes... Any input about this ??

Thanks in advance for your help on any of these topics !