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Education and Chromebook management in CMDB

Updated

Overview

Education is the K-12 section of the CMDB sidebar. It tracks a school's Chromebook fleet and everything that happens around it: who each device is assigned to, damage reports, repairs, vendor returns (RMAs), classroom device sets, and the Google Admin connection that keeps the fleet in step with the school's own Google Workspace for Education tenant.

Use it when you want one place to answer "which Chromebooks does this school have, where are they, what state are they in, and what is out for repair."

Education is client-scoped, like the rest of CMDB: pick the client you support first, then open Education. The section's entry point is /cmdb/edu, which scopes you into the client you last worked in; every page inside it lives under that client. Everything below assumes a client is selected.

Education is the surface for your technicians. School staff do not work in CMDB — they get a much narrower view in the Hub client portal, where they can look at their school's fleet and submit a repair request or a damage report.

The Education Pages

  • Fleet Overview — the dashboard: total devices, how many are checked out, in repair and available, repairs raised this week, pending RMAs, the recent repair queue, and per-district device counts.
  • Chromebooks — the fleet list, plus a device detail page for each Chromebook (device info, assignment history, damage log, repairs, RMAs).
  • Device Sets — named sets of Chromebooks (a classroom, a cart, a mobile set) that are checked out and back in as a unit rather than one student at a time, each with a set detail page showing its devices, custody and checkout history.
  • Districts — the districts you support with their school and device counts. Open a district to see its Schools list, and from a school its tracked devices, tech contact and type.
  • Repairs — the repair pipeline across the client, with status and priority filters.
  • RMA — return-merchandise authorisations for devices going back to a vendor, each with an RMA detail page carrying the vendor, the warranty position and the tracking numbers.
  • Google Sync — the Google Admin connection: service-account credentials, the manual Sync button, last-sync status, and the automatic-sync toggle.
  • Chrome Management — read-only visibility into the Chrome apps installed across the district and the Chrome policies applied to it.

How To: Connect a School's Google Admin

  1. In Google Cloud, create a project for the sync and enable the Admin SDK API. If you also want Chrome app-inventory and policy visibility, enable Chrome Management API and Chrome Policy API in the same project.
  2. Create a service account, then Keys → Add key → Create new key → JSON, and save the downloaded file.
  3. On the service account, open Edit → Show advanced settings and enable Domain-wide delegation. Copy the numeric Client ID it shows you.
  4. In the school's Google Admin console, go to Security → Access and data control → API controls → Domain-wide delegation → Manage Domain Wide Delegation → Add new, paste that Client ID, and paste the scope list. The Google Sync page in CMDB shows the list with a copy button, plus a read-only-only subset if you want nothing more. Domain-wide delegation matches scope strings exactly, so add every scope the page lists — a write scope does not cover the read-only scope beside it.
  5. Back in CMDB, open Education → Google Sync with the client selected, and use Import the service-account JSON — upload the .json file or paste its contents. The service-account email and private key are filled in for you; copying those two fields by hand usually fails because the key in the JSON has escaped newlines. Then enter the school's Customer ID (Google Admin → Account → Account settings) and the Workspace admin email to impersonate.
  6. Save. Turn on Enable automatic sync if you want the scheduled runs.

The private key is stored encrypted at rest, and the page tells you whether a key is stored.

How To: Run and Check a Sync

  1. Open Education → Google Sync for the client.
  2. Click Sync. The page reports Last Sync, Devices Synced and Last Result; before the first run it reads Never run.
  3. If a run fails, the page says the last sync failed and names the reason, instead of leaving a stale time on screen.
  4. With Enable automatic sync on, the sync runs every six hours for that org. Devices, users and org units come across on each pass.

The sync is driven by the school's own Google tenant, so a Chromebook that has never been enrolled in Google Admin will not appear — there is no network scan behind this list.

How To: Add a Chromebook by Hand

  1. Open Education → Chromebooks and click Add Device.
  2. Fill in the asset tag, manufacturer, model, the school it belongs to, purchase date, purchase price and warranty expiry.
  3. Tick Mark as loaner device if it belongs to a loaner pool rather than to a student.
  4. Save. The device joins the fleet list and is available to assign.

How To: Assign a Chromebook

  1. Open the Chromebook from the fleet list.
  2. Click Assign Device.
  3. Enter the assignee name, choose the Assignee Type — Student, Staff or Loaner — and add notes if they help.
  4. Save. The device shows its assignee and the assignment is added to the device's assignment history.

To hand a device back, open it and click Return Device, then record the Return Condition — Good, Fair, Damaged or Lost — and any notes. Both ends of the assignment stay in the history.

How To: Record Damage

  1. Open the Chromebook and click Log Damage.
  2. Choose the damage type and severity (Minor, Moderate, Major, Total Loss), describe what happened, record who reported it, and tick Accidental damage where it applies.
  3. Save. The event is added to the device's damage log, and you can update the device's condition to match.

How To: Raise a Repair

  1. Open the Chromebook and click New Repair (or start from the damage log).
  2. Set the repair type, describe the damage, choose the priority (Low, Normal, High, Urgent) and assign a technician.
  3. Save. The repair appears on Education → Repairs for the client.
  4. As the work moves, open the repair and use Move to to advance it: received → diagnosed → waiting parts → in repair → quality check → ready pickup → completed. A repair can be cancelled from most of those states.

The Repairs page lists the client's repairs, with status and priority filters and counts for what is in progress, waiting on parts, and completed this month.

How To: Open an RMA

  1. Open the Chromebook and click New RMA, or open Education → RMA and click New RMA.
  2. Pick the device — the picker offers this customer's CMDB records. If the return came out of a repair, the RMA detail page shows the linked repair; the link itself is set through the API, not from this form.
  3. Fill in the vendor name, the vendor's RMA number, the reason, the replacement serial, and the outbound and inbound tracking numbers.
  4. The page shows the warranty position it read from the device record. If this return needs a different one, set the manual warranty end date.
  5. Save. The RMA appears on the client's RMA list and on the device's own page.

The return shipment is recorded on the RMA itself: the outbound and inbound tracking numbers are that shipment's record, so a device in transit is traced from the return rather than from a separate list.

Deleting an RMA does not destroy it: the record is hidden and can be restored, so the return history survives a mis-click.

How To: Check a Device Set Out and Back In

  1. Open Education → Device Sets and click New Device Set. Give it a name, a type (classroom, cart, mobile set, lab, loaner pool or other), the school it belongs to, and a location if useful.
  2. Open the set and use Add Devices to Set to add Chromebooks by search.
  3. Click Check Out Set. Choose the custody type — classroom, teacher, period, staff or location — who it is checked out to, and optionally the staff member who signed for it. The set's devices go out together.
  4. When it comes back, click Check In Set. Each device starts as Present; flag any that came back Missing or Damaged.
  5. The set keeps a Checkout history of every checkout with its custody, the responsible staff member, and the return.

Chrome Management

Education → Chrome Management reads from the same Google Admin connection as the sync and shows two read-only views:

  • Apps — the Chrome apps and extensions installed across the district, by org unit, with install type, source and the number of users, browser devices and profiles they reach.
  • Policies — the Chrome policies applied to an org unit, with the schema each value belongs to and where it is inherited from.

There is nothing extra to configure on this page, but it needs two further OAuth scopes on the same service account: Chrome Management API and Chrome Policy API. A district whose domain-wide delegation has not been widened for them gets an error that names exactly that — not an empty list. Widening the existing delegation is enough; there is no second service account to create.

School Staff and the Client Portal

School staff do not use CMDB. Their surface is the Hub client portal, where the Chromebooks section shows their school's fleet, its students and its repairs, and lets them submit a repair request, report damage, and assign a device to a student. The client-portal knowledge base carries the school-facing guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

The sync ran but new Chromebooks did not appear.

The sync only sees devices the school's own Google Admin tenant reports. Confirm the device is enrolled there, then read Last Result on the Google Sync page — a failed run names its reason there rather than failing silently. If the run succeeded and the device is still missing, check that you are looking at the right client.

How do I record a Chromebook a student has lost?

Open the device, click Return Device with a return condition of Lost, and update its condition. The assignment history keeps the last known assignment, and the device stays in the fleet list.

How do I see which devices are near the end of their supported life?

The Chromebooks list carries a sortable Support ends column — when Chrome OS support ends for that model — and a Warranty column. Warranty expiry ends free repairs; the support date ends the device's usable life.

Do I have to create the district by hand?

Normally not. A district row is derived from the school's own company record the first time it is needed, so a sync can run without anyone creating one. The Districts page is there so you can correct the details (name, state, contact) and see how many schools and devices sit under each district.

Can school staff see the fleet?

They see their own school's Chromebooks through the Hub client portal, not through CMDB. Their view is read-only apart from assigning a device to a student, submitting a repair request, or reporting damage.

Who can see a school's records?

Education follows the same boundary as the rest of CMDB — records belong to a company inside your organisation. A school's devices, repairs and RMAs are visible on that client's pages, and one client's records are never shown on another's.

Troubleshooting

"No school company is set up for this organization yet." The organisation has no company record marked as a school, and Education needs one before a device or a device set can be attached to it. Mark the school's company record as a school, then run the sync (or add the device) again.

Chrome Management reports an authorisation error. The district's domain-wide delegation does not cover the Chrome Management and Chrome Policy scopes. Widen the existing service account's scope list in the Google Admin console — the error names the scope it needs, and no new service account is involved.

The Google Sync page says the stored key cannot be used. The stored service-account key could not be read. Re-import the service-account JSON on the Google Sync page to replace it.

A device is flagged as not checking in. CMDB compares Google's own last-check-in time for the device against a 14-day threshold, and re-alerts at most once a week. A Chromebook that sits unused still appears in Google's device list but will not check in — if it is genuinely in use, confirm it is powered on and reaching Google.

A repair or RMA will not open. Both are scoped to the client whose page you are on. If the record belongs to another school, switch client first; a record outside the current client answers as not found rather than showing you another school's data.

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