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Overview of capturing assets in Dynamics 365 Remote Assist

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Technicians can use the asset capture feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist to capture data about the assets they operate, inspect, and maintain without having to make a video call. Data is captured in a consistent and structured way, and made available through the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist model-driven app for easy validation, report generation, and auditing.

Asset capture has several benefits compared to the Snapshot tool, also available in Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. Asset capture is:

  • Available independent of calls. Technicians can use asset capture processes such as inspections, audits, repair procedures, and factory acceptance tests without having to make a video call. This is great for scenarios where technicians are working by themselves or when a video call isn't possible. Asset capture, spatial markup tools, and reference documents are always available the moment the technician opens Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

  • More flexible and robust. Asset capture is built on Microsoft Dataverse and the Common Data Model. The data generated by Dynamics 365 Remote Assist can be used in automated processes with Power Automate or in existing Dynamics 365 apps and apps built on Power Apps. Because Dynamics 365 Remote Assist uses the same customer asset entity used in Dynamics 365 Field Service, Connected Field Service, and Supply Chain Management, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist seamlessly extends those applications, enabling technicians to capture spatial data for the asset from Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

  • Easier to manage. Data captured with asset capture is automatically related to a digital record of the equipment (assets). Over time, these records become a historical record and audit trail of rich spatial data captured from Dynamics 365 Remote Assist. And compared to the Snapshot feature where the user must share the folder on OneDrive with specific individuals for viewing, asset data is saved to Microsoft Dataverse so anyone in the organization with access to Microsoft Dataverse can view data from Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

Overall process for implementing asset capture

Asset capture is easy to use:

  1. An admin installs the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist app in a Dynamics 365 environment.

  2. The admin adds Dynamics 365 Remote Assist users to the environment.

  3. The admin manually creates digital asset records or imports existing data to Microsoft Dataverse.

  4. A technician selects the Dynamics 365 environment where the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist app is installed in the client app.

  5. The technician completes their work (an inspection, for example) and captures the inspection data to the asset record through Dynamics 365 Remote Assist.

  6. The captured data is available to view.

Next steps

To use the asset capture feature, see the following series of articles:

  1. Install the model-driven app
  2. Add users to the environment
  3. Import and create asset records
  4. Capture pictures and videos with spatial markup on HoloLens and Mobile
  5. Review asset captures from the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist model-driven app
  6. Create Power Automate flows to automate business processes with captured asset data

Additional notes

  • Dynamics 365 Remote Assist uses the same common solution for the asset entity as Dynamics 365 Field Service.

  • Video capture limitations:

    • The maximum video length on HoloLens 2 is 45 seconds.
    • The maximum size of the captured file is 16 MB.
    • If the user answers a call while capturing video for an asset, the recording will stop.

  • After signing in to the client application, the user must select the environment where the Dynamics 365 Remote Assist model-driven app is installed. You can do this through Settings. This is the environment that the asset data will be fetched from and new assets and captures added to.

Entity reference

Asset capture uses several entities stored in Microsoft Dataverse:

  • Customer Asset: The individual asset. This entity is also used in Dynamics 365 Field Service and Connected Field Service. More info: msdyn_customerasset EntityType.

  • Customer Asset Category: A way to describe a group of similar assets.

  • Customer Asset Attachment: A media artifact of a single asset, captured in HoloLens.

  • Account: The customer account where the asset currently exists.

  • Product: The make and model of the asset.

Known issues

  • Dynamics 365 Remote Assist supports a maximum of 5,000 asset records.

  • Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens won't automatically update the list of asset records. If you create or update an asset from the model-driven app and don't see it in HoloLens, restart Dynamics 365 Remote Assist on HoloLens by closing the live tile and reopening the app.