FAQ - Warranty Lookup

FAQ - Warranty Lookup

Manufacturer vs Serial Number

To know which manufacturer's API to query, Propel Your MSP relies on the following information:
  • Asset's Manufacturer
  • Asset's Serial Number
  • Asset's Model Number
  • Asset's Tag Number
In cases where the Manufacturer is blank, Propel Your MSP will try to deduce the manufacturer from the Serial Number.
Here is the list of recognized manufacturers (any other manufacturer is ignored at this time):
  • Cisco / Cisco Meraki
  • Dell, Dell inc.
  • Lenovo
  • Hewlett Packard, Hewlett-Packard, HP, HP Inc
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, HPE
  • Microsoft
  • Apple, Apple Inc
Wrongly identified assets (e.g. HP vs HPE) will result in the warranty not being fetched.

Lookup

Asset Warranty Lookup is performed daily on new assets or when modifying the master ConnectWise Type to Asset Category mapping. After the first lookup, the refresh date depends on the status. The further the expiration date, the further the next lookup is going to be. An Asset Warranty Lookup is re-scheduled immediately when the Manufacturer, Serial Number or Tag Number is updated.

Cisco

Hardware warranties are ignored, the coverage contract end date is used instead.
Cisco does not return the expiration date of already-expired contracts. Those will be shown as having a blank date.

Dell

Dell's Lifetime Warranties are ignored during warranty lookup because they are not useful for critical pieces of hardware.

Lenovo

Lenovo's API sometimes requires the model number in order to return warranty information. In those case, the Asset's model number is required or warranty data cannot be retrieved.

HP

HP sometimes requires the product number in order to return warranty information (i.e. the serial number is not enough). In those cases, the asset will need to also have its Part Number field filled (e.g. 8C239PA or 8C239PA#ABG) to retrieve the warranty information.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HPE has taken down their API in December 2022. They promised to put a replacement in place, but have yet to deliver on that promise. We are eagerly monitoring the situation. If you have an HPE Account Manager, you can reach out to him/her to try to add administrative pressure ;)

Warranty Lookup Timing

Propel Your MSP next warranty lookup date for an Asset is based on the last lookup date and the current warranty expiration date. We look up at half the time remaining for the warranty, than half again, and half again until the warranty date changes or the warranty expiration date is reached. Once the warranty expiration date is reached, we double the lookup time between each lookup if the warranty expiration date remains unchanged.
Example:
Say the last lookup was on January 1st, 2020 and the warranty expires January 1st, 2023, the next warranty lookups will be something like: July 1st 2021, April 1st 2022, August 15th, 2022, November 23th, 2022, December 12th, 2022, December 21st, 25th, 28th, 30th, 31st.

Lookup Status Meanings

Looking at a manufacturer lookup status, you may see the following statuses: 
  1. Aborted: The manufacturer lookup is interrupted, mainly because another manufacturer returned valid data.
  2. Error: The manufacturer lookup had an error, it will be retried later.
  3. Indeterminate: The manufacturer cannot return the warranty status data with the available information. For example, it needs the model number along with the serial number, but the model number is not available or accepted by manufacturer.
  4. Rejected: The manufacturer did not return any information for the provided asset.
  5. Synced: All good. The manufacturer returned valid data for the asset

PSA Integration Considerations

What if I already have Purchase Date and Warranty Expiration Dates in my PSA?

If you already have dates for Purchase Date and Warranty Expiration Date in your PSA, they will take precedence over any date queried from a Manufacturer's Warranty API. This is indicated by the color of the "sync badge", for example:


If you are setup to write Purchase Date and/or Warranty Expiration Dates back to your PSA, only assets with a blank PSA date or whose dates were matching the information queried by Propel Your MSP will be written back, others are not.

PSA / API Date Tolerance

Sometimes, the dates already in your PSA are a bit different than the dates returned by the manufacturer's API. This may be because of time zone conversions or the fact that the "hours" portion of the date may have been dropped somewhere before making its way into your PSA. To avoid having minor differences showing up in Propel Your MSP, a date coming from your PSA is considered the same as a date from the manufacturer's API if they are within 36 hours of each other.

Feedback

If you believe data to be invalid or that an error occurred during the Warranty Lookup, please contact us at support@propelyourmsp.com to inform us.

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