IT Glue Flexible Assets Management

Overview

Flexible Assets in IT Glue provide customizable, structured documentation templates. Unlike free-form documents, flexible assets have defined fields and types, enabling consistent documentation across organizations and powerful filtering/searching capabilities.

Anti-triggers

• Servers, workstations, and network gear — those are

configurations, which IT Glue also calls "assets"; use itglue-configurations.

• Free-form runbooks and procedures — use itglue-documents.
• A credential held in a password-type field — it is not a

Passwords record and search_passwords will not find it; see itglue-passwords for how the two stores differ.

Key Concepts

Flexible Asset Types

Flexible Asset Types define the schema for a category of documentation:

Flexible Asset Type: Network Overview
├── Fields:
│   ├── Primary ISP (Text)
│   ├── Backup ISP (Text)
│   ├── Public IP Addresses (Textarea)
│   ├── Firewall (Tag - Configuration)
│   ├── Network Diagram (Upload)
│   └── DNS Provider (Select)

Field Types

Tag Fields

Tag fields create relationships to other IT Glue resources:

Field values live in a traits object on the asset instance, keyed by each field's name-key. Tag fields hold arrays of related-resource IDs.

See references/fields.md for the full field/traits reference and the common built-in flexible asset type layouts (Network Overview, Application Documentation, Backup Overview, Microsoft 365 Tenant).

Critical: Discover Type IDs First

Flexible asset type IDs are instance-specific — every IT Glue account has different IDs. Never guess or hardcode type IDs. Always call list_flexible_asset_types first to discover what types exist, then use the returned IDs with search_flexible_assets.

Step 1: list_flexible_asset_types → get type IDs
Step 2: search_flexible_assets(flexible_asset_type_id=<id from step 1>)

API Patterns

• Fetch the type definition with ?include=flexible-asset-fields to get field names, name-keys, and which are required before creating or validating an instance.
• Tag fields are set as plain arrays of resource IDs in traits (e.g. "firewall": [12345]), not nested objects, when creating/updating.
• Assets can be filtered by organization and type simultaneously: GET /flexible-assets?filter[organization-id]=456&filter[flexible-asset-type-id]=123.

See references/api.md for the complete endpoint catalog (types, instances, tag-field examples) with full request/response bodies.

Common Workflows

Create Flexible Asset from Template

Fetch the type definition with its field list, validate that all required fields are present in the supplied values, then create the asset with those traits. See references/examples.md for the full createFlexibleAssetFromType implementation plus lookup-by-type-name, tag-update, export, health-check, and cross-org cloning workflows.

Clone to Another Org

Tag fields reference resources in the source org — when cloning a flexible asset to a different organization, tag values must be remapped or stripped since the IDs won't resolve to valid resources in the target org.

Gotchas

• Hardcoded type IDs break across accounts — always resolve type IDs via list_flexible_asset_types rather than reusing IDs from another tenant or a previous session.
• Required-field validation isn't enforced client-side — fetch ?include=flexible-asset-fields and check required yourself before submitting, or handle the resulting 422.
• Tag fields don't survive an org clone — IDs are org-scoped, so a cloned asset's tag traits will reference the wrong (or nonexistent) resources unless remapped.

See references/errors.md for the complete error-code and validation-error tables plus a retry pattern for missing-field and invalid-tag errors.

Best Practices

1. Plan type structure - Design flexible asset types before creating
2. Use consistent naming - Follow conventions for field names
3. Leverage tags - Link to configurations, contacts for relationships
4. Required fields - Mark essential fields as required
5. Use appropriate types - Match field type to data (date for dates, etc.)
6. Document types - Add descriptions to types and fields
7. Standardize across orgs - Use same types for all clients
8. Regular reviews - Update flexible asset content periodically
9. Avoid duplicates - One flexible asset per topic per org
10. Export capability - Build export for reporting needs

Related Skills

• IT Glue Organizations - Flexible asset scope
• IT Glue Configurations - Tag field targets
• IT Glue Contacts - Tag field targets
• IT Glue Passwords - Password fields
• IT Glue Documents - Alternative documentation
• IT Glue API Patterns - API reference