How do I deal with duplicate containers?

Beacon is built with controls to prevent more than one container from being created with the same catalog number.

However, accidents do happen and if you're (un)lucky you may accidentally end up with duplicate containers in your account, typically driven by an inventory import error.

So, what do you do when you discover that you have more than one of a container in your inventory? 

Fixing Duplicate Containers in Beacon

Phase 1: Investigate

1. Do some research. Understanding what happened is critical to understanding how to fix it and to prevent it from happening again.
   1. First you're going to want to do some research into what happened to create the duplicates. Was other data affected? Are there other items or containers that need fixing? Go through your account and identify the scope of the situation.  Key things to pay attention to: 
      1. How were these items created?
      2. Were they created as a result of a particular import (check import name)?
      3. Were they created at the same time (check creation date)? 
      4. Was other inventory duplicated? What about device inventory? Is this affecting your overall inventory totals?
      5. Is all of the device inventory where it is supposed to be? Is the inventory split between custodians? Does one container hold more inventory than the other(s)?
2. Determine which container you want to keep. 
   1. Our goal will be to get you to a place where you have one container in your stock that contains what it should. 
   2. If the duplicate containers are with different custodians, you'll need to decide which one is correct. You can always reconfigure what is in a container to make it "correct", so consider which container will take the most work to reconfigure. You may always transfer the container to the correct custodian at the end of the process. 

Phase 2: Consolidate

The first step in fixing the container will be to consolidate the contents of the containers into 1 container, which will become our "real" container. Then we will deactivate the remaining containers. You will need to have Admin privileges to complete this process. To accomplish this we will

• Tag the duplicate containers and inventory to easily locate them in search. 
• Move all duplicate containers to the same custody. 
• Release all items from the duplicate containers.
• Deactivate duplicate containers.
• Transfer all consolidated inventory into the correct containers. 

1. Identify your duplicate containers that are going to be consolidated and deactivated. For each of these containers, create an inventory transfer to a new custodian (it ultimately doesn't matter which, it would be best if this was an administrative custodian where the inventory is not at risk of being used in a case). 
2. During the creation of the transfer, add a tag to that container so you'll be able to identify its contents, such as the container name: "Container 1 Consolidation".
   1. The tag will be applied to the container and all of its contents when the transfer is completed. Then when we release the contents from the container, you'll be able to easily recall the devices in an inventory search.
3. Complete the transfer by accepting it. Repeat this process for any of the duplicate containers you are looking to consolidate, but DO NOT transfer the final container into the same custody. 
4. When the duplicate containers are in the new custody, click on the container to pull up its detail screen. 
5. Scroll down to the Devices section and expand it to view the container's contents. 
6. Click on a device to view its detail screen and confirm that the tag was applied during the transfer. 
7. Next, navigate back to the container detail screen and back to the Devices section.
8. Set the records per page to the maximum number and click "Select all". Make sure you have selected all devices from the container.
9. Click "Release Selected" to release the items from the container.
10. Check your inventory to make sure the items were removed from the container and the container is now empty. 
11. Next, click Deactivate in the upper right corner of the Container's detail screen. Repeat this process for any other duplicate containers. 
    
    
12. At this stage we have removed all of the items from the duplicate containers, applied a tag to them so we can identify them, and have deactivated the duplicate containers. Now we will transfer the inventory into the proper container. 
13. Create an inventory transfer from the custody containing the tagged inventory to the custodian with the final container. 
14. Use the tag to search for and select all inventory that you removed from the duplicate containers.
15. Then, assign the inventory to the proper container by clicking "Assign to Container" and selecting from the drop down menu.
16. Make sure you have included all inventory that must be consolidated, then Complete the transfer by accepting it. 
17. Confirm that all device inventory has been transferred into the correct container and custody. You may use the search tag you created to easily check. 

Phase 3: Audit the Final Container

We have consolidated all inventory into one container and deactivated the duplicate containers. Now we need to make sure that the final container is correct. There are two main ways to do this: 

1. Use the inventory audit function to audit what is actually there. 
2. Use a Bill of Materials to easily make sure the container is fully stocked. 
3. Do both!