Archibus SaaS / Assets / IT Asset Manager
Assets / Assets / IT Asset Manager / Telecom Console
Assets / Enterprise Assets / IT Asset Manager / Telecom Console
Assets / Telecom Assets / Telecom Management / Telecom Console

Concept: Modeling Faceplates and Jacks

Decide whether you want to track:

• both faceplates and jacks
• only faceplates
• only jacks
• whether you want to depict these items in drawings. If tracking both jacks and faceplates, decide which you want to depict in the floor plan drawings. Depicting both faceplates and jacks in a drawing can lead to crowded drawings.

Note: When using the Telecom Console to connect your telecom devices, you cannot connect directly to faceplates. You connect to either a jack on a faceplate or to a stand-alone jack.

Modeling Faceplates

There are a few ways to model your faceplates:

• Do not model faceplates; instead, model jacks.
• Number faceplates after their room locations.
  • Faceplates are usually named after their rooms, such as faceplate HQ-17-118, located in room HQ-17-118.
  • If there is more than one faceplate in a room, you can include alphanumeric suffixes, such as HQ-17-118A and HQ-17-118B.
• Number faceplates independently of their room locations; that is to say, number them sequentially.
  • To sequentially number faceplates, complete the Faceplate Code field with a unique value, such as 101, 102, 103, etc. Record the location by completing the Building, Floor, and Room Code fields of the Faceplates table.

Modeling Jacks

As with faceplates, there are a few ways to model your system’s jacks.

• Do not model jacks; model only faceplates. If you choose this method, note that you cannot connect devices directly to faceplates. You must connect to a jack on a faceplate.
• If you do not track faceplates, number jacks after their rooms.
  • You can develop jacks without developing faceplates. In this case, you should number them after their rooms, such as jacks HQ-17-101-D1 and HQ-17-101-V1 for room 101.
• Assign jacks to faceplates, numbering them after their faceplates.
  • If your system’s jacks are named after faceplates, you should create jack records named similarly. For example, sequentially numbered faceplate 101 has voice and data jacks 101-V and 101-D.
  • You can have the system automatically generate jack records based on faceplates. In this case, jacks will be numbered after their faceplates. See Automatically Create Jacks for Faceplates.
• Assign jacks to faceplates, numbering them after their building grid locations.
  • Many sites lay out jacks as cable drops according to a building grid. With this strategy, horizontal cabling is not subject to changes due to room renovation or reconfiguration of open plan furniture. Thus, even when the faceplates are demolished, the jacks on the faceplates are kept in the ceiling as spare cable drops, awaiting the next renovation.
  • For this situation, create jack records and assign them to their current faceplate, sequentially numbering the jacks (such as 3304, 3305) or numbering them after their positions in the building grid (17G-01, 17G-02). These numbers should also appear on labels on the cable drops.