====Secondary States====

For the utilisation system to work, each asset should have a [[state|state]], such as 'running' or 'stopped'. This is known as the **primary** state.

It can also have a **secondary** state, which provides more detail or context to the state information. For example, if your primary state is 'Moving', your secondary state might be the //location// of the asset - explaining //where// the movement is taking place.

The secondary state does **not have to be consistent** between your different primary states. For example, it's possible to have the following...

^Primary State^Secondary State^
|Travelling|Location|
|Delayed|Reason|
|Breakdown|Cause|
|Unavailable|Category|

The secondary status is usually used to answer simple who/what/where/when questions about the primary status.

You should choose a secondary status that should answers the users most common questions around the different states when performing analytics. For stops/downtimes/unavailability, people will mostly be concerned about //why//. During normal operation, their questions are more likely to be around //what// the assets were doing, or //where// they were doing it.