Best Practice Question: Create a list where items may not have a Title?

[Chad_V_Kealey]

I've been tasked with creating a system for tracking IT assets (computers, peripherals, etc) for a department. Some are assigned to individuals and others are assigned to a group, so I'm building two content types. However, I'm having a bit of an existential crisis over what to use the "Title" field for. 

I've already created (site) columns for the "Asset Type" (Choice: desktop, laptop, monitor, etc.), "Asset Make" (Choice: Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.), and "Asset Model" (Text). Most (but not all) items have a Serial Number or Service Tag. Historically, I've always believed that the Title field should be treated as the "primary key" for a list and, whenever possible, be a unique value. Based on that, Serial #/Service Tag would be great, except that not everything has one.

I know a lot of other organizations create "Asset Tags" or "Asset IDs" for such items (in fact, our University did that up until about 15 years ago), so I thought about concatenating the "Asset Model" with the Item ID into the Title field. I've done something like that for other lists in the past (SP2010), using a simple SPD Workflow or even an InfoPath Rule (if using an IP form) to build that string. However, building and setting a single column value (and leaving the rest of the column values alone) is actually somewhat tedious and complicated in MS Flow. Eventually, this will be put into PowerApps, so maybe I just need to jump right to that and use it to build and set the Title field when new items are created.

Anyway, I'm sure others here have run into this "what do I do with this #$%! 'Title' column?' conundrum as well. So, how have you dealt with it??

[#2]

I've just setup the content type and just "Hidden" the title field. It's not required to have it. In the old SharePoint you would have to do some js script to make the other columns use the drop down menu etc. but with the new modern layout with the way items are now selectable might not be as much of an issue.

Once that's hidden it won't show on forms for entry, and you just hide it from views.

[#3]

I'm generally not a fan of hiding columns, but that's not the worst idea. It should do the job, and it's likely we'll build a PowerApp to interact with the data, so we'll have to remember that it's hidden and use other columns for the purpose of sorting and filtering the items.

[#4]

OK, one of the reasons I'm not a fan of hiding columns: Even when Title is not required, QuickEdit mode needs it. I did exactly as you described and tried using a QuickEdit view to paste in the data from the Excel sheet that's been used up to this point. It kept complaining that it couldn't save new items because a required field was missing. Added the Title field and - BOOM - was able to paste in and save.

[#5]

Hmmm, I rarely use if ever quick edit when I had to customize the form like that, that's odd. You would think it would be ok to not have.