Groups

Introduction

The following is a description of the Groups folder in Configuration Management. Groups are logical areas based on the infrastructure of your company. This might be departments, business areas, countries, user types or whatever makes sense to you. In many large, complex networks, IT managers can often have trouble maintaining a good overview of which computers are used for what purpose, what software is installed where, and what needs updating.

To help you get the overview you need, CapaInstaller enables you to organize units into both static and dynamic groups. You can then apply your installation and maintenance packages to entire groups at once, thereby ensuring thorough distribution while saving time.
With CapaInstaller groups you can:

Establish custom groups for organizing computers to match your organization.
Establish dynamic groups based on both simple and complex queries into the inventory database, for example, to match a certain hardware configuration, operating system, and/or software installation. (Requires the Reporting and Queries.)
Group computers based on Active Directory membership.
Group packages to keep related tasks together

The Console includes several types of groups, each of which is introduced below. Out of the box, only the System Group is added in the tree view containing 3 subgroups:
Catalog Group
Calendar Group
Reinstall groups

Four Custom Groups can be created:
Static groups
Department groups
AD groups
Dynamic groups

Field descriptions

Element	Description
Static groups	Static groups are created manually and membership is based on the manual adding and removing of specific units. You can create static groups for both computers and users, but a single group cannot contain both types of units. You will usually use static groups to collect units that cannot be grouped using inventory or Active Directory information.
AD groups	Active Directory is a Microsoft technology for organizing users and computers. Active Directory Groups are based on the contents of an LDAP item from the Active Directory. LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is used to access information regarding the Active Directory. Active Directory Groups are dynamic, so membership will always depend on current LDAP information. Membership is maintained by the Replicator, so updates will appear only as often as the Replicator runs the Active Directory group job.
Dynamic groups	Unit membership in a dynamic inventory group is based on various types of inventory information gathered about the various units. You can establish complex logical criteria for defining the membership of each group. To view the units that are currently part of a dynamic group, click on the group name in the left frame and look at the list in the right frame. Membership is maintained by the Replicator, so updates will appear only as often as the Replicator runs the Process SQL group job. Dynamic group membership is updated only as often as the Replicator runs. You may therefore need to wait a short time before units appear in a new dynamic group.
Department groups	Department groups are created manually and membership is based on the manual adding and removing of specific units. Department groups can only hold computers. You will usually use Department groups because these can easily be added to reports

If you want to...	You can...
Learn more about groups in business units	Groups and Business Units