4.6.4 Creating groups

You can manage devices and hardware assets in groups. First, you need to determine what type of grouping to use, and how you wish to create the groups.

When you create groups, you can perform the following tasks at the group level:

• Assign security policies (excluding host-name-of-the-management-relay-server groups)

• Assign a computer to perform distribution

• Define the scope of reports (excluding user-defined groups)

• Assign agent configurations (excluding user-defined groups host-name-of-the-management-relay-server groups)

The following table describes the types of group and how each group type is managed.

Type	Management method
Device type	Computers are grouped based on operating system information collected from the computer. Devices other than computers are grouped automatically based on their device type.
Network	Computers are grouped by network segment based on IP address information collected from the computer.
Department	Computers are automatically grouped based on the department and location information collected from the computer. In a multi-server configuration, computers are also automatically grouped when asset field definitions are applied from the higher management server. The administrator can also manually assign computers to groups. When linking with Active Directory, the department information managed by Active Directory can be reflected directly to the group configuration.
Location
User-defined	Devices are assigned to groups automatically based on the conditions set by the system administrator.
Host name of the management relay server	In a multi-server configuration, computers are automatically grouped based on the host name information collected from lower management relay servers. Network segments that are defined in a management relay server are put into a group with the same name as the management relay server.

The following describes the matters you must consider when creating groups:

1. Types of group

   In the following circumstances, devices must be managed in user-defined groups. When using user-defined groups, you also need to consider the structure of the groups.

   • You want to manage groups using the value of an added management item as the allocation criteria

   • You want to manage groups using added management items and system groups (device type, network, department, or location) as the allocation criteria

   By default, the relevant groups are not created automatically when you group devices by department and location. You need to decide the structure of the groups.

   When you group devices by device type and network, groups are created automatically based on the information collected from devices. In this case, you do not need to consider the group structure.

2. Group structure

   When using user-defined groups, consider the criteria you want to use to allocate devices to groups.

   Department and location groups can be managed in a tree structure. Consider what group structure would be appropriate in light of the departmental framework of your organization and how devices are physically distributed throughout it. When linking with Active Directory, consider whether to incorporate the group configuration managed by Active Directory as department information.

3. Creating groups

   User-defined groups are created by the system administrator, who sets the conditions for allocating devices to the groups. For details about how to create user-defined groups, see (20) Creating groups. For details about the structure of user-defined groups, see (22) Overview of user-defined groups.

   There are two methods to create groups of departments and locations:

   Group creation by collecting device information

   Groups are created based on the user information collected from computers. To collect user information from computers, the department and location configurations must be set in advance in the Settings module on the management server. Note that user information can only be collected from computers with agents installed.

   You can also use the group configuration managed by Active Directory as department information. To do so, enable the import of group configurations when you configure Active Directory linkage in the Settings module.

   You can also automatically group computers based on the registry information collected from the computers.

   Group creation by the administrator

   You can group computers manually by defining the department and location configuration in the Settings module on the management server.

   Tip

   During initial setup, we recommend that you group devices automatically based on the collected device information. Manual grouping should be used to modify an existing group configuration, rather than during initial setup.

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