Management Groups

You can access this menu by clicking your avatar and selecting Settings. This is only visible, and restricted to the Full Administrator role by default or a configured role with the Security permission. Refer to Roles and Securables.

Management Groups are containers used to group devices and the software installed on those devices. Management Groups are defined using configurable rules that look at various properties of the devices and their installed software, these are then evaluated to determine the group membership. This means that Management Group membership adapts to changes to the devices and software in your environment.

Management Groups overview

Management Groups are use to determine:

• The targets for questions, actions, and reporting.

• User permissions for targeting to particular devices based on Management Group membership.

In terms of permissions for determining how users interact with the devices in your network, Management Groups work alongside Instruction sets.

Management Groups are created in two different ways:

• Rule based - the page lets you add, edit, delete and evaluate Management Groups that are based on rules.

• Direct based - these use scripts to create Management Groups by importing lists of devices using FQDN, this type of Management Group has no associated rules and cannot be edited and evaluated from the Management Groups page, instead 1E recommends using the 1E PowerShell Toolkit.

Both types of Management Group have the following properties:

• Each device known to 1E can be assigned to any number of Management Groups.

• Roles can be associated with specific Management Groups, so that users with those roles will only be able to target the devices in their Management Groups.

• Management Groups can only contain devices, and they are completely independent of any other Management Group, even if they contain the same devices

• Each Management Group must have a unique name which is not case-sensitive.

Permissions

The following roles can add Users and Groups, Roles, Management Groups, Assignments, and Delegation:

• Full Administrator.

• Group Administrator: Cannot create roles unless they are delegated.

Refer to the Roles.

Management Group safeguards

1E has implemented safeguarding measures for Management Groups to ensure users are aware of the impact of any changes they make. Users have visibility into the total number of assignments, engagements, and policies associated with a Management Group and its subgroups.

With Management Group safeguards:

• Admins can see the potential impact of a change implementing it. For example, an admin can see the total count of assignments policies, and engagements being utilized by a specific Management Group.

• You can use a simulation process which allows you to evaluate the impact of a change (assignments, policies and, engagements) and see how many devices are targeted.

• Admins will see an alert that they cannot make or save a change while a Management Group is used by another admin. Admins are emailed details about who is using that Management Group.

• If an admin (admin A) creates a Management Group draft while another admin (admin B) has committed a change, admin A is be alerted that there is a revision conflict and they will need to refresh Management Groups to get the latest version of Management Groups.

The Revisions and Usage sections

The Revisions and Usage sections support Management Group safeguards.

Revisions:

• Revision: Shows the amount of Management Group revisions. When a live Management Group is updated, a new revision is created, in the picture, the selected group has been updated 41 times.

• Created by: Shows who created the latest revision of the group.

• Last modified: Shows the date and time in UTC of when the latest revision was created.

Usage:

The Usage section shows where this Management Group is being used so that any impact can be assessed before making any changes. For example, in the picture it shows:

• In RBAC there are one assignment for this Management Group.

• There is one assignment to this Management Group in Employee Sentiment.

• Once policy is assigned to this Management Group.

Creating a draft Management Group using Management Group safeguarding

To see the impact of adding or editing Management Group rules:

1. Make your changes to a Management Group, this enables the Simulate Changes button.

2. Clicking Simulate changes creates a new draft Management Group. Once a draft simulation is in progress you cannot make any revisions to it.

    

   • Drafts are only visible to their creators, other users can see that a draft has been created but will be unable to view its details or edit it.

   • Only the user who created a draft or a Full Administrator can discard a draft.

   • Drafts cannot be discarded when a simulation is running.

   • Only one draft can be created at a time.

3. When the simulation completes, you can preview the number of devices that would be affected before applying your change.

   

4. If you save your changes, the Management Group will be updated and the draft version will be deleted.

5. Clicking Continue Editing allows you to make additional changes.

   

   • The Revision section shows the Draft tag, this indicates the onscreen data is for a draft and not a live Management Group.

   • The message at the top of the page displays the status of the simulation. Clicking Review Changes shows the Management Group Preview.

   • When your revisions are complete, click Simulate Changes. This updates your draft Management Group restarts the simulation.

   • Click Save to update your Management Group, you will see the Revision count and Last modified totals will be updated.

Draft Management Group hierarchy

Only one draft Management Group can be created at a time in a management group hierarchy.

For example, if you have a hierarchy of ParentMg > ChildMG1 > ChildMG2 and you create a draft associated with ChildMG1, you will not be able to create another one associated with either the ParentMG or ChildMG, unless you delete the draft associated with ChildMG1, (or update ChildMG1 from the draft).

When you have a draft in a hierarchy, every Management Group in that hierarchy will be set to read-only mode. In the following examples, there is a draft Management Group for TestMG-1 and user is clicking TestMG.

If a draft Management Group is:

• Created by the currently logged in user:

  

• Not created by the currently logged in user:

  

• Not created by the currently logged in user, but they are a Full Administrator:

  

Creating direct-based Management Groups

Direct-based Management Groups are created using scripts. Two sample PowerShell scripts are provided.

• Each script creates a new log file in the same folder, with file name format as <scriptname>_<ddMMyyyyhhmmss>.log which must be deleted manually.

• If a Management Group already exists with the same name, the script will delete and recreate it, only with the new devices provided.

• If the file or collection includes a device that is not present in the 1E Inventory repository, then it is ignored, and logged.

• After a successful run, the script triggers a Management Group sync.

Once imported into 1E, your direct-based Management Groups will be added as child groups of the default All Devices Management Group.

Prerequisites

• User must have read/write permission in the folder where the PowerShell script is present.

• User must use UseCustomCredentials parameter if the current logged-in user does not have permission in 1E to create Management Groups.

• If Windows Task Scheduler is used to run a script, then the scheduled task should provide the current logged-in user.

• Minimum of 1E Powershell Toolkit v1.2.5 installed.

• Kid to Upn mapping should exist in the 1E Platform.

Create Direct-based Management Groups from a file

To create the Management Group:

1. Create a folder which will contain text files to create Management Groups. This is the FolderPath passed as a parameter in the PowerShell script.

2. Create text files in the above folder with the name same as Management Group(e.g. ManagementGroupName.txt).

   • Enter Management Group Description in first line.

   • Enter one or more Device FQDN from second line onwards, one device per line.

3. Optionally add more files if you want to create multiple Management Groups.

4. Download: Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1

5. Execute the Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1 PowerShell script.

.\Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1 -TachyonApiBaseUrl https://tachyon.testlab.com -FolderPath C:\Temp\DeviceFolder -UseCustomCredentials

Create Direct-based Management Groups from a Configuration Manager collection

To create the Management Group:

1. Create a text file which will be passed as a parameter in PowerShell script.

2. In the file enter the following as a comma separated single line: Collection name, Management Group Name, Management Group Description

3. Optionally, enter more lines in the same format if you want to create multiple Management Groups.

4. Download Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingCmCollection.ps1

5. Execute the PowerShell script.

.\Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingCmCollection.ps1 -TachyonApiBaseUrl https://tachyon.testlab.com -FilePath C:\Temp\Collection.txt -UseCustomCredentials

Working with direct-based Management Groups

Given the information provided in Creating direct-based Management Groups, we can now give an example of how direct-based Management Groups can be added.

Before adding the direct-based Management Groups

In our example, we do not have any Management Groups except the default All Devices group with a total of all seven devices in our network, as shown. Once imported into 1E, your direct-based Management Groups will be added as child groups of the default All Devices Management Group.

The device files

We've created a C:\Sources\DeviceFolder folder and added two files, All Managed Windows 10 Devices.txt and All Managed Windows 7 Devices.txt that contain a list of device FQDN on separate lines.

We have also added the Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingCmCollection.ps1 script to this folder, in our example we'll run the script from the same folder as the text files.

.

Running the script to populate the direct-based Management Groups

With the device files in place, in our example, we run the Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1 file with the following command-line:

.\Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1 -TachyonApiBaseUrl https://tachyon.testlab.com -FolderPath C:\Temp\DeviceFolder -UseCustomCredentials

Where the TachyonApiBaseUrl is set to our example instance of https://tachyon.1etrn.local and the -FolderPath is set to the C:\Sources\DeviceFolder we set up earlier.

We don't bother with the UseCustomCredentials setting as the account we are running the script with has administrator permissions in 1E.

Checking the log file for Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1

After running the script you will find a log file is created in the same directory where the Create-DirectManagementGroupUsingFile.ps1 is located. In our example we can see that the script completed without errors.

The reports for creating and enabling the direct-based Management Groups

When the direct-based Management Groups are added to 1E some reports will run to enable the Management Groups to be used.

If more than one direct-based Management Groups are being added you will see two Management Group Evaluation reports run on the default Inventory repository. You will also see an additional Management Group Evaluation report run on each additional non-default inventory repositories you have in your system.

If you have Application Migration installed you will also see two Application Migration Consolidation reports run on the default ApplicationMigration repository.

In our example we have Application Migration installed, so we see four reports run when the DB Management Groups are added. Two Management Group Evaluation reports and two Application Migration Consolidation reports, as can be seen in the picture opposite.

The direct-based Management Groups added

After running the script, two new direct-based Management Groups get added:

• All Managed Windows 10 Devices.txt

• All Managed Windows 7 Devices.txt

You can drill down to see the details of a Management Group by clicking the Name link.

Clicking on the All Managed Windows 10 Devices.txt  Management Group name link displays the details for that Management Group. Here, you can view group members, export the membership as a .TSV file or add Child Management Groups as required.

You can use the Inventory→Hardware Inventory page with the Management Group selector set to the name of the Management Group, to view every device contained in the new Management Group.

Working with rule-based Management Groups

Rule-based Management Groups are defined and maintained in the Settings→Permissions→Management Groups page. They use device inventory data gathered from data sources by connectors and use Management Groups to control how instructions are applied in 1E applications. All child Management Groups must be created under the default All Devices Management Group.

You can easily create complex Management Group definitions by building rules for them, you'll find this in the Rules section of each Management Group. In the Rules section, you can define parameters that determine what devices are members of your Management Groups. The rules you create can be as simple as defining membership according to the OU path in your AD, or as complex as adding groups of rules that narrow membership down to details like Processor Matched Threads per Core. You can also use device tags that you have created to define Management Group membership, or a combination of all these parameters.

By default, in a new instance of 1E, all devices are members of the All Devices group. If you have upgraded from a previous version of 1E, your previously created Management Group will be preserved and will become a child Management Group of All Devices Management Group.

You can create Child Management Groups and nest them into a Hierarchy Structure where child Management Groups inherit rules from their parent groups.

Using child Management Groups you could create by hand a Management Group structure which mirrors your Configuration Manager collections, or divide your Management Groups by device type, for example into servers and workstations. You can use the delegation feature to create Management Groups that mirror your organizational structure with associated delegated roles.

To find out how to use scripts to import a Management Group structure from a file or from Configuration Manager collection, refer to Creating direct-based Management Groups.

Creating a rule-based Management Group

In this example we will create a Management Group for devices that are based in a different office location, this location contains Windows 7 devices and is named Sales. The new Management Group is going to be a child group of the All Devices group.

To create the rule-based Management Group:

1. Click the Add Child button to display the new Management Group template.

2. Enter a suitable Name for the Management Group. For example Sales.

3. Add a Description, it's a good idea to use a description that provides an outline of the rules that are used to populate the Management Group. For example OU Path Contains Sales.

4. To add each rule:

   1. Click on the Add rule button. The first one is already added, all you need to do is fill out the parts of the rule.

   2. First, you select the rule name and description, for example, OU Path.

   3. You then select the condition. For example Contains.

   4. To complete the rule you then set the value. For example Sales.

   5. Click Save.

      You cannot save changes to a Management Group if another user has just made new changes to that group. You will need to Refresh the page first.

      

5. Repeat step 5 for each rule you want to define.

6. When you have more than one rule added, you can:

   1. Use the gripper icon at the right-hand end of the rule to change the order the rules are applied by dragging the rule to a new place in the list.

   2. Change the conjunction operator at the left-hand end of the rule to select between AND and OR.

7. When you have finished adding the rules, you need to decide whether you want the Management Group membership to be evaluated immediately on adding the Management Group. If you are just adding one Management Group, it makes sense to click the Evaluate button. If you are adding a number of Management Groups, it may be a good idea to leave Click the Evaluate All button at the top of the page.

8. If you click Evaluate All and there is more than one inventory repository an additional control will be displayed prompting you to select which repository you want to evaluate the Management Group rules against.

The Management Group will be added to the Hierarchy Structure.

If you selected to evaluate rules immediately, the rules you set for the Management Group will be evaluated against the selected inventory repository.

To check how many devices are in the Management Group, switch to the Inventory Insights app, select the Management Group name from the drop-down.

The picture shows the details for the OU Path contains Sales Management Group, showing that it contains 2 devices.

Once the Management Group rules have been evaluated, you should then be able to check the devices in Endpoint Troubleshooting contained in the group using the Endpoint Troubleshooting→Devices→Table page. The picture shows the Devices table with the Management Group filter set to Sales.

Editing a rule-based Management Group

To edit an existing rule-based Management Group:

1. In the Management Groups table, locate the Management Group you want to edit and click the title at the left-hand end of its row in Hierarchy Structure.

2. Here you can edit the Name, Description and Rules that define the Management Group.

3. When you've finished editing, before you click the Save button you can click Evaluate, enables any modifications you've made to the rules to take effect right away. If you don't check the box, the rules won't be run, but you'll be able to evaluate the Management Groups later.

Deleting a Management Group

The following applies to rule-based and direct-based Management Groups.

To delete an existing Management Group:

1. In the Management Groups table, locate the Management Group you want to delete and click the title at the left-hand end of its row in Hierarchy Structure.

2. Click the Delete button. This displays the Delete Management Group popup.

   A Management group cannot deleted unless you remove its dependencies (assignments, policies, engagements) first.

   

3. Here you are asked if you want to proceed with the delete process. Click the Yes, delete Management Group button to confirm the deletion, or No to cancel.

Evaluating Management Group membership

You can select to evaluate the Management Groups at any time.

1. Click the Evaluate button.

2. If there is only one inventory repository, the evaluation will be queued immediately. If there is more than one inventory repository, the Evaluate Management Groups popup will be displayed, and you will need to select a Repository then click the Evaluate button before the evaluation is queued.

3. When an evaluation is queued you will see a Management Group Evaluation action appear on the Settings→Monitoring→Process log page. From there you can view the progress of the evaluation.

4. When this action has run, the Endpoint Troubleshooting application will reflect any changes that have been made to the Management Group memberships.

Delegation in 1E

Delegation in 1E is, a concept where an administrator can delegate some of their own responsibility to other users and limit the area where they can use that responsibility. In 1E, a Full administrator can create and modify Roles. They can also assign any Role to a 1E user or group using Management Groups, there are exceptions, like the Group Administrator Role which cannot be assigned to All Devices.

For example, a local security administrator with the Group Administrator role cannot create or modify Roles, but they can assign any Role that is marked as delegatable to a Management Group they have the security permission on, or any of its child Management Groups.

The exception is that a local security administrator cannot assign a Role that has the same security permission using the same Management Group they have permissions on. Instead, they have to use a child Management Group of the one they have security permissions on.

Essentially, a local security administrator cannot create an assignment that would result in another 1E user or group having the same security permissions as they do.

Delegation example

In our example we have a new 1E installation with only a few assignments, the one shown in the picture is of the Full Administrator role which is assigned to the group All_Devices_Full_Administrator and is assigned to All Devices. We have used a group to control the assignment instead of an individual user account.

In our example, we want to use the delegation feature of 1E and use the Group Administrator role to delegate some tasks to a child Management Group of All Devices called Servers to another administrator.

We'll assign the Group Administrator role to a Universal AD group called Server_Group_Administrator which we have added to 1E using the Users and Groups.

To add the new assignment:

1. We click on the title of the role to configure, in this case Group Administrator this displays the Assignments page focused on that role.

2. Clicking the plus sign button allows us to add our group, Server_Group_Administrator and the associated Management Group, Servers.

3. Once we've selected the group and Management Group, we click the Save button.

When a user in the Server_Group_Administrator group signs in to 1E, they will be able to create a child Management Group. For example a subset of the Servers Management Group for application servers called App servers, other Management Groups at the same level are locked because the Server_Group_Administrator has not been applied to those Management Groups.

If, for example, our Server_Group_Administrator now wants to add a user with the All Instructions Questioner role to the new App servers Management Group, they can now do so.

Management Group rules and conditions

In computing, a Boolean result means an expression is either true (1) or false (0). That is, expressions such as A AND B or A OR B give you a true or false result. Boolean expressions can be much more complex, and you can use brackets (groupings) to keep the same operators together, for example A AND B AND C. You would not write an expression such as A AND B OR C because it is ambiguous. It can be interpreted as either A AND (B OR C) or (A AND B) OR C.

When you are building rules, and you get different results to the ones you expect, write down each of your rules as A, B, C etc, and put them into a simple Boolean expression, like A OR (A AND B) = A.

This is perhaps the most important point to remember when building Management Group rules, and why it helps to write down what you are trying to achieve as a Boolean expression, then simplify it. The Rule examples section has some simple examples of how Boolean expressions translates to the rules you can apply to your own Management Groups.

Rule layout

Rules section layout

The rows in the Rules section are laid out as follows:

Conjunction	Rule Name	Operators	Value	Delete	Gripper
When there is more than one rule, this field determines how it is evaluated with the other rules. This may be one of: Conjunction Description AND This rule must be satisfied as well as any other rules. OR Either this rule must be satisfied or any other rules.	Determines the type of information checked when evaluating the rule. For example, selecting Device Computer Name will specify checking the set value against the information held internally for each device's computer name using the selected operand. Please refer to List of available rules below.	How the value compares against the type of information. This may be one of the following: Operator Attribute type Comparison Equal to String, Date, Number, Yes/No Your value is exactly equal to the device’s value. Not Equal to String, Date, Number Your value is not equal to (different from) the device’s value. Before Date Your date is before the device’s date. After Date Your date is after the device’s date. Begins with String The device’s value begins with your value. Ends with String The device’s value ends with your value. Less than Number Your value is less than the device’s value. Less than or equal to Number Your value is less than or equal to the device’s value. Greater than Number Your value is greater than the device’s value. Greater than or equal to Number Your value is greater than or equal to the device’s value. Is one of Tag The specified Device tag exists on the device, and its value is one of the array of alternative values that you specified. Is not one of Tag The specified Device tag exists on the device, and its value is not one of the array of alternative values that you specified. Is Null String, Date, Number, Tag The device does not provide this information. If you have specified a Device tag, it does not exist on the device. Is not Null String, Date, Number, Tag The device provides this information, but it can be any value. If you have specified a Device tag, it exists on the device, set to any value. Contains String The device’s value contains your text string. Not Contains String The device’s value does not contain your text string.	The value field is either a string, date, or numeric value, depending on the chosen rule name. It may also be a Device tag. For more information about Deice tags, please refer to Custom properties.	This field contains an icon that lets you delete the rule.	This field lets you grab the rule and change its order where there is more than one rule.

Rule examples

The following examples may help to illustrate the logic underpinning the rules you can build and apply to the Management Groups in your environment.

Rule example 1

"Device Netbios Name begins with 1ETRNW" OR ("Device Netbios Name begins with 1ETRNW" AND "Device Netbios Name begins with 1ETRN")

Is the same as saying:

"Device Netbios Name begins with 1ETRNW"

You could reduce this to the statement:

A OR (A AND B) = A

In our environment, this returns all five workstation devices with the NetBIOS name beginning 1ETRNW.

Rule example 2

"Device Netbios Name contains 101" OR ("Device Netbios Name Contains 101" AND "Device Netbios Name Contains 71")

Is the same as:

"Device Netbios Name Contains 101"

You could reverse the logic in the statement and say:

"Device Netbios name Contains 101" AND ("Device Netbios name Contains 101" OR "Device Netbios name Contains 71")

Which is the same as:

"Device Netbios Name Contains 101"

You could reduce this to the statement:

A AND (A OR B) = A

In our environment, this returns one workstation device with the NetBIOS name contains 101, which matches one device, 1ETRNW101.

Rule example 3

Management Group rules do not let you place a Boolean NOT operator around a grouping, but you can convert an expression into NOT rules, for example:

NOT ("Device Netbios Name Contains AP" OR "Device Netbios Name Contains CM")

Using rules, you can express this as:

"Device Netbios Name Not contains AP" AND "Device Netbios Name Not contains CM"

You could reduce this to the statement:

NOT (A OR B) = (NOT A) AND (NOT B)

In our environment this returns the six devices where the NetBIOS name does not contain AP or CM, which are 1ETRNAP, our application server, and 1ETRNCM, our Configuration Manager server.

List of available rules

Rules used to create Management Groups, and connectors that provide the data to support the rules.