Now that you have initial settings in place and a little data to work with, we can get familiar with the ITAM web interface as a whole. This article also mirrors the second of our Readiness courses that new TD ITAM customers attend.
Much of this article will focus around the Computers page as the top example of the UI features, but the concepts apply to all list pages. A List page is any page that has a list of records, which includes Computers, Devices, Purchases, Users, Policies, and more. Other pages are very similar to list pages and much of the UI experience is the same. A couple quick items before we proceed:
- We assume you are using the Administrator account at this point as we've not yet fully covered Roles and Access configuration for other accounts. Authenticated users will see the objects granted by permissions using these detailed settings, so rich federated access is possible.
- The Guest view will only see the Maps and Software navigation items by default.
- It is possible to add a guest Dashboard so that item also displays if desired. It is further possible to open more access to the unauthenticated guest view, but this may not be prudent if network access is widely open.
- You can also disable guest access and require authentication to view the Web UI, while retaining the default guest level permissions. Some of these topics are touched on through this page, others are more advanced and covered in KeyConfigure.
Speaking of Tours, you may want to click the ? icon in the lower left of the UI or hit F1 as seen next to the ? icon. This will show you a quick in-page tour of the current section of the web ui you're viewing.
List Pages
Click on Computers on the left side navigation to get started. You should see the sub navigation pane appear for Computers, which includes headers for Login, Divisions, Filters, and eventually other things as we progress with the platform like Tags. The main pane will have the list of computer records.
Sub Navigation
Some items are discussed in later articles, like Login Type being covered in the Computers and Devices article under Lifecycle Management. Other list pages will not have Login Type in this position. Devices will have Category (printer, display, etc.) which is pretty straight forward. Purchases will have the purchase Type. Users and Policies don't have a special pane in this position of their navigation. Divisions are a unique name on the Computers page, and all other list pages will have Folders instead. You'll note that the icon for a Division is a Folder, because they are the same concept. We simply have a distinct name for this container when it comes to Computers because they have special functions in the platform making them more fundamental for computers than anything else.
All these navigation items have a ^ next to them to expand and collapse the child objects, which you'll also see in the main sidebar navigation for some items. Some will also have a + so you can create a new object (e.g. new folder, new filter). Pro tip: if you hold Shift and click the + for Divisions, you will create a new Section instead. Sections are access management containers you can use in large organizations, and are discussed in more detail in other articles. Tags for example will not appear until you have added a tag to a computer.
Selecting any item in this sub navigation will filter the list of records in the main pane accordingly. While there are Filters specifically, the concept of filtering applies to all these navigation items. In some cases like Login Types and Categories, clicking will put a checkmark next to them as multiple can be toggled on and off at the same time. Others like Folters and Filters you can only have one selected at a time. But by combining these you can show for example only Dedicated computers in a certain lab (Division) that also match some advanced Filter criteria. At the top of the pane is text that displays all currently active selections (or All in Scope if nothing is selected) along with a record count in parenthesis. The x at the end of that string can be clicked to deselect all criteria at once. To the left of that string is a button that will toggle the display of the sub navigation pane for smaller screens, so if your navigation is missing just look for the button!
Main List
The main pane of a list page shows all the records of that type (computers, devices, etc). Many features work just like the file explorer on your computer.
- If you click on the name of a record, you open the record detail (more on that below).
- If you click anywhere else on the row you select that item.
- You can Shift click and Control click to select multiple records at once.
- The UI is drag and drop enabled, so you can drag selected items to move them to another folder or Login Type or add them to a Tag.
- If you click a column header, you sort by that column. Click again to invert the sort.
- You can click and drag the dividing line between the navigation sidebar and sub navigation sidebar, or the sub navigation and the main pane, to resize those panels. If you don't see object counts next to folders for example, it's because the pane is too narrow.
- Likwise, you can resize column widths by click and drag of the dividing lines in the header.
- Click the + in the upper right to create a new record.
- Click the Columns button to choose what columns are displayed and in what order. Computers for example have over 100 fields to pick from.
- In the column picker, you can also choose a Group criteria. When grouped, the group line in the main pane will have an object count on the right.
- You can save views in the column picker. This allows quick swap of all your column and group choices.
- The more options (3 vertical dots) button has other things like running reports or scripts, and perhaps most important saving the record list to your choice of formats. The save file will contain only the records and columns you have currently displayed through the above choices.
Right Click and Quick Edit
Many parts of the web UI are right click enabled. If you right click somewhere and get the normal browser context menu, that thing you clicked is not special. If you right click on a Division or Filter for example, you can choose to Edit that item. Right clicking on a record gives you appropriate actions as well like running targeted reports or scripts. Because you can select multiple items at once, you can perform tasks on random selections of records.
One of the powerful options in the right click menu when working with list records is Quick Edit. This pops up a modal where you can select multiple fields from drop a drop down list, and enter a value for each one. When combined with the other features above, this means you can use the filtering to quickly find a subset of records based on various criteria, select them all, and change a number of fields on all the records at once to whatever is needed. Batch move the department, building, manager, room number, lifecycle stage, etc on a couple dozen records in seconds.
Search
The Search bar at the very top is dynamic. On most pages it will search for only the object type that is relevant to that page. However, when used on the Dashboards page it will find any relevant object across the entire system. It is useful therefore to understand the iconography used in the result list. These will make more sense as we continue through the tour.
Scope
To the left of the Search bar in the top navigation is the Scope button (funnel icon). Clicking this will show a list of all applicable Maps, Sections, Divisions, and Tags that have been created and the items they contain (more on each of these later). Therefore, this menu is blank until you at least make some Divisions (if not the other items), which again illustrates the importance of these containers. When a Scope is applied the name of that Division/Floorplan/etc. is displayed, and all information on the page is changed to reflect only the computers in that Division. This scope will follow you between areas of the UI, so if applied on the Dashboard and you change to Software, you will only see Products that are installed on the machines in the scoped location. Using the scope is very powerful on the Dashboard in particular as your entire selection of widgets will redraw their data accordingly. This makes it very easy to flip from a chart view of statistics for your entire fleet, to stats for only a single lab location.
The Maps page will only show scope options for Maps/Floorplans, not the other categorizations. To clear the Scope, click the x next to the name. If there is no x, you are on a page where you can not clear the scope because the page IS the scope (i.e. when looking at a specific Floorplan). Visiting a Floorplan automatically applies that scope which then follows you to other pages like the Dashboard. Note that Scope will also apply to things like Reports. That is, if you run a report from a one click widget or the report builder (more on these topics below), the results will be filtered by the applied Scope. Again note that the notion of scope is retained across pages, so if at any point you find yourself seeing (or not seeing) data or objects you expect, it's a good idea to check the Scope.
Favorites
An interesting feature of the web UI is the Favorites menu. This is the Star icon in the upper right near your login name. Note this only appears when viewing a list page, not just any page of the UI. Clicking this opens the menu where by default you simply see (and can clear) the list of recently visited records. The reason it only shows on list pages though is because this menu is also drag and drop enabled. You can drag a record (e.g. a computer) from the list to the star to add it to your favorites. This creates an easy to use shortcut to that object without going looking for it (as easy and powerful as the Search is). But you can also drag FROM the favorites menu to a field in the UI. This means you could drag a bunch of computers to the favorites, go edit a purchase record, and drag those computers into the hardware list of the purchase to link them. Again, the search features and Quick Edit are more commonly used tools, but it is a unique feature that can be handy.
Alerts
Also in the upper right is the bell icon. This will turn orange to draw attention when a new alert occurs that you have not looked at. Clicking the icon will drop down a list of all unresolved system alerts. Also shown here will be any scripts that you are executing in the background. Only admins will see alerts, and the idea is to resolve them as you review them. That way the list does not clog up with months of alerts, but only shows current unresolved items of note that still need review.
Personal Settings
In the upper right is your logon name. Clicking this will show a menu of items that can again depend on your Role. View Assets shows you all computer, device, and software assets that are associated with your account, be it as the assigned owner, borrower, or policy allocation. Also in the menu is the Logout and choice for light and dark mode display.
If you Edit Account you will be able to modify a few preferences. Forms are discussed in later documentation. The Login QR Code is for use with our mobile app. Of particular note however is that the items in the left side main navigation will have checkboxes next to them. You can enable or disable various navigation items as desired, just remember to Save before exiting the page. Some items like Users and Policies are not enabled by default, and many admins will want to turn them on. Some sites may decide they are not using Purchases or Maps, and hide those from their sight.
Details Slider
When you click on a record a side panel will slide out with that record details. This side pane can also be resized as desired, so on a wide screen you can still see the main list behind it to easily flip between asset records. Likewise you can resize the width of the navigation sidebar from the main pane display. There is an x in the upper right to close the slider. Like the main navigation, there is a side pane of various sub pages you can flip through. Computers have a lot of sub panes, where Users have only a few. Each pane has information that may or may not be editable when you edit the record. This is because some things are set by the agent, like make and model and serial number, or are a primary identification like a user name.
When you Edit a record, once you make a change the button will change to Save. Once you Save your changes, the button changes to Done, but you are still in Edit mode. You can click Done to exit edit mode. The pencil icon in the upper right does the same thing as the Edit/Save/Done button under the navigation items, except it is Save and Done in one click.
Specifics of each asset/object type and their various fields of note are under the specific articles on those things. But there are a couple shared features of note:
History
Computers, Devices, and Policies have a History associated with them, while Purchases and Users do not. The History tab tracks changes to most of the values on the record. This allows for quick search of changes over time by the various criteria recorded in the history entries. What was changed, by whom, on what date, from what to what. You can also add a Memo to the history manually to add information at a point in time.
Custom Columns
Computers, Devices, and Purchases can have custom fields created for them. If you find that the robust array of fields in these records isn't quite enough, you can add your own in Settings -> Columns. Each of the 3 table types can have 10 custom fields. You can call these anything you want, but avoid using the same name as a built in field (we have seen it happen). The settings for columns allow not only the custom name, but also what data type and preset choices you may want to specify. See those settings for more details.
II. Initial Tasks<< III. Using the Web UI >> IV. KeyConfigure