Creating a Smart Device Group

You create a device group and then give it an ordered list of Device Match Rules to determine which discovered devices to add to your device group. When the Conductor discovers a new device, it checks the rules for all Smart Device Groups. If the device matches all of the Device Match Rules successfully, the Conductor adds it to that group. See Best Practices for Smart Device Groups.

v3.0 and later

Follow this section to add a smart device group in v3.0 and later.

1. To create a Smart Device group, create a device group, go to the Match rules tab, and enable Use rules to add devices. Enabling this shows the Device match rules section.
2. Next to Device match rules, select the edit icon , and the next table row on the right, select Add Rule.
3. Set the rules you want to determine which devices are added to this group:

   Order

   Specify the order you want the rules run. You can receive very different results based on how you order your rules. For details, see Rule ordering.

   Operator

   Use an operator to determine the logic by which devices are added as members of the group. See Rule operators for a list of operators.

   Reverse (!)

   The reverse option reverses the result of the operator. The Smart Device Group example contains a device match rule that uses the reverse option as an example.

   Rule type

   Select the information you want to use to determine what devices are added to a Smart Device Group. See Rule types for a list of rule types.

   Arguments

   Select the arguments, or options, for the rule type you selected.

   
   

   

   
   
4. To add additional rules, select Add rule again.
   To delete rules, next to the rule, click the delete icon .
5. Under the rules table, check the rule options. It is best practice to keep both of these checked:
   • Ignore auto-discovered devices until accepted – Keep this box checked to only add discovered devices after they have been managed by a Conductor administrator.
   • Automatically recompute after rules change – Keep this box checked to recompute the device group whenever the rules are changed.
6. Set the Rule editor to a person with permissions to manage the devices in the Smart Device group.

Note: If one of your rules is adding and removing tags, make sure the tags you create are not being used elsewhere in the Conductor, since manually-added tags are also removed if they are the same as these conditional tags.

CAUTION: If you disable Use rules to add devices on an existing Smart Device Group and click Save, the Smart Device Group reverts to a standard device group and the Device match rules are deleted. Devices added by the rule retain membership in the group but now you must add and delete devices manually using the Properties tab.

CAUTION: If you enable Use rules to add devices on a regular device group, any existing devices will be removed from the device group.

Set Device Match Rules

The screenshot below illustrates how you might construct a typical set of device match rules. These rules:

• Add all Airwalls in the Campus-West Airwall group, then,
• Add all devices in the Campus-East Airwall group, then,
• Remove all devices that are in the Instructors device group.

Note: If you change the order of these rules to exclude instructor devices first, it will exclude the Instructor device group first, then add Airwalls in the Campus-West and then Campus-East Airwall groups, which means instructor devices in those groups are added back in.