Creating custom queries [Web console]
Custom queries are useful when you want inventory details about hardware and software installed on your devices. Use a custom query to build a list of devices with similar inventory. For example, if you want to upgrade all devices to at least a 2 GHz processor, you can query for all devices in your database with processor speeds of less than 2 GHz. Custom queries are also used to define groups and scopes.
You can query on any of the inventory items (known as "attributes") that the inventory scanner stores in the database.
Managing queries
Manage queries in the Queries tool pane. Use this tool to create, edit, or delete queries:
- To run an existing query, select it and click Run.
- To create a new query, click New. Once you have created and saved that query, its name will appear in the list on this page.
- To edit a query in the list, double-click it. The Edit query page appears with query parameters you can edit.
- To edit the most recent query, click Edit current.
- To delete a query, select the query and click Delete.
- To clear the query parameters from the Edit query page, click the Clear toolbar button. If the query has already been saved, it's cleared from this page but remains in the Custom queries list.
Creating a query is a four-step process:
- Create a search condition: Specify a set of inventory attributes that will be the basis of your query.
- Select attributes to display: Refine or "filter" the query so that the results display the attributes most useful to you, such as IP addresses or computer device names.
- Sort results by attributes: Specify how you want the query results sorted. (This options applies only if, in step 2, you chose to display more than one type of attribute in the query results.)
- Run the query: Run the query you just created. You can also save it for later use, or clear all of the query information to begin again.