Defining a computer group

As you monitor product and license usage, you may want to associate groups of devices with licenses. For example, a group can represent devices in a location or in a division of your organization with its own software license accounting.

You can associate licenses with groups in two ways:

  • Static group: a group of devices that you have selected in the Endpoint Manager network view and saved as a device group.
  • Dynamic group: a group of devices defined with a query in the Endpoint Manager network view. As monitored devices are added or removed, the contents of the group changes to match the query parameters.

You can only create groups in the Endpoint Manager network view. When you define a group in the software license monitoring (SLM) console, you are simply choosing a name to associate with an existing device group or query.

To define a computer group
  1. Click Administration > Computer groups.
  2. On the toolbar, click New > Computer group.
  3. Type a name for the group. This name identifies the group in the SLM console.
  4. Select Use as allocation unit if you want to define this group as an allocation unit. You can later allocate a certain number of product licenses to this group with the intent of charging back the cost of providing IT support.
  5. Expand Devices or Queries and find the device group or query that is the source for the newly created computer group.
  6. When all information is complete, click Save.
To delete a computer group
  1. Click Administration > Computer groups.
  2. Select a group in the list. On the toolbar, click the Delete button.
  3. Click Yes to confirm the deletion.

NOTE: If you delete a computer group, any associated licenses will no longer be associated with those devices, so compliance reports will not apply to the group. If you do this, you need to decide what devices to associate with the license and define another group. If there is no associated group, the license is associated with all devices.