How come, when you select an agent in the web reports - you do not see all the gathered data on that particular device - as you do in the console? I have an entire desktop support team that wants access to all the info on a workstation that can be found in the console - but I do not want to give them all console access. Which means they have to come to me several times a day to get information on a specific workstation. I understand that it might be a case of then dragging down the web services. I also realize that the db is open enough that we could create our own custom report console - but I don’t have the expertise or time for that. Is there a way to set the current data load to show more detail? Thanks.
It sounds like you should teach your support team to create a computer properties report in Web Reports. All the same data is available in Web Reports as is available in the console.
No, sorry - that doesn’t help at all. First, I have taught them to create computer properties reports. Second - that is a lot of steps to gather information on one single workstation. And third - even after going through that process, not all the data is there. When I look at a workstation in the console, I see a ton of information (Application Information, Hardware Information, Application Tracking, Anti-Pest Settings/Scan results, etc). Unless my web reporter is not setup properly - I’m only able to see about 1/3 of what the console has to offer.
Doing a report by “All Computers” and then selecting the workstation name (that is something they usually know ahead of time) works ok for seleting single workstation - but the detailed info is still not there. Should it be?
Actually there should be more properties available in the computer properties report then there are columns on the computers tab in the console. The computers tab in the console only lists globally activated properties, while the list of properties in the computer properties report would include those properties plus any activated analysis properties.
If you are not seeing these properties, please open a support case. It’s possible your web reports cache is corrupt or your web reports server is out of memory.
Then it sounds like everything is in order. True - if I build a report then all the retreived properties are available in the 3 column setup - or if I go through the analysis reporting. Sounds like my setup is ok. It would be cool though if when you clicked on a specific workstation (in web reporter) you would get all the active retrieved properties that you get when you do the same thing through the console. It sounds like to allow our desktop support team the ability to dig deeper into a workstation inventory or properties - I will need to give most of them read access to a full console. Not ideal - but I need to get out of the business of workstation research for them. It gets very time consuming. Thanks for your help. Maybe I will do it through Citrix. Is there any support documents describing best practice for publishing the console in Citrix?
I think you should be able to get all the information your support team needs without going the Citrix route. When you click on a computer in web reports, you’ll see a list of all of the globally activated properties for that particular machine. These would be all the same properties that are available as columns in the console.
If you wanted to see results from analysis properties, you can scroll to the bottom of the computer page (or select the ‘All Analyses’ report on the store reports page) and click on the analysis that contains the property you are interested in. On the analysis report page, you can click on the link at the top “View Computers” to see the results from individual computers.
Here is a scenerio (and since deploying BF AntiPest - it has been the biggest request).
Support has a workstation that they want to check on the results of spyware scans. The have one of two most direct ways to do it (let me know if I’m missing anything).
Create a new report and choose the Analysis for “BigFix Anti-Pest - Run Statistics”. Then if the choose “view computers” they can sort through numerous pagest till they find the one PC they want (subsequently - we can create a saved report that enables a quicker report gernation).
Create a new report based on “all computers”. From there they search for the computer (only if they know the name) and then click on it. From there they can run the same Anti-Pest analysis (as you mentioned). Biggest issue I see with this way - is that when you select an analysis it pulls the information based on all agents - not just the single PC that was orginally searched on. So then you have to go through option 1 to dig into the single PC.
Should option 2 work like that with the analysis giving you all details - instead of based on the single PC?
You are correct that option 2 will provide results from all computers. This is the intended behavior. However, it should be easy to teach your help desk operators how to filter the analysis down to a single machine. You can do this either before or after you get to the analysis page. Simply go to the filter drop down, choose ‘Create Filter’, then choose to filter by Computer --> Retrieved Property --> Computer Name, then select the computer name. Make sure the drop down is set to ‘Include’ and press the + button. Click done and the filter will be applied. Another nice thing about this method is that if they don’t know the computer name there are plenty of other properties they could use, e.g. IP Address, Location, OS, etc.
Thanks for your help on this. Unfortunately filtering won’t solve the problem at hand. It is an easy enough task for a once in a while look-up - but to do a filter and scroll through 3400 agents for a single PC several times a day won’t go over well (in fact that is why I started this thread - the complaints had already started). I feel for those locations that have 20k+ to scroll through.
They need to be able to look something up quickly - and they are currently fustrated with having to scroll through that many agents everytime they want to look something up. I’ve decided that the best thing is to hand out the console to people. Not ideal - but it at least it allows them more control over data mining. I think the console and reporter are very tuned for “admins” - but I feel that for the support person out in the field - the BES structure needs some simplicity for lookups.