Novell Documentation: GroupWise 6.5 - Creating and Managing Agent Groups

Creating and Managing Agent Groups

You might find it convenient to group related agents together for monitoring purposes. Initially, all agents are in a single group with the same name as your GroupWise system.

Agent groups are displayed on the left side of the Monitor Agent console. When you select an agent group, the monitored agents in the group and their status information are listed on the right side of the Monitor Agent console.

Monitor Agent console on initial startup

You can create additional groups and subgroups as needed to make monitoring similar agents easier. You might want to create agent groups based on geographical areas, on administrative responsibilities, or on agent configuration similarities. The number of agents in the group is displayed to the right of the group name in the agent groups window.

Monitor Agent console with agent groups defined

In addition, by creating agent groups, you can provide configuration settings for monitoring just once for all agents in each group, rather than having to provide them individually for each agent in your GroupWise system.

NOTE: On Linux, perform these tasks in the Monitor Web console.

Creating an Agent Group

At the Windows Monitor Agent console:

Right-click the folder where you want to create the agent group, then click Create.
Type a name for the group, then click OK to create a new folder for the agent group.

The group name must be unique within its parent group.
Click a folder containing agents that you want to add to the new group.
Drag and drop agents into the new group as needed.
Click the new group to view its contents.

You can nest groups within groups as needed.

Managing Agent Groups

Managing agent groups is easy:

To rename an agent group, right-click the agent group, click Rename, type the new name, then press Enter.
To move an agent group, drag and drop it to its new location.
To delete an agent group, right-click the agent group, then click Delete. A group must be empty before you can delete it.

Viewing Your Agent Group Hierarchy

When you create nested groups, you can choose how much of the hierarchy you want displayed:

You can open and close groups manually by clicking the plus and minus icons beside each folder.
To expand your entire group hierarchy, click View > Expand Tree.
To collapse your entire group hierarchy, click View > Collapse Tree.

You can also decide, when viewing the agents in a group, whether you want to view just the agents in the currently selected group or the agents in subgroups as well. By default, only the agents in the selected folder are listed in the agent window. Right-click an agent group, then click Show Subgroup Agents to display the contents of nested groups along with the selected group.

Monitor Agent console with subgroup agents displayed

Numbers in brackets beside each group indicate the number of agents in the selected group and the total number displayed

Configuring an Agent Group

Configuration settings for monitoring can be set for each monitored agent individually, for each agent group, or for all monitored agents collectively. You can establish default configuration settings for all agents by setting them on the root agent group that is named the same as your GroupWise system. Those default settings can be inherited by each subgroup that you create thereafter if you select Apply Options to Subgroups. Those default settings can be overridden by establishing different settings for an agent group or for an individual agent if you deselect Use Parent Options.