Devices and Groups

Lanview uses groups to organise managed Windows devices and to control where administrative actions are targeted.

A device is a Windows computer managed by Lanview. Devices appear in Lanview Studio after the Lanview Client service has connected to Lanview Server and the device has been approved.

A group is a Lanview container used to organise devices and apply group-based operations. Groups are useful when devices need to be managed together, such as by location, department, support team, device type or operational purpose.

Groups in Lanview are not the same as directory service security groups. They are Lanview management groups used by Lanview.

Where to find devices and groups

Devices are managed from the Devices module in Lanview Studio.

From the Devices module, administrators can view managed devices, open the Device Window, approve new devices, delete devices or run permitted actions.

Groups are shown through the group navigation and group management views in Studio. A device can also show its group membership from the Device Window.

Groups

Groups help administrators work with several devices as a set.

Typical uses include:

• grouping devices by site, office or building
• grouping devices by department or business function
• grouping devices by support responsibility
• grouping devices by device type
• applying the same action to a defined set of devices

Group actions can include operations such as wake, ping, restart, shutdown, logoff, display a message, start a new process and trigger Windows Update where those features are enabled and the user has permission.

Group targeting should be used carefully. A group action can affect many devices.

Group membership

A device can be added to or removed from Lanview groups.

Use Lanview Studio to add devices to groups or remove them from groups.

Changing group membership may affect how a device is organised in Studio and may affect feature settings where group inheritance is supported.

Devices can belong to multiple groups at the same time.

Inherited settings

Some Lanview features support inherited settings.

For example, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) port configuration and Agent policy can use global, group and device level values.

The exact inheritance behaviour depends on the feature. Do not assume every setting inherits through groups. Inheritance is feature-specific.

Permissions

Device and group actions are controlled by role-based permissions.

Common device permissions include:

Common group permissions include:

The exact action also depends on feature-specific permissions. For example, a user may be allowed to view a group but not deploy software to it.

Audit behaviour

Lanview audits important device and group management actions on the Server.

Audit records can include device approval, rejection, deletion, blocking, unblocking, renaming, group creation, group deletion, group rename and group membership changes.

Sensitive actions may require a reason when reason prompts are enabled in the Lanview Server configuration.

Console commands

Most device and group actions are available from Lanview Studio. Related console commands may also exist for administrators who use the Lanview console.

Examples include:

device.list
device.show
device.approve
device.reject
device.delete
device.block
device.rename
group.list
group.show
group.add
group.delete
group.member.add
group.member.remove

Guidance

Use groups to make management easier. A clean group structure makes targeting safer and makes the product easier to support.

Avoid creating large catch-all groups for high-impact actions unless the role design, approval process and audit expectations are clear.