The Radix Device Management Platform allows you to manage a large fleet of devices remotely. Besides being able to send messages and files, you can also install apps onto many devices simultaneously. But what happens if you want to add new devices to your fleet of devices? It can be tedious trying to install all of those apps onto every new device manually.
One powerful feature of the Radix Device Management Platform is the option to create groups and apply commands with persistence. This is a powerful tool to enable automating commands for new devices enrolled in the platform.
Persistent Groups
Creating a group of devices allows you to install and enable a set of software apps on all of the devices in the group. In addition, applying persistence to a command will allow every new device that you add to the group later to automatically receive all of the desired apps installed immediately.
To illustrate persistence, we will do the following:
- Create a group without any devices in it.
- Assign a command to the group.
- Define the command as persistent.
- Add a device to the group.
The device will immediately have the command applied to it.
Step One: Create a Group
To create a group:
1. In the Radix Device Management Platform's Dashboard, click on the Devices icon in the sidebar menu, to open the Devices Table.
2. Click on the Groups button to open the Groups pane (if it is not open already).
The Groups pane opens.
3. Click on the Add group icon.
The Create new group window opens.
4. Assign a name and description for the new group.
5. In the sidebar menu, click on the Tags icon. The tag is an identifier for any device belonging to this group. We will assign the tag “xyz” and click Save.
We have created the Show persistence group. We see in the Groups window that the group has no devices associated with it:
Step Two: Assign a command to the Group
We will now assign a command to the group.
To assign a command to the group:
1. Click on the three-dot menu next to the group name, to open the Group Actions drop-down menu.
2. We will select the Deploy>Messaging command.
We will select one of the stored messages to be displayed on devices in the group “Show Persistence” and click Apply to send it to the devices.
Step Three: Make the Command Persistent
Now we will apply persistence to the command. With persistence, as soon as a device is added to the group, it will receive the persistent command.
To make the command persistent:
1. In the Radix Device Dashboard, go to the Command History Log and find the command that you want to make persistent. Note that the icon for the command is blue, meaning that it is assigned to a group, but not a persistent command.
2. Click on the three-dots menu near the command and select Persist.
3. In the prompt, click Yes to agree to make the command persistent:
The icon for the command will now turn green:
Step Four: Assign a Device to the Group
Now we will assign a device to our group, by assigning the identifying tag to that device. In practice, all of the remote users can assign tags to their devices through the Viso Agent app. When they assign the correct tag to their devices, all of the relevant commands will be performed: sending files, installing software, installing updates, and more.
To assign a device to a group:
1. In the Radix Device Dashboard, go to the Devices Table, and select the device that you want to be in the group:
2. Click on the three-dots menu “Device Actions” on the right and go to Device>Set Device Tags:
3. Add the identifying tag for our group. The tag is “xyz”.
4. As soon as we click Confirm, the device will receive the Advanced Message command that we have associated with the group:
Advanced Message that we sent to the devices in the group
Removing Persistence
If at some point you’d like to remove the Persistence option from a persistent command or software installation, there is also an option to remove persistence.
To remove persistence:
1. Open the Command History Log by clicking on the Command History icon in the sidebar menu.
2. Find the command to which you’d like to remove the persistence feature. In our case, it is the command "Advanced Messaging: that's all folks".
3, Click on the command’s three-dots menu and click on the Stop Persistence tile.
4. You will be prompted if you wish to stop persistence. Click Yes.
The color of the command’s icon in the Command History Log will now revert from green to blue. This indicates that the group command no longer has persistence.
Commands That Support Persistence
As we saw, applying persistence to a command will execute the command immediately on any device that joins the relevant group, as well as on the devices already in that group. Here is a list of commands to which persistence can be applied:
- Advanced Messaging
- AFW Install/uninstall
- Change agent Password
- Custom command
- Device Settings
- Disable apps
- Enable apps
- Firmware Update
- Install package
- Remote Exec (Commands & Scripts)
- Remove Google Accounts From Device
- Restart
- Send file
- Send Message (Direct Message)
- Shutdown
- Smart recovery (for Windows devices)
- Sound Siren
- Uninstall Packages
- Wake On LAN
- Workflow