Device Groups and Filters

Overview

Device groups and filters are a very useful method to manage many devices. For example, you can group devices by location or purpose. A group of devices can then be dynamically filtered by different criteria, such as the operating system, the firmware version, the device’s public IP, and more. We will learn how to use device groups and filters to execute commands on only selected devices.

Viewing the Existing Device Groups

To view the device groups:

1. Click on the Devices icon in the Overview Dashboard.

2. In the Devices Table, click the Groups button to open the Groups pane (if it is not already open):

The Groups pane lists all available groups.

The “All” group at the top of the list is a master group. The master group contains all the devices enrolled in the domain that the Radix Device Management Platform can display.

There is no limit to the number of device groups you can create in an account. A device can be a member of more than one group.

If you create a filter and perform a search, the devices that comply with the filter conditions will immediately appear in a group. All the rules and tasks relevant to that group will be applied to all the devices in the group.

Example of Searching for a Group

Let us use the Groups search bar to look for the group “Teachers Laptops”.

(Note: Group names are not case-sensitive. Therefore, a group named “Teachers Laptops” is not distinct from a group called “teachers laptops”.)

In this case, the filter group called “Teachers” filters all devices containing a tag called “teachers laptops”.

Adding Devices to a Group

To add more devices to our “Teachers Laptops” group, we add the tag “teachers laptops” to another device.

To add a tag to a device:

1. Click on the Devices icon in the Overview Dashboard. This will display the Devices Table.

2. Find the device that you would like to include in the Teachers Laptops group. You can use the Search bar at the top to locate the device.

3. Click on the device’s three-dots menu>Device>Set Device Tags on the right-hand side of the device’s row.

The Set Device Tags window opens.

4. Enter the tag “teachers laptops”, and press Enter. The tag “teachers laptop” will appear among the tags attached to the device. (Note: Tag names are case-sensitive, so be sure to use lower-case letters in the tag name.)

5. Click Confirm to confirm the tag choice and close the Tags window.

6. Click on Groups, and search for the Teachers Laptops group. You’ll find the new device listed among the member devices in the group.

Filters and Filter Conditions

The Search bar at the top of the Devices Table allows you to search for a particular device. If you know the name of a tag applied to a device, the username, or the device name, you can type that into the Search bar. For example, if we type “teacher” into the Search bar, we receive a list of all devices with the string “teacher” in one of their tags, or in the email address, or username:

If you click on the Filter Devices icon near the Search bar, the Filter pane opens. You can use it to narrow down the search using a wide range of conditions.

Filter devices icon in the Devices Table

Selecting filter options

Currently, there are 21 conditions that you can use to filter devices:

Search Criterion	Description
Tag	Will filter by tags (= identifying names) that can be applied to a device (either by the agent or server-side) and can describe the essence of the device.
App with version	Will filter devices by a specific software app. You’ll have to supply the software package name and its version number.
App not installed	Will filter devices by apps that are not on the device.
Email	Will filter devices by their main email account on the device.
Model	Will filter by the model of the device.
Last seen	Will filter by the number of days that the device was seen connected and online.
Policy/Kiosk	Will filter by the software policy that is applied to the device. Software policies are a list of apps that are blocked from the device, while Kiosk mode is a list of apps that are allowed on the device.
Available internal storage (in MB)	The amount of available space presently on the device.
OS Version	Operating system version (number).
Hardware ID	The internal hardware ID, typically represented by the MAC Address.
IMEI	Will filter by the International Mobile Equipment Identity number, which is unique for every mobile device.
Name	Will filter by the name applied to the device.
Public IP	Will filter devices by their IP address.
OS	Will filter by the device’s operating system (Android, Windows, ChromeOS, iOS, MacOS).
WLAN MAC address	Will filter by the device’s wireless MAC address
Ethernet MAC address	Will filter by the device’s Ethernet MAC address
Firmware version	Will filter devices by their firmware version
Time Zone	Will filter devices by their time zone
Battery Status	Can be set to filter devices if their battery level is above or below a certain value
Serial (Windows)	Filters Windows devices by their serial number
Antivirus	Filters devices by the antivirus installed

Filter Criteria

If you are filtering the devices by the tags employed, email address, model, hardware ID, IMEI, device name, or Public IP, you’ll see a dropdown list of filter criteria:

Here is a brief summary of all of the search filter options to help you create device groups:

Filter Criterion	Description
Is	Requires that the search result be exactly like the string you enter. If you search for the string “teacher”, only those devices with the tag “teacher” will appear. However, “teachers” or “Teacher” will not appear in the search.
Startswith	Requires that the search result only start with the string that you enter
Endswith	Requires that the search result only end with the string that you enter
Contains	Requires that the search result only contain the string that you enter
Doesn't exist	Will display all devices without the specific search criterion: for example, it will display all devices without tags.
Exclude	Will display all devices without the specified criterion. For example, it will exclude all devices with the tag “new”.

Also, you can combine several types of search criteria, separated by “AND” or “OR” operators, to further refine the search results.

In the example below, the search filter uses three criteria. The filter displays only 1) Windows devices that 2) contain the string “teacher” within one of their tags, and 3) have been used within the last 1500 days.

You can choose to save the filter by clicking Save Filter to use it in future searches. In our example, we saved the search and assigned it the name “Teacher Laptop Filter”.

You will receive a notification that the search was saved properly:

The results of our search are as follows:

The search displays all Windows devices that 1) have the tag “teachers laptops”, and also 2) were last seen within the last 1500 days.

Removing a Search

To stop the search filter and view all of the devices again, click on the “X” next to the current filter criteria, or click on Clear Filters:

The Devices Table will display the “All” group, with all the devices, as before the search.

A Practical Example

As a practical example of employing a device group and filtering the devices, we will use the search function to create groups of devices, and then filter them by their tag options.

For example, some devices contain the tag “Class_A”, while other devices contain the tag “Class_B”, and some contain both tags. We have four possible options:

Option A: To create a device group to filter all devices that have the tag Class_A only