filters - yet again...
I've managed to get it working but still don't understand the "why"?
Made a dynamic collection to be its own "root" & checked drill down from parent. My filter to look for some software works fine - I can see the computers that have it. Now I made the exact same collection with filter & placed it underneath this collection. Have drill down from parent checked. Yet nothing shows up in the filter like it did before...? Shouldn't having the drill down from parent on both collections tell it to start from "all computers"?
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Hi Jonathan,
We can't duplicate what you are describing. Will you send a screenshot of your two collections?
I want to describe what the "Drill down from parent collection" actually does.
First of all, if you have a collection at the root then the "Drill down" effectively does nothing. A dynamic collection at the root will automatically query all computers in the database. If you have 500 computers in your DB then all computers are evaluated to see if they pass the filters. Let's say this collection contains 23 computers. When you build a sub (child) collection and you enable the "Drill down..." feature then only the computers in the parent collection are evaluated. This means that the filters in the sub collection would only evaluate the 23 computers that exist in the parent collection. This can speed up the collection population as it can avoid redundant queries.
Hmmm, where did my reply & Lex's reply go?
Well attached is the screenshot of filters. Basically I have a dynamic collection at the root called MISC. It has no filters whatsoever defined in it. I thought by default it should show all computers if no filters where "filtering" the computers. But apparently that is not so. Now underneath it I have several dynamic collections but some of them work & some of them don't. Some will know to look at all computers & then filter them. Some sub-collections will not see any computers to begin with so they won't show anything in the filter...? Like the latitude filter, I have at least 30 computers that are latitude but my filter will be blank. So when I make it its own collection (not sub) it will show me the computers. Yet when I go to the win7 filter it will show me computers...? I think my filters are screwy.
I believe you and Lex were also communicating in a support ticket. Those communications are not public.
A collection with no filters will not show any computers. If you want a collection to show All Computers create a filter that says "Computer Name Contains" and keep the value blank. When you create a new collection this is the default filter that is created.
As far as the Latitude filter, I would suggest unchecking the "Drill down..." feature. You can modify your Misc collection to include all computers but unchecking the Drill Down in Latitude will already check against all computers.
A good example for using the Drill down is shown below.
Here are the collections in the Collection tree:
Top-level Silverlight collection:
Sub-collection only showing Windows 7 computers with Silverlight.
Perhaps you can make 2 options for drill down to be an either or decision with a radio button? Like,
1) apply filter to parent collection only
2) apply filter to all computers
It may be easier to understand for simpletons like me? And perhaps even hide the drill down option when it is a root collection since it does nothing anyway?
Then the filters themselves - all, any, not any, not all - head spinning. You can keep the logic behind the scenes & perhaps just change the words used for the front end? Instead of just "all", perhaps "all filters must match", etc.
Thanks for taking the time. As I mentioned in first post, I figured out unchecking the drill down option or making sub collection into root collection made the filter work like I wanted. Just the other ones that seem to work when they shouldn't is what puzzles me.