Cockpit Groups

[Melanie_Monnereau]

Hi

Any reasons why we do not see the smart groups into the listed groups of the Cockpit app?

Can it be customized so users also see the smart groups?

thank you

[Robert_Neale]

Smart groups, by default are only seen in Device Management. The smart groups are primarily intended to make functions of the Device Management app easier, so they are only normally visible there.

https://cumulocity.com/guides/10.15.0/users-guide/device-management/#using-smart-groups

[Melanie_Monnereau]

I know hence my questions what s the reason behind hidden them from the cockpit app? If a user decides to create a smart group, he might well still want to see business info for that same group on the cockpit. The advantage of the smart group is that it is dynamic; our client does not want to remember adding new devices to a regular group if new devices are being registered on a regular basis. Hence he likes the idea of a smart group where devices are added auto; and he wants to see that same group/devices on the cockpit.

[Robert_Neale]

It’s a reasonable request but at the moment it’s not there by default. Perhaps raise a Feature Request, maybe a toggle in the UI to show just groups, just smartgroups, or all. I’m sure a custom app could show smart groups (fragment c8y_DynamicGroup), after all, Device Management shows all kinds of groups, but don’t ask me how. Needs someone with more app development experience than me!

[Tristan_Bastian]

Hi Melanie,

in general you could enable the smart groups feature within cockpit pretty easily by just replacing AssetsNavigatorModule, with AssetsNavigatorModule.config({ smartGroups: true }), in the app.module.ts when building the cockpit app on your own.

As soon as you activate this, you will also find the smart groups listed underneath Groups in the navigation.
You can navigate to them and will find the Subassets tab where all the matching devices are listed.

All good until here. But in contrast to the devicemanagement application, cockpit offers also further tabs on group level which are not compatible with smart groups (Smart rules, Data explorer and the whole dashboarding functionality).

These three features are relying on the devices/assets having a direct parent/child relationship with the group via the childAssets. This is not the case for smart groups as smart groups basically just store the query that identifies their children.
These features could of course be adapted, but it involves quite a lot of effort to do so.

It could be quite easy to just remove the Smart rules, Data explorer and dashboarding functionality for smart groups in case your only usecase for smart groups is navigating via them or and having the Subassets tab.

Regards,
Tristan