Quick Search settings

The Quick Search provides a simple way of finding devices that match one or more specific criteria. You can search for devices using either simple terms or complex expressions. You can configure the list of indexed attributes: any device or device related attribute can be added to the index. For example: hardware inventories, software inventories, security inventories, and patch inventories. The search targets device attributes directly or attributes of other device related objects.

Related topics

Update Index

Cleaning up the Search Results

Searching objects

Index Sections

To access the index content, on the left window pane, go to Global Settings > Quick Search > Index sections.

An Index section is linked to a BMC Client Management object type. A full text search index is created and maintained using information from the main database. The indexing technology supports complex queries, involving filtering and logical operators. With this option you can filter index content and organize information. Administrators can create, update, and remove sections, bind them to an object type, and set security restrictions. Administrators require Read capability to access Index sections; to create, modify, or delete a section, Manage capability is required.

Index sections have the following tabs:

Tab Description

General

Displays general information, like name of the section, index key, object type name, names of creator and a person who made last changes, time of creation and last modification.

Name: identifies the object instance and must match the ^[^/\\:\"*?<>|]+$ regular expression.
Key: defines a filter that can be applied to restrict the searches. It must match the ^[a-z]{1,32}$ regular expression. When multiple sections share the same key, the search filter also uses multiple sections.
Object Type Name: places attributes of different object types in this section based on where they are indexed. Only Administrators, who are authorized at the device level, can see this information. The list of available object types is dynamic and takes into account the inventory tables, such as hardware and custom inventory tables. By default, more than 80 object types can be indexed.
Created By: identifies a creator of this section. For default sections, the creator is System.
Create Time: identifies the time of section creation.
Last Modified By: identifies a last user who implemented the changes to the section.
Last Modification Time: identifies the time of section modification.
Notes: enables you to enter and maintain additional information for the created object instances.

Assigned objects

Displays object type attributes that the engine collects when it indexes a section. The process of uniting attribute values and building the text to index respects attribute sequence. To modify the sequence, after selecting the attribute row, you can either use a menu bar, or invoke the contextual menu, and select the required action, such as: Remove an attribute, Add an attribute, Move Up or Move Down.

You cannot index the same attributes more than once unless they are associated with different sections. To use the default whitespace separator, leave the Text to index before field empty. You can customize the separation pattern, for example, use a dot or a semicolon instead. The default white space separator is not applicable to the header text.

Security

You do not need special rights to access Quick Search from the left window pane or the Configuration option. To view Index sections, you require Read capability. To create, modify or delete sections, you require Manage capability.

Some of the sections are created by default. For example:

Agent Topology
Agent Versions
Device Domain Name
Device Host Identifier
Device IP Address
Device MAC Address
Device Name
Device NetBIOS Name
Device OS
Device Type
Device User Name
FAM Asset Contact
FAM Asset Owner
FAM PO Number
FAM Status
FAM Support Provider
FAM Vendor
FAM Vendor SKU
Hardware Computer System
Hardware Disk Drive
Hardware Logical Disk
Hardware Network Adapter
Hardware Physical Memory
Hardware Processor
Hardware Video Controller
Software Inventory

Configuring Index sections

1. To create a section, select Create option from the menu that you can invoke in the following ways:

From the section view, right click with you mouse to call out a contextual menu:
From a menu bar, select Create Section.
From the list of sections, call out a contextual menu.

2. To update a section, select Properties option from the menu that you can access in one of the following ways:

From a menu bar, select Properties.
Invoke a contextual menu that is applied to one of the sections:

3. To delete a section, select Delete option from the menu that you can access in one of the following ways:

From a menu bar, select Delete.
Invoke a contextual menu that is applied to one of the sections.

Additional configuration performed on the Master

Quick search uses the Vision64Database module. On the Master, you can perform additional configuration in the Index section of the Vision64Database.ini configuration file:

IndexPath

The index is created as a single file in the folder configured by IndexPath. The index size depends on the configured content (sections) and device count, and it can become large. The default location is the agent data folder at ../data/Vision64Database/index/data (from the agent's current working directory). You can configure a different location for the index.

Languages

Some of the attributes indexed are keywords and a translation is automatically applied to them before they are displayed in the UI, based on the administrator language. When the engine is about to index such attributes, it first applies one or more translations according to languages configured in the Languages parameter.

By default, the American English is used, but it is possible to change these settings and to set one or more languages from the following list:

American
Deutsch
Spanish
French
Japanese
Brazilian

To index multiple languages, enter these as a comma separated list. For example, Languages=American,Francais indexes the keyword-based attributes into US English and French. If you specify more than one language, each one is applied to the keyword and the translated texts are indexed, separated by a whitespace character. If the same translation is given for multiple languages, then a single translated text is indexed. If you change the Languages parameter, you must reset the index. The language names are not case sensitive.

AutoReset

The index structure is driven by the sections content. If any sections are modified, then the index structure becomes outdated and must be reset. The engine detects modifications, such as section creation, section object type replacement, section key modification, added or removed attributes in sections or changes to the order of attributes. When engine detects changes, it can automatically reset the index during the next index update or maintenance operation. The AutoReset Boolean determines whether the engine can perform the reset operation automatically, if not, it rejects the next operations and updates the status to Reset required.

The default value is true. When this value is set to false, the index is not automatically updated, and a reset operation triggered by an administrator is required.

DefaultIndex

BMC Client Management includes a list of default sections and attributes. You can customize index content by modifying the list. You can also restore the default index structure using the DefaultIndex Boolean parameter. When the agent starts, if DefaultIndex is true, then the index structure is cleared and reconfigured with the default sections and attributes. Depending on the AutoReset parameter value, an automatic reset can then be applied. Once restored, the DefaultIndex parameter is automatically set to the false.

Quick Search

You can configure the index content using BMC Client Management object types and object type attributes. Any device or device related information can be added to the index. The index is built and maintained using operations that are Index Update and Index Maintenance.

To configure the index content, on the left window pane, go to Global Settings > Quick Search > Configuration. You can update the information about devices, inventories, uninstalled software, and similar objects linked to devices. For example, you can change a device name or delete the uninstalled software. This is why the index content must be regularly updated. It detects information that is not relevant anymore and should be removed from the index.

You can configure a default schedule the Index Update and Index Maintenance:

Parameter	Description
Update	This is a default schedule that defines the frequency with which the database is checked for new or updated objects, which are then indexed right away, if any are found.
Maintenance	This parameter defines the frequency with which the database is searched for deleted objects like a device or an uninstalled software, which are then removed from the index. BMC recommends you not run this operation frequently, and only during quiet times, such as during the night or on weekends, as the process is time and resource consuming.

Both Index Update and Index Maintenance display the following details:

Parameter	Description
Status	The current status of the index operation.
Last Indexed Time	Displays the date and time at which the last index operation was executed.
Activation	This field shows the condition on which the index operation will start executing.
Schedule	The fields of this column display the frequency with which the index operation will be executed.
Termination	This field displays on which condition the index operation will definitely terminate its execution cycle.

Update and Maintenance options have the following values:

Value	Description
Idle	No update or maintenance is currently running, currently waiting for the next schedule or manual triggering.
Processing	The update or maintenance operation is currently being processed.
Canceled	The update or maintenance operation has been canceled by the user and will be stopped as soon as possible.
Error	The update or maintenance operation failed to be executed. Check the log file to get more details about the error.
Reset required	The update operation cannot be processed because the index content has been modified, probably through the sections and section attributes management. If the automatic index reset is disabled, then a manual index reset operation is required.

Improving search results

To provide better search results and reduce the search performance issues, execute update operations more often than the default schedule.
By default, the update is executed on a daily basis during the night and maintenance is performed once a week.

Starting and stopping an update or maintenance operation manually

To start or stop an update or maintenance operation manually, you can either use the contextual menu invoked from the schedule, or the menu bar to execute and select the desired operation.