User preferences screen

The User Preferences screen is accessed by clicking the System tab. This screen is also available via the More pull-down menu at the upper right of the display. The screen shows a list of user preferences specific to the currently logged in user and permits you to change the login password. Modifications of this data affect only the currently logged in user. This screen is depicted as follows:

You can modify preferences by clicking Edit and then clicking Commit option on the edit screen. You can change your password using Modify option at the top of the screen. User preferences are as follows: 

• Change Password—This is at the top of the screen allows you to change your password. The operator enters their current password, and the new password, and confirms.

• Current Login Name—This value is not modifiable from the edit screen, and can only be assigned by the BMC Defender Server administrator via the System > Logins screen. This is the name of the currently logged in user, provided here only for reference. 

• Full User Name—This is the full name of the user, initially configured by the Administrator, and appearing on the Logins screen. The text is arbitrary and used to identify and distinguish the currently logged in user. The value is available to BMC Defender Server developers, but not otherwise used in the system. 

• Initial Login Screen—This is a drop-down menu that determines the initial screen displayed when you log into the BMC Defender Server system. The default value is Home. You can set the initial login screen to be Messages, Correlation, Tickets, Reports, or System.  The value can be set depending upon the particular interest areas of the user. 

• Initial Dashboard Screen—This is a drop-down menu that determines the initial dashboard displayed when you log into the BMC Defender Server system. The default value is Unspecified, that defaults to the first dashboard on the system (listed in alphabetical order.) This value can also be set when creating a new dashboard via the Add New Dashboard Wizard, that can automatically make the new dashboard the default dashboard. 

• Initial Device Group—This is a drop-down menu that controls the initial Device Group setting of the Messages > Devices screen on entry. The preference affects only the Devices screen. This setting can be used to list only selected devices on entry, convenient to those BMC Defender Server operators that are concerned with managing only specific devices on their system. 

• Initial Thread Group—This is a drop-down menu that controls the initial Thread Group setting of the Correlation > Threads screen on entry. The preference affects only the Threads screen. This setting can be used to list only threads of interest for a user, convenient to those BMC Defender Server operators that are concerned with managing only specific devices or applications on their system.
• Initial Load Graph—This is a drop-down menu that displays a list of all the graph configurations on the system defined by the Reports > Graphs > Edit Parms screen. You can configure a graph, and then specify this as the default graph displayed when the Reports > Graph tab is clicked. This provides an easy way of setting up the default graph for a particular user.

• Initial List Count—This is a drop-down menu that controls the Max List setting of various screens in the system, including the Search, Devices, and correlation screens. You can specify the number of entries initially displayed by these screens. The initial list count can be made Max-1 to indicate the number of messages by page number. Setting the value extremely high might degrade the performance of the browser.
• Initial Span Days—This is a drop-down menu that controls the Span Days setting of the Messages > Search screen (and other screens) on initial entry. The setting can be used to expand the number of days worth of data that is displayed and searched by default. 

• Initial Sort By—This is a drop-down menu that controls the Sort By setting off the Messages > Devices screen on initial entry. The preference affects only the Devices screen. This setting can be used to keep the devices on this screen positioned independently of the time of the last message. (Sort by Time is the default.) 

• Initial Ticket Group—This is a drop-down menu that displays a list of all the registered users and configured ticket groups. The value is used by the tickets facility to show and filter the tickets assigned to a particular group. This setting allows you to configure the initial group displayed when the Tickets tab is clicked so that you can immediately see the particular tickets of interest. The default ticket group for an admin type login is All, indicating tickets of all assignees are displayed. For other users, the default value is the username.

• Screen Auto-Refresh—This screen is a drop-down menu that controls the rate that screens are automatically refreshed. This screen is mainly useful when letting BMC Defender Server idle on a screen, such as on a Network Operations Center terminal. Setting this value to other than the default None might have undesirable usability side effects since the auto-refresh interferes with editing values. 

  Warning

  Note

  Some screens, such as the Dashboard screen, automatically updates without any special refresh. 

• E-Mail Address—This is the e-mail address of the user, initially configured by the Administrator, and appearing on the Logins screen. This value is available to system programmers but is not otherwise used by BMC Defender Server. 

• Modify Advisories—This is at the bottom of the screen allows the operator to view and modify their current System Advisory settings, that controls the Advisory screen functions shown in Utility-screens. 

Reasonable defaults are provided for all user preferences.

To change a password, you click Modify Password option at the very bottom of the screen. This prompts you for the current password and a new password. When changing a password, any modifications to parameters prior to clicking Modify option are discarded. (You have to access the screen again and reconfigure parameters, if necessary.) 

If your preference corresponds to a configuration item that has been deleted (such as a device group, ticket group, initial dashboard screen, or other items) then your preference generally becomes the installation default. The value depicted on the top-level user preference screen is undefined. The value might appear as the initial setting or the setting last specified by you. In this case, you should edit and save your preferences to make the top-level screen agree with the actual setting. This might be slightly confusing to naïve users. 

You pin list, like the parameters of this screen, are completely local to the currently logged in user, and do not affect other users of the system.