How To Configure Device Groups In Room Alert Manager

Each type of user role in Room Alert Manager has a unique set of permissions for viewing and configuring device groups.

Administrator

An administrator…

• has full access to view and edit all device groups
  • including any device groups created by other admin users
• can assign any device to any device group
  • can remove any device from any device group except Inventory
• can assign any manager or viewer user to any device group
  • can remove any manager or viewer user from any device group

Manager

A manager…

• can see devices within their assigned device groups
• can edit/configure device groups below their top-level group
• can add viewers to device groups that are below the manager’s top-level group
  • can remove viewers from device groups that are below the manager’s top-level group

Viewer

A viewer…

• can see devices within their assigned device groups
• has read-only access to their assigned device groups

For more information about user roles in Room Alert Manager, please see our FAQ: How To Configure Users In Room Alert Manger.

Follow these steps to configure a device group in Room Alert Manager:

1. Open Room Alert Manager in your web browser.
   • You may open it by entering ‘localhost:9393’ or ‘<IP address of host system>:9393’ in your browser’s address bar. For more information, please see our FAQ, How to Open Room Alert Manager’s Web Interface.
2. Go to Settings–>Groups in the navigation bar. Then select the Groups tab.
   
3. By default, Room Alert Manager has one device group, Inventory, which contains all discovered devices.
   
   • All admin users have access to Inventory and cannot be removed.
   • Inventory is the top-level group in Room Alert Manager. All configured groups and subgroups are nested below Inventory.
   • The Inventory group cannot be edited/deleted.
4. To the right of the screen, the Subgroups tab is open by default.
   
5. Type a name for your subgroup into the group name field.
6. Then select the Add Group button.
   
7. Your new subgroup will now appear in the Subgroups tab and the group tree to the left of the screen.
   
8. Next, assign users and assign devices to your subgroup. You may also create additional subgroups.

Follow these steps to assign a user to a device group in Room Alert Manager:

1. Open Room Alert Manager’s Settings–>Groups page.
2. Select the top-level group that you wish to assign a user to.
3. Then select the Assigned Users tab.
   
4. Put your cursor into the Select a user field.
   
   • You’ll see a drop-down list populate with any available users.
   • You may type directly into the field to filter the results.
5. Choose the desired user and then select the Assign User button.
   
6. Notice the user is now listed in the Assigned Users tab.
   

Implicit Group Access

• When you assign a user to a device group, they are given implicit access to any subgroups nested below that group.
• In our example, because the user IT_Manager is assigned to the Data Center group, they also have access to the Server Rack 1, Server Rack 2 and Server Rack 3 groups.
• This is reflected in the Implicit Access table at the bottom of the Assigned Users tab. This table is hidden if no users currently have implicit access to the device group.
  

“Unknown” Ancestor Group

• If you are logged into Room Alert Manager as a manager or viewer user, you may observe “Unknown” in the Ancestor column of the Implicit Users table.
• This occurs when the logged-in user does not have access to the Ancestor group.
  
• In the example above…
  • We are logged into Room Alert Manager as IT_Staff.
  • IT_Manager inherits access to Server Rack 2 from the parent group, Data Center.
  • The lower-level user, IT_Staff, does not have access to Data Center.
  • Therefore, they see “Unknown” in place of the group name in their view of the Implicit Access table.

Follow these steps to assign a device to a device group in Room Alert Manager:

1. Open Room Alert Manager’s Settings–>Groups page.
2. Select the lowest-level group that you wish to assign a device to.
   • Adding a device to a subgroup also adds it to any ancestor groups between the subgroup and top-level group.
3. Then select the Assigned Devices tab.
   
4. Put your cursor into the Select a device field.
   
   • You’ll see a drop-down list populate with any available devices.
   • You may type directly into the field to filter the results.
5. Choose the desired device and then select the Assign Device button.
   
6. Notice the device is now listed in the Assigned Devices tab.