Creating SMS Collections 3/27/2000

In SMS 2.0, collections are groups of SMS users, user groups, or clients that have attributes in common. Collections are designed to gather resources into useful groups that you can manage within your site hierarchy. You can create SMS collections by gathering a specific list of clients, users, and user groups, or by using queries.

To create a new collection, navigate to Collections in the SMS Administrator console. Right-click Collections, point to New, and click Collection. When the Collection Properties dialog box appears, complete the property settings for your new collection. Lets focus the following properties. 

Define a New Direct Rule-

A direct rule is "hard coded" if you will or static. You select specific resources to add to the collection. 

To add a new direct rule do the following: On the Membership Rules tab, you can use the Create Direct Membership Rules Wizard to select a specific resource to include in this collection. Click the Create Direct Membership Rule icon (looks like a PC with a little star.)

Here's a sample: 

From resource class select System Resource, from attribute select name. In the Value box type in %computer name%, where computer name is the name of any or you SMS clients. On the next page select browse (only if your rights don't allow you access to all other collections) or next. Then select all the computers you want to add to the collection. Then select finish. Refresh the Collections tree and select the new collection to get your results.

This collection is based on a list of resources it will not change unless these resources are removed from the database. 

**Note if you select only the  % you will receive all SMS clients that you have access to view. 

Define a New Query Rule

On the Membership Rules tab, you can create new query-based rules. Click the New Query Rule icon (this is the database symbol) to open the Query Rule Properties dialog box. To read or modify this option, you must have security rights to read all collections. At this point you can select an existing query by using the browse button (it may take some time and add a load on your database server) 

or just type in your query name (quicker). You can also select the Show Query Language and write or paste query language to create a query that is independent of SMS queries.

Dynamic queries are obviously based on queries. The resources of the collections are based on the results of the queries used to build the collection.