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Attributes

The Attributes tab provides a powerful means to refine searches, allowing you to perform searches as simple as finding "all of the CIs with 2 Gb of RAM" or as complicated as "all of the CIs with 2 Gb of RAM that were created between March 2, 2005 and March 2, 2006 but not made by Vendor X or were made by Vendor X but have Pentium III processors". The Attributes tab only refines searches on the CI types you selected on the CI Types tab, filtering them based on the attribute criteria that you select.

You can have both an Attributes and a Relationships filter at the same time. Any results would fulfill the criteria of both filters.

Build a Simple Filter

To filter search results based on attributes:

  1. After selecting the CI types to search on, select the Attributes tab.
  2. In the drop-down field, select the attribute on which you want to base the filter. Only attributes common to all of the returned CIs are listed in the drop-down field.
  3. Select the operation for the search in the second drop-down field. Operations are determined by the type of field you are searching. The following field types allow the following operations:

Build Complex Filters

You can run searches that filter results based on multiple attributes. In addition, you can nest the filters at varying levels. To do so:

  1. After selecting the CI types to search on, select the Attributes tab.
  2. Build a simple search as described in the procedure above.
  3. After clicking the Apply button (step 5 in the above procedure), click the Add button (located in the bottom left corner of the page). The attribute filter you built is displayed with a new Filter Editor below it. The new Filter Editor is connected to the existing filter by a line and the word "AND".
  4. Use the new Filter Editor to build an additional attributes filter per the procedure above. After you click the Apply button, the new filter is displayed below the first filter.
  5. You can continue to build additional levels of filtering in this same manner and use the additional controls to make the new filters "AND" or "OR" filters.To make changes to a filter you have built, you must use the Open button within that filter to open the filter controls and then the Edit button to make the changes. Filter controls are:
  6. Open—Opens the filter controls. Only one set of filter controls can be open at a time.
  7. Edit—Allows you to change the filter.
  8. Copy—Use the Copy button to begin a copy-and-paste. Wherever you click the Paste button, the copy is placed below the paste selection. For example, in one section you might filter to include all PCs using the Windows XP operating system, but in another section you might exclude all PCs with the Windows XP Pro operating system. You could copy the existing filter, paste it where you need it, and edit it to exclude Windows XP Pro.
  9. Cut—Use the Cut button to begin a cut-and-paste. Wherever you click the Paste button, the copy is placed below the paste selection.
  10. Delete—Deletes the selected filter.
  11. Up and Down controls—Moves the filter up or down within the curent nest.
  12. Close—Closes the filter controls.
  13. Paste—Only displayed after a copy or cut. Pastes the copied or cut filter.
  14. The following figure illustrates a complex filter. Assume that you need to upgrade all active or newly purchased PCs to the Vista operating system. You will need the filter to identify all desktops and laptops using Windows XP or that have less than 1 gig of memory. Therefore, your search would be for all desktop PCs and laptops with a Status of Active or New. Purchase and where (the operating system is Windows XP or the RAM is less than 1 GB).

More on Complex Filters

The And/Or modifier applies to all filters at the same level, as illustrated in the following figure.

In the figure, all of the filters in the same next are either And or Or. Each of the filters has a NOT checkbox in the upper right corner. When this is clicked, the filter changes color and the filter criteria become the opposite of what they began as. With regard to nesting filters, filters are added at the level of the Add button. In the figure above, if you click the Add button in the “RAM is not one of 1 Gb, 2Gb” filter, the next filter would be nested with it, but not with the “OS is one of Windows XP Pro”. The following figure illustrates this.