EV Reach Console - Administration and Diagnostics - Browsing or Searching for Network Objects
The Administration & Diagnostics interface allows for easy and quick access to any user, computer or group object from an Active Directory domain on your Internal Network, as well External Devices that are outside of our network. You can also use this feature to administer computers which do not belong to any domain using the Favorites container.
Browsing Through Network Objects
Once you select the Administration & Diagnostics feature, a tab is presented for each primary object types: Users, Computers, and Groups
Each object tab is divided into two main views, the network browser and the object view itself.
The Network Browser View
The network browser view displays the object containers available for the object type:
- Internal Network > Active Directory (this section is available in the Users, Computers and Groups tabs) The Active Directory domains and hierarchy available from your local machine or defined by the Active Directory Forest Selection feature.
- External Devices (this section is available in the Computers tab only) All external devices that registered with the EV Reach Gateway Service are in this container. External devices have their hierarchy of folders based on their organization ID. Note that this category is not displayed if Gateway Services are not enabled.
- Favorites Container (this section is available in the Computers tab only) Open this container to create and access your hierarchy of internal and external computers. Favorites are particularly useful to list WORKGROUP machines. See: My Favorite Devices
To browse through the Active Directory structure, just double-click on the parent container to disclose its child containers. Do this until the desired child domain, organizational unit or container is reached.
To open a container, select it and either click on the Network Browser Selection Bar (the bar at the top that says << Click here to open a container >>), or right click on the mouse and select Open Container from the popup menu. Double-clicking on a leaf container also automatically opens it.
The Object View
Once you open a container, the Network Browser view collapses to show the Object View. The Object View contains all of the objects of the selected type within the selected container.
The Network Browser Selection Bar displays the full path of the container for the currently focused view. To change the focus on the object view, click again on the Network Browser Selection Bar to display the Network Browser view.
Filtering a Container
If the container that you are working one has too many objects, and you only need to work on a subset of these objects, use a Container Filter.
| A container filter allows you to specify a condition on most object attributes. For instance, for users, you can configure a filter based on the user department. For computers, you can set a filter based on the operating system name. Once a container is filtered, it will be indicated in the Network Browser Selection Bar. To modify the filter or remove it, click on the Container Filter button again. |
Refreshing Information
EV Reach displays a large set of information, a list of objects and data on each object. To increase performance and reduce network load object lists are cached into memory, queried from a domain controller once, and then extracted from memory.
The cached object lists are:
- The domain list as well as the Active Directory container hierarchy
- The user, computer and group lists of opened containers and domains.
You may need to reload an object list to see changes which occurred in the list since it loaded.
| To reload an object list, click on the Refresh List button in the ribbon bar, and the currently focused object list will reload. For instance, if the Network Browser Panel is displayed, then the domain list and the Active Directory container hierarchy are reloaded. Similarly, if the user list of a container shows, only this list is reloaded. |
Reporting The Objects
| You can report on the contents of each object view to a text file. To do so, click on the Export button in the ribbon bar. |
Searching For Network Objects
| The Search panel allows you to look for internal and external network objects quickly and efficiently. Once found, you can directly perform management tasks on one or more objects via the context-sensitive menu. To do so, select one or more entries from the Found items list, and right click on the mouse to disclose the available actions for your selection. You can also select any object from the result set and click on the Set Focus button to set the primary focus of the main object view to that object. |
Standard Searches
- Select the scope of the search by clicking on the scope button. A search scope can be the entire internal network, a specified active directory domain, or external devices (if Gateway services are enabled).
- Enter the search string
- Click the Search button
Search Term Format
| Format | Result |
| SearchString | Starts with SearchString |
| *SearchString | Contains or ends with SearchString |
| Search*String | Starts with Search and contains or ends with String (only works for Internal Network scope) |
| IP Address | Resolve IP to FQDN (only works for Internal Network scope) |
Advanced Searches
Advanced searches allow you to look for a network object based on object attributes versus object name. For instance, you can search for all users that belong to a specific department, or all computers of a particular operating system.
Search Term Format
ATTRIBUTE NAME = Search String
The following attributes are available:
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Examples
| Description = *Test Object* | returns all objects whose Description includes 'Test Object' |
| Operating System = *Vista* | returns all Vista machines |
| Profile path = *SRV_012* | returns all user accounts whose profile path include SRV_12 in them. |
Searches using Templates
You can also pre-configure search templates to be used at any time. Search templates are more powerful than a simple search as they allow you to specify extended search criteria.
Add, Remove Or Modify A Search Template
To manage your search templates, click on the DOWN ARROW of the search field, then select <search templates> :
The Search Template Manager will open, giving you the ability to manage your templates:
The following is an example of how to create a user search template which returns all users in the Legal department:
- Click on the Add button of the Template section and click on User Template.
- Enter a template name, for instance 'Marketing'.
- Click on the Add button of the Criteria section.
- Select the Department attribute, set the Condition to Is (Exactly) and the value to 'Marketing'. Click on OK.
- Click on OK.