Merging Administration Groups

If you want to merge two or more administration groups, you merge their corresponding target property criteria in the administration group hierarchy definition. The group merge operation consists of retaining one of the groups to be merged and then moving over the targets from the other groups into the group that is retained. Once the targets have been moved, the other groups will be deleted.

You choose which group is retained by choosing its corresponding target property value. The group(s) containing the selected target property value as part of its criteria is retained. If the retained target property criteria corresponds to multiple groups, i.e. group containing subgroups, the movement of targets will actually occur at the lowest level administration groups since the targets only reside in the lowest level administration groups. The upper-level administration groups' criteria will be updated to include the criteria of the other groups that have been merged into it.

To merge groups:

  1. Select a target property from the list of chosen properties in the Hierarchy Levels table. You choose the target property corresponding to the groups you want to merge.

    Hierarchy Levels table

    For example, let us assume you want to merge <Devt-Group> with <Test or Stage Group>. In the hierarchy, this corresponds to target property Lifecycle Status. The associated property values are displayed.

  2. Select two or more property values corresponding to the groups you would like to merge by holding down the Shift or CTRL key and clicking on the desired values.

    hierarchy node selection

  3. Click Merge.

    merge nodes

    The Merge Values dialog displays.


    merge value dialog

    Again, by merging membership criteria (target properties), you are merging administration groups and their respective subgroups. You choose the administration group to be retained. The other groups will be merged into that group.

  4. Choose the group you wish to retain and specify whether you want to use the existing name of the retained group or specify a new name.

    Note:

    When deciding which group to retain, consider choosing the group that is used in most group operations such as incident rule sets, system dashboard, or roles. These groups will be retained and the members of the other merged groups will join the retained groups. After the merge, group operations on the retained groups will also now apply to the members from the other merged groups. Doing so minimizes the impact of the merge.

  5. Click OK to merge the groups.
  6. Click Update to save the new hierarchy.

Example

Your administration group consists of the following:

Hierarchy Levels

  • Lifecycle Status

  • Line of Business

Hierarchy Nodes

  • Lifecycle Status

    • Development

    • Mission Critical or Production

    • Staging or Test

  • Line of Business

    • Online Store

    • Sales

    • Finance

The following graphic shows the administration group hierarchy.


admin group hierarchy example

You decide that you want to merge the Mission Critical or Production group with the Staging or Test group because they have the same monitoring settings.

Choose Lifecycle Status from the Hierarchy Levels table.

From the Hierarchy Nodes table, choose both Mission Critical or Production and Staging or Test.

Select Merge from the Hierarchy Nodes menu.

The Merge Values dialog displays. In this case, you want to keep original name (Mission Critical or Production) of the retained group.


merge value

After clicking OK to complete the merge, the resulting administration group hierarchy is displayed. All targets from Test-Sales group moved to the Prod-Sales group. The Test-Sales group was deleted. All targets from the Test-Finance group moved to the Prod-Finance group. The Test-Finance group got deleted.


merged hierarchy

Click Update to save the changes.