User Interface

Note

One of the goals of NetXMS Management Console is to provide identical user experience across all supported platforms, including Web Interface. Screenshots in this particular guide are based on Mac OS X version.

Workbench

When user is authenticated, a single Workbench window is displayed. A Workbench window offers one or more perspectives. A perspective contains views, such as the Object Browser. Multiple Workbench windows can be opened simultaneously. Initially, in the first Workbench window that is opened, the Management perspective is displayed, with Object Browser and Object Details views visible. A shortcut bar appears in the top right corner of the window. This allows you to open new perspectives and switch between ones already open. The name of the active perspective is shown in the title of the window and its item in the shortcut bar is highlighted.

_images/perspectives.png — Shortcut bar, Management perspective is selected

Views

The primary use of Views is to provide convenient navigation through the information displayed in Workbench. A view might appear by itself or stacked with other views in a tabbed notebook. To activate a view that is part of a tabbed notebook simply click its tab. Views have two menus. The first menu, which is accessed by right-clicking on the view’s tab, allows the view to be manipulated in much the same manner as the menu associated with the Workbench window. The second menu, called the “view pull-down menu”, is accessed by clicking the down arrow VDA . The view pull-down menu typically contains operations that apply to the entire contents of the view, but not to a specific item shown in the view.

A view can be displayed by selecting it from the appropriate View, Monitor, or Configuration menu, or via Window ‣ Show View menu. A perspective determines which views may be required and displays these on the Show View sub-menu. Additional views are available by choosing command link Other at the bottom of the Show View sub-menu. This is just one of the many features that provide for the creation of a custom work environment.

Through the normal course of using the Workbench you will open, move, resize, and close views. If you’d like to restore the perspective back to its original state, you can select the Window ‣ Reset Perspective menu operation.

Rearranging views

You can change the position of any view in the Workbench by following the steps below:

Click in the title bar of the view and drag the view across the Workbench window. Do not release the mouse button yet.
While still dragging the view around on top of the Workbench window, note that various drop cursors appear. These Drop cursors indicate where the view will dock in relation to the view underneath the cursor when the mouse button is released. Notice also that a rectangular highlight is drawn that provides additional feedback on where the view will dock.
Dock the view in any position in the Workbench window, and view the results of this action.

Drop cursors

Drop cursors indicate where it is possible to dock a part in the Workbench window. Several different drop cursors may be displayed when rearranging a part.

	Dock above: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will appear above the part underneath the cursor.
	Dock below: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will appear below the part underneath the cursor.
	Dock to the left: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will appear to the left of the part underneath the cursor.
	Dock to the right: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will appear to the right of the part underneath the cursor.
	Stack: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will appear as a tab in the same pane as the part underneath the cursor.
	Restricted: If the mouse button is released when this cursor is displayed, the part will not dock there.

Maximizing and minimizing views

The console presentation provides a rich environment consisting of one or more View Stacks (each containing one or more views). These various parts compete for valuable screen real-estate and correctly managing the amount of screen given to each can greatly enhance your productivity within the console. The two most common mechanisms for managing this issue are “minimize” (i.e. make me use as little space as possible) and “maximize” (i.e. give me as much space as you can). The console presentation provides a variety of ways to access these operations:

Using the minimize and maximize buttons provided on a stack’s border
Using the minimize and maximize buttons provided on a stack’s border
Selecting the Minimize or Maximize item on the context (right-click) menu for a stack
Double-clicking on a stack
Using Control + M: this is a key binding for a command that will toggle the currently active part between its “maximized” and its “restored” (i.e. normal) states.

Maximize

It is desirable at times to focus your attention on one particular view to the exclusion of the others. Console implements the maximize behavior by minimizing all stacks except the one being maximized. This allows the maximized stack to completely occupy the main presentation while still allowing to access any open views in your perspective by using the icons in their Trim Stack (the area around the edges of the window is called the “trim”).

Minimize

Another way to optimize the use of the screen area is to directly minimize stacks that are of no current interest. Minimizing a stack will cause it to be moved into the trim area at the edges of the workbench window, creating a Trim Stack. View Stack will get minimized into a trim representation that contains the icons for each view in the stack:

_images/trim_stack.png — Views minimized into Trim Stack

Perspectives

A perspective defines the initial set and layout of views in the Workbench window. One or more perspectives can exist in a single Workbench window. Perspectives can be opened in one of two ways:

In the same (existing) Workbench window.
In a new Workbench window.

Perspectives define visible action sets, which can be changed to customize a perspective. A perspective that is built in this manner can be saved, creating a custom perspective that can be opened again later.

New perspectives

There are several ways to open a new perspective within this Workbench window:

Using the Open Perspective button on the shortcut bar.
Choosing a perspective from the Window ‣ Open Perspective menu.

To open one by using the shortcut bar button:

Click on the Open Perspective button .
A menu appears showing the same choices as shown on the Window ‣ Open Perspective menu. Select perspective from the list or choose Other (in that case additional Select Perspective dialog will be opened).

Icons of recently used perspectives will be placed on shortcut bar for quick selection.

Saving perspectives

The Workbench allows any current view layout to be saved for future use. To save current layout as new perspective:

Choose Window ‣ Save Perspective As from main menu.
The Save Perspective As dialog allows for an existing perspective to be redefined or for a new perspective to be created. Select existing perspective to redefine or type name of new perspective, and click OK.
Answer Yes to the subsequent confirmation dialog. The new perspective layout will be used if the perspective is reset or if a new one is opened.

Object Browser

Object browser represents all objects in the system as a tree with multiple root objects. Tree is built based on object hierarchy and user permissions. Only objects available to currently logged in user will be shown. User has two options to interact with objects:

Click Left mouse button to select object and display its details (see Object Details)
Click Right mouse button to open context menu with actions available for this particular object type

Object status

System track status of each object, which can range from Minor to Critical. Status is displayed as overlay on icon of each object.

Filtering

Above object tree there is filter field that allows to filter objects in the object tree. Filter supports a number of prefix characters that define how search is performed:

Prefix	Status
>	Search by IP address part
^	Search by exact IP address
#	Search by object ID
/	Search by comment
@	Search by zone ID

Without prefix search is performed by object name.

_images/object_browser_filter.png — As-you-type filter in action

Object Details

This view provides one or more tabs with detailed information about object currently selected in Object Browser. List of available tabs depends on type of the selected object.

Overview

This view provides basic information about selected object: Name, Class, Status and comments. For Node objects, it also show IP address, Host name, SNMP details as well as Capabilities.

Node capabilities

Capability	Description
isAgent	True if NetXMS Server can communicate with NetXMS agent installed on the node
isRouter	True if selected object can route network traffic
isSNMP	True if selected object is SNMP-capable

Alarms

Alarm view provides user with list of alarms for currently selected element of the tree, including all child objects. To view all alarms in the system, either use system-wide Alarm Browser (click View ‣ Alarm Browser to open) or select Entire Network object. Right-click on the alarm will open pop-up menu with available actions

Each alarm can be in one of three different states:

State	Description
Outstanding	Newly created alarm, no actions was taken by user
Acknowledged	User acknowledged raised issue, work in progress
Resolved	Issue resolved, but alarm is kept in the list. This state mostly used when alarm is automatically resolved by the system, to keep users informed about incident
Terminated	Issue resolved and alarm removed from list.

Last Values

This view provides access to all collected data, both latest and historical. When view is shown, it displays latest values, as well as timestamp when each value was collected. Threshold column indicates threshold violations for given DCI. User has two options to interact with data:

Double click on the DCI will open line graph view for last hour
Right-click on the DCI will open pop-up menu giving access to all available actions
- History - show historical data
- Line Chart, Pie Chart, Bar Chart - show historical data in graphical form
- Clear collected data - remove all history for selected DCI

_images/object_details_lastvalues_graph.png — Line graph built from collected data

Performance Tab

Performance tab is a special view that allows to quickly assess health of the selected node using one or more graphs predefined by administrator. Each graph can contain data from multiple sources.

Network Maps

This view allows user to see network overview in a map form. Map can be build and routed either manually or automatically for selected part of the network. Maps can be automatically generated based on:

IP topology, both Level 2 and Level 3
Geographical location of the objects
Object relations

_images/networkmap_geomap.png — Geo map showing part of the ATM network

To open existing map, either double click on the name in Object Browser or right-click and select Open map in pop-up menu.

Reports

NetXMS is integrated with Jasper reporting engine from Jaspersoft. This view allows user to generate report and download result as PDF file. Report generation can take long time, so it’s done in background, without user interaction. When report is generated, resulting PDF can be downloaded any time, as well as any result from previous runs.

To generate report:

Right-click on report name in Object Browser and select Open report in pop-up menu, report view will open (as show in figure above)
In report view, fill parameters and click Generate Report

You can monitor progress in Server Jobs view. To open it, select Window ‣ Show view ‣ Other ‣ Server Jobs.

When report is generated, new finished job will appear in Results table of the view. Select it and click on Render to PDF to download.

When generated report data is not longer needed, it can be deleted from the sever by selecting job in Results view, and then clicking Delete.

Dashboards

_images/dashboard.png — Dashboard showing traffic information from core router.

Dashboards are defined by administrator and allow to combine any available visualization components with data from multiple sources in order to create high-level views to see network (or parts of it) health at a glance. There are two ways to access dashboards:

Open dashboard from Object Browser
Switch to Dashboard perspective and select dashboard with left-click

_images/dashboard_perspective.png — Dashboards perspective

Business Services

_images/availability.png — Availability chart and uptime percentage for a system.

Business Services is a hierarchy of logical services as defined by administrator. Each service can represent combined state of multiple elements. For each service in the hierarchy, NetXMS calculates availability percentage and keeps track of all downtime cases. To check availability of any particular level, select it in Object Browser.