Populating insights
Randy White avatar
Written by Randy White
Updated over a week ago

When creating personalized insights, there are three items required for successfully creating an insight.

  • Name & description

  • Asset type

  • Insight policy

Name & description for personalized insight

  • Enter the name (title) of the insight so it is recognizable at a glance as to what asset types the insight may contain. For example, the Insight is labeled as Inadequate high-risk servers needing replacement.

  • To further explain the details of the insight add a description to fully represent the assets expected within the Insight. For example, the description is Servers over 8 yrs old without warranty coverage and unsupported OS.

Asset type for personalized insight

  • Select an asset type to see available actions for your Insight. Currently, the available asset types are:

    • Workstation

    • Server

    • Virtual Machine

Adding insight policies for personalized insight

Once you have selected the asset type, you are able to set the policy (or policies) for the insight.

While single policies are easy to establish, it may be necessary for those who have more specific replacement criteria to create insights with more than one policy. You can also choose a range of thresholds with custom operators through layering policies.

Personalized insights are not editable
It is important to note that when insights are created, you cannot make further edits to the insight once completed. If the policy or policies you've added need adjusting, you need to create an entirely new Insight with the matching policies and delete the existing insight from use.

Workstation and Servers

Insights can be created for servers and workstations using the following policies:

  • Age

  • Configured backups (BackupRadar subscription required)

  • Manufacturer

  • Memory (RAM) specifications

  • Person assigned

  • Operating system status

  • Processor manufacturer

  • Software

  • Total storage specifications

  • Warranty

Virtual Machines

For virtual machines, Insights can be created using the following policies:

  • Configured backups (BackupRadar subscription required)

  • Memory (RAM) specifications

  • Operating system status

  • Software

  • Total storage specifications

Based on the description of the insight we started to create (Servers over 8 yrs old without warranty coverage and unsupported OS), you need to layer three separate policies within this insight. Here's how that is done.

First policy layer

  1. Select the relevant policy for the insight. In this case, select the Age-based policy.

  2. Select the custom operator option is over and specify the age value for the policy (in this case, 8).

  3. Click the Add policy... button to add the second policy layer.

Second policy layer

  1. As the Insight policy is also described as looking for Servers without warranty coverage, select the Warranty policy.

  2. Specify whether the warranty is expired or not expired and select the custom operator option expired.

  3. Click the Add policy... button to add the third policy layer.

Third policy layer

  1. As the Insight policy is also described as looking for Servers with an unsupported OS, select the Operating system policy.

  2. Specify whether the Operating system is supported or unsupported and select the custom operator option unsupported.

Removing a policy from an Insight
Any policy can be removed, prior to generation, by clicking the subtract- button to the left of the policy.

As all policy layers have now been set, click Finish to start generating the Insight.

Generated results

Once the Insight has been created, any assets affected by all the layered policies are displayed in the Your insights section on the dashboard. As the following image illustrates, there are no affected assets based on the new Insight that this article describes.

However, by generating a new insight with only two of the layered policies from the initial insight...

  • Age is over 8 yrs - kept

  • Warranty is expired - kept

  • Operating system is unsupported - removed

...the Personalized Insight now identifies 47 affected assets throughout all your clients.


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