Custom inventory attribute - able to display without drilling into detail?

General Discussions
1

When clicking on “Devices” on the left-nav menu in Mender server, the UI displays a list of all devices. If I click on a device, it expands to show the inventory of attributes for a device.

Does the Mender server software allow you to “configure” the devices page so that you can display one of the custom inventory attributes on the devices page, say, right after “Last Check-in time”, rather than having to drill into the device detail?

2

Configuring the devices page as you described is not possible yet.

However, depending on what you are looking for, I could think about a couple of alternatives:

  1. The attributes you want to use change?

If not, you could set them as part of the identity of the device. Please take a look at Identity | Mender documentation.
Then you can add the new value as the “Device ID” column with the :gear: icon.

  1. You can create dynamic groups with all the devices that have the same value for the same inventory attribute
    To follow this path, you can take a look at this document: Inventory | Mender documentation.
3

@lramirez , thank you for your reply.

I’m not sure that would work for us.

In short, we’re a retailer and the custom attribute is “store number”.

The store number will rarely change for a device, but it’s not impossible. In fact, I would bet my life that some will change over time. This would be a case where we would move a device from one store to another.

We simply want to see the store number in the main scrolling list of devices.

It was worth a shot :slight_smile:

I’m just curious… Does Mender allow feature requests from the community? I have to believe that many people would like to see their most important custom attribute at the top-level “Devices” page without having to drill into the device detail.

Thanks again!

4

Hi @jmeirow

As your scenario looks like it will not change frequently, you could add the store as part of the id. And when moving the device to another store, you can decommission it and then add it again as a new device (because of the new id). At least, I feel it could be a workaround for what you are looking for in the meantime.
Regarding the “propose a new feature” request, let me ping @eystein as he has more information about it :slight_smile:

Have a great day!
Luis

5

Hi @jmeirow

Thanks for your feedback and request. Indeed Mender is built on feedback, so please do not hesitate. Posting here like you did is probably the best way.

I’d advice to add the store number to identity as well. Do you use this to identify the device or is it simply “extra information” (why do you want it in the main table)?

We do plan to introduce an editable Device name soon as well, which may help if you use it to identify the device.

6

I’d vote for this feature as well.
Just started evaluating mender for our use case and we’ve got a similar attribute to the “store number”. Decommissioning the device while in transit, (a) would mean the device will disappear from our device list which is not good for us and (b) would require commissioning new devices (including key verifications, etc.) more than once per device which might be a bit error prune.

7

Thanks for the feedback @uishon .

We are currently implementing Device tags (so you can add custom key/value directly in the server) and plan to look into the UI layout as well.

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