Groups

A group collects devices, channels, and other groups, for example per building, floor, area, or customer. Groups are also the most compact way to share permissions (permission inheritance).

The group list showing Building A, Floor 1, and Floor 2 with the Parent column and contents.

List and hierarchy

The Groups menu has two views: List (a table with Name, Parent, Contents, Tags, and Status) and Tree. Search, sorting, a status filter, the Display button for choosing columns, and Upload CSV are available.

The group tree view: Building A with Floor 1 and Floor 2. — The Tree view.

Creating a group

Choose Create group, fill in Name, optionally a Parent group, a description, tags, and metadata. A group without a parent becomes a root of the hierarchy.

Hierarchy rules:

The hierarchy may not form a cycle.
The maximum depth is set by the server administrator (10 levels by default).
A group that still has children cannot be deleted unless you choose a cascading delete (typing the name and ticking the confirmation). Member devices and channels are not deleted; only their membership is released.

Group detail

Section	Contents
Settings	Name, description, parent, tags, status, delete. The Metadata tab.
Children	Direct child groups. Add or release.
Devices and Channels	Group members. One object may be a member of many groups.
Access	Roles and direct policies that apply to this group.
Journals	Change history.

On the device and channel detail pages, the Groups section shows the groups that contain them (read-only; change membership from the group page, which requires the manage-members permission).

Adding objects to a group while creating them

The Create device and Create channel forms have a Group field. The object is put into the chosen groups in the same transaction. You need the manage-members permission on each group.

Upload CSV

From the Groups page, Upload CSV imports many groups at once.

name,description,parent,tags,metadata_json
Building A,Main cold storage,,building,
Floor 1,,Building A,floor,
Floor 2,,Building A,floor,

parent can be a group ID or name, including a group created on an earlier row of the same file.
Group names are not unique. If two groups with the same name exist under the same parent, use the ID.
The import is all-or-nothing, with a per-row preview. See CSV import.