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Inventory

On the Inventory page, you can query and view entities that are currently in your Zenoss Cloud environment. Because you may have a very large number of entities in your system, the ability to query your inventory is important to locate and examine specific entities.

Inventory queries consist of one or more entity property-value comparisons. You can view query results in a table with one row per entity and one column for each property. To view additional information, click the Actions icon in each row to open the ENTITY DETAILS panel.

Entity properties vary widely by source, so the default display of a table of entities from many sources includes many columns. To view tables with fewer, fuller columns, use the query bar. When you create a query that provides rich results, you can save and share those queries.

For more information about entities, see Entities and devices.

Opening the Inventory page

You can query and examine your inventory of entities from the following locations:

  • The Zenoss Cloud header is visible on all tabs. In the header, click INVENTORY.

Note

Your account must be assigned the Read Only User role or a more privileged role to see the INVENTORY tab, run or create queries, and display entity tables.

Tour of the Inventory page

When you click the INVENTORY tab, you see the Inventory page title with a menu icon, the query bar, and several sections, such as Explore Properties and Templates. Each section includes property names or query cards that you can click to get started with your search. To hide or open a section, click its title.

Let's take a closer look at the main sections you might see on the initial page:

Explore Properties

Click this section title to view a list of entity property names in your environment. By default, the list is hidden.

Once open, you can use the search field below the title to display a subset of properties. Note that the list doesn't include the internal properties that are generated by Zenoss Cloud.

My Queries

This section contains queries that you create and save. You can only see this section when you have saved queries.

When you mark a query as public, it's also added to the Shared Queries list. Click any query card to display its results.

Shared Queries

This section contains queries that are created and shared by you and others in your organization. You can only see this section when you have shared queries in your environment.

Click any query card to display its results.

Templates
This section contains the queries that Zenoss provides. These templates are useful if you are new to using Inventory. Select a template to get started, customize it for the results you want, then save it as a query to use later or share with other users.

Using the Inventory Queries panel

The Inventory Queries panel provides an alternate way to to access your saved and shared queries and templates. In addtion, you can also access your favorites and most recently used queries. In the Inventory Queries panel, you can share, edit, copy, and delete your queries.

To open the Inventory Queries panel, click the Inventory menu icon in the upper-left corner of the page.

To display a different query, click the name of one of your queries in the My Queries folder, or open the Shared Queries folder and click the name of a shared query. Also, you can click the FAVORITES or RECENT tabs to find a query that you marked as a favorite or opened recently.

Note

The FAVORITES tab isn’t available to read-only users because read-only users can’t mark inventory queries as favorites.

Viewing results

After you run a query or open a template, you can view a table of entities with one row per entity and one column for each property.

There are several actions you can take to help in your investigation:

  • To view additional information about an entity in the table, click the eye icon in the Actions column for the row. In the ENTITY DETAILS dialog box that opens, you can view more details and navigate to Smart View pages.

  • You can change how the properties appear in the table. To make changes, click Adjust columns from the Settings menu. The ADJUST COLUMNS dialog box opens where you can select or clear the available columns, and change the order of the columns in the table.

  • If you want to adjust the query, you can display and use the query bar. Click the Expand query bar icon next to Settings, or collapse it when you're finished.

Table actions

You can perform several actions on your table of results. The actions you see may depend on your query or template. These action icons are located in the upper-right corner above the results table.

View the following table to learn more about table actions.

Icon Action
Share Make the inventory view public if you are the owner, or copy its URL to your clipboard.
Export table Download the results of the current query in HTML, CSV, Excel, or JSON format.
Clone query Create a duplicate of the current query. You can update the title of the new query.
Save Save the current query. This control is dimmed if the query is unchanged.
Save As Save the current as a new query. You can update the title and description of the new query, and select a different icon for it.
Settings From Settings, click Adjust columns to open the ADJUST COLUMNS dialog box. Here you can select or hide columns in the results table, or change the order of the columns in the table. Limiting the columns to just what you need can help avoid confusion.
Expand/Collapse query bar Display or hide the query bar.

Query bar

The inventory's query interface is a search bar that supports two modes.

  • Quick Search (default). Enter a keyword so the query can quickly search for the keyword in any of the following:

    • entity names, titles, and types,

    • organizer names,

    • virtual machine names,

    • and more.

    As a best practice, only enter one keyword, such as Linux, Kubernetes, Windows, Docker, or Teams.

  • Advanced Search. Use this interactive query builder for more complex searches. As you enter text, the search bar suggests options for each part of the query, as shown in the following series of images.

    The exists operator tests whether an entity has a property and, if so, whether the property's value is non-null.

    The AND connector has precedence.

To switch between quick search and advanced search, click the name of the mode you want to use on the right side of the search bar.