Customizing NS Console 6.5

With the release of the new Altiris console 6.5 came a new way of organising and looking at your installed Altiris solutions. Even though the new console is much easier to navigate and look at and also makes things much easier to find, it can be quite confusing if you don't know what you are looking for or you are so used to the old Notification Server 6.0 console. There are also a lot of forum posts and articles that state that the Altiris console 6.0 and even the new Altiris console 6.5 are still too cluttered and way too busy. This is technically correct for the Altiris 6.0 console but for the Altiris console 6.5 you can make the console as simplified as you want.

This guide will go through the steps of showing you how to customise your 6.5 console and add a new menu structure for your own use. For the purpose of this guide you will need an Altiris Notification Server installed along with the console 6.5 and various solutions. I will be using parts of Client Management suite but you can also create menus for anything at all.

Before you start creating your new menus and submenus it's probably best if you write down ideas of menus that you would want and items that you want coming off those menus. That will make the process of creating the menus much easier and will prevent you creating duplicate areas for accessing the same pages.

For this guide we are going to create a new menu with 3 sub menus to do the basics with Altiris. The first thing an organisation needs to do after installing Altiris is to go out and do a discovery and see what devices are in the organisation and then eventually configure the Altiris agent and install the agents on a select group of end user machines. The second menu item we are going to create is to setup an IT Audit because you can't do anything until you first of all know what you have got so we will initiate an audit and look at the resulting web reports.

The third and final menu item will be to start managing software within the organisation. For this we will use application metering solution to monitor the usage of the software and then we will allow you to manage the software process, both physical software such as msi or exe installs and also virtual software using Altiris software virtualisation solution.

Menu Item 1

Once you have decided on your menu items, go to the Configure>Console>Menus link.

Click to view.

Under the console menu item, right click and select "new submenu"

Click to view.

In this example, call the menu heading "My Tasks". Highlight your new menu and right click and select "New menu item". Rename this sub menu to "Agent Tasks" and follow the same steps as above to create a menu structure that looks similar the image below. (Note: you can make your menu structure look however you want at this point.)

Click to view.

If you click on Apply at the bottom of the page it will reload your console and you will see the new menu structure that you have created. At this point there is nothing associated with your menu so the next stage will be to add content.

If you go back into Configure>Console>Menus and select the 'device discovery menu' item. On the right hand side of the page under the "show" drop down, select 'View' and under the tree view section click on browse to open the item selector pop up. From the 'Configuration' tree, select Solution Settings>Network Discovery>Scan Groups and click ok as shown below.

Click to view.

Repeat the step above for the remaining 2 menu items using the following selections and images below. For the Agent Install item you must select the 'Single Page View' and use the Altiris page before selecting the View item. NOTE: One area to highlight here is the way the item selection pop up acts when you open it. You may notice that if you previously had the pop up selector open and had selected an item from the configuration tree view, the next time you open the item selector pop up you will notice that the tree drop down may say configuration but the items displayed will default back to the 'Views' tree. To work around this simply click on the drop down and select another view and then go back to your original selection such as configuration items for example.

Agent configuration: Configuration tree and Altiris agent>Altiris agent configuration config item

Agent Install: single page view, views tree and Administrative tools>Altiris agent installation item

Click to view.

Click to view.

If you want click on apply at the bottom of the page and once the console pages have reloaded you will be able to test your new menu and make sure you find what you were expecting to see.

Menu Item 2

The next stage is to add another menu item called IT Audit. Please follow the steps outlined earlier to create you menu items before adding content to them.

Click to view.

Once again, please follow the steps outlined as previous to associate the items with the corresponding menu headings aslisted below. Make sure that you notice which tree menu the items are being selected from.

Define Audit Policy: Tasks view and Assets and Inventory>Inventory>windows>Inventory Tasks item

View Results: reports tree and Assets and Inventory>Inventory>windows report item

Click to view.

Click to view.

Once you have completed the second menu item, click apply and reload the conosle pages. You can now browse through your new menu structure and see the required information as shown below.

Click to view.

As you start to browse through various pages and links within the Notification Server or Soltuions you may come across pages or items that you want to add to your menus. As you come across links just make sure you note which area you found the item such as the configuration section or the tasks section of a solution.

Menu Item 3

The last menu item to create is for managing software. Please use the steps you used for creating menu item 1 and 2 to create a menu structure similar to the image below. Notice that this menu goes 3 levels deep at one point so make sure that when you create your 'Manage Software' menu item your next sub menu is done when you have the 'Manage software' item highlighted. If you create a menu item in the wrong position of the tree you can easily drag and drop the item to the correct spot.

Click to view.

For each of the menu items please associate the following items from the selection pop up (and images below);

Monitor Usage: Tasks tree and Software Management>Application Metering task item.

Manage Software > regular software: Views tree and Software Delivery view item.

Manage Software > virtual software: Views tree and Software Virtualisation view item.

View reports: Reports tree and Software management report item.

Click to view.

Click to view.

Click to view.

Click to view.

Once you click on the apply button at the bottom and wait for the console to reload all the pages you should see a menu structure that looks similar to the image below.

Click to view.

You will notice that you can now do 3 separate functions within the Altiris solutions from a single menu which is customised for your own ease of use. As with other items inside the Altiris console, the new menu can be secured so that only certain people have access to the new menu item. Please refer to the Notification Server reference guide for help in securing items within the notification server console. You can also export your menu structures and save them or re-import them into another notification server.

The final thing I normally do is to move the 'Tools' menu to the end next to my new menus as there are lots of single functions that this menu has such as Resource Manager, remote Control and the log viewer as a few examples. To do this move go back to the console menu configuration page, highlight the tools menu and click on down arrow until you get the desired position as shown below.

Click to view.

Click to view.

If you start to build large sets of menus you should think about using the separators that allow you to add some space between menu items and make it easier to read. Also think about using nested menus as opposed to a single menu drop down to help organise your menu structure. When you are creating your menus you can also use external links such as adding a menu item to a specific hardware vendor website or having a menu item that goes directly to the Altiris knowledgebase and Altiris main website.