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Device Groups

Groups let you organize the fleet your own way in the Devices view, by site, customer, hardware batch, or anything else. A device can be in any number of groups. Groups are purely for organizing and filtering: being in a group never changes how a device registers, gets approved, sends heartbeats, runs commands, or is reached remotely.

Groups are managed only in the web UI. There is no API or client command for them.

Who can do what​

What you can see and change depends on your device permissions:

  • Device managers with access to every device can create, edit, archive, restore, and permanently delete groups, and change membership for any device.
  • Device managers limited to some devices see only groups that contain at least one of their devices, and the counts include only those devices. They can add or remove their own devices, but only in groups they can see.
  • View-only operators see a group, and its count, only if they can see at least one device in it. They cannot change anything.

A group with none of your devices in it is hidden from you entirely.

The server checks permissions again on every change. If your access changes after you select some devices, the whole action fails; nothing is half-applied.

Create and maintain groups​

Open Devices → Groups. If you can manage every device, you can:

  1. Select New group and enter a name and, optionally, a description.
  2. Use Edit to change an active group's name or description.
  3. Use Archive to take a group out of lists, membership choices, and filters.
  4. Select Show archived, then Restore, to bring an archived group back.
  5. Select Delete permanently, and confirm, to remove an archived group that has no members.

Archive is the normal way to retire a group. It keeps the group and all its memberships, so restoring it puts everything back exactly as it was. Permanent deletion is only allowed for archived, empty groups, so you cannot wipe out a group's memberships by accident.

Names are unique, ignoring case, across active and archived groups, so archiving a group does not free its name. Names can be up to 120 characters and descriptions up to 500.

Add and remove devices​

  1. Select one or more devices in the Devices table.
  2. Choose an active group in the bulk action bar.
  3. Select Add to group or Remove from group.

Adding a device that is already in the group, or removing one that is not, simply does nothing. A multi-device action either succeeds completely or changes nothing: if the group is archived or missing, a device is missing, or your access changed, none of the changes are made.

If you can only see some devices and you remove the last of yours from a group, that group disappears from your view.

Filter by group​

On wide screens, the Groups column shows up to two of each device's active groups, plus a count of any others. Select a group badge to filter the list to that group.

The filter is saved in the URL as group_id, using the group's UUID, so you can bookmark or share it. It works together with search, sorting, and the product, account number, IPv4 address, approval, and connectivity filters. The filter chip shows the group's name, not its UUID.

On small screens the Groups column is hidden to save space; open Groups to see the groups and counts available to you.

If the URL names a group that does not exist, is archived or deleted, or that you cannot see, you get the same "unavailable" message in every case, so nothing is revealed about groups outside your access. Select Continue without group filter to clear it.

Audit trail​

Every successful change to a group or its members writes a structured device group audit log event once the change is saved. Each event records:

  • the action;
  • who did it;
  • when, in UTC;
  • the group ID;
  • the device IDs affected.

These events go to your logs, not to a Nixstasis table, so how long they are kept, how they are exported, and who can read them is up to your log collection. The audit PubSub topic inside the server is for live subscribers only and keeps nothing. The separate notification that refreshes the UI carries no details about who changed what.

Fix common problems​

  • A group with that name already exists: pick another name. The existing group might be archived.
  • Remove every device before permanently deleting this group: restore the group, remove its members, archive it again, and then delete it.
  • That group is archived or no longer available: refresh the Devices view, or restore the group, then try again.
  • Your device access changed: refresh the page. If the devices should still be yours, ask an administrator to restore your access.
  • Operator identity is unavailable: sign in again. In production, changes are refused unless the server knows who you are.
  • Requested group is unavailable: select Continue without group filter. The message deliberately does not say whether the group is invalid, archived, deleted, or just not visible to you.

If a bulk action fails, there is nothing to clean up: the whole change is rolled back.