NetIM includes powerful search capability that lets you find sites, devices, groups, interfaces, hosts, or configuration files quickly.

To begin a search, select Search in the menu bar. The NetIM search page displays.

On the Search page you can perform the following types of searches:

You can do a simple search by entering your search term in the space provided and pressing Return, or you can narrow down the search by your items of interest: Devices, Groups, Interfaces, Hosts, or Configuration Files.

You can navigate the Search page in these ways:

NetIM’s Search page allows you to use search expressions to search for exactly what you are looking for. NetIM’s Search Expression search also provides a query language and type-ahead to make creating complex searches easy, as shown in the following screen.

Search by Search Expression’s type-ahead support includes search attributes (including custom attribute definitions), attribute values (including custom attribute values) and relevant operators available for selection as you type, as follows.

To get started with Search-by-Search Expression, note the following:

In addition to the simple keyword search, NetIM provides other options, such as a Top-N Metrics search. Launch additional options by selecting the action menu icon (three vertical bars) in the upper-right corner.

 

When using search expressions, the Search page not only allows you to create a new expression, but also to select a search expression from a list of previous searches, access a saved search, or manage saved search expressions by going to the Search Expressions page, as shown in the following screens.

Additionally, you can save a new search expression to the Search Expressions page, as shown in the following screens.

For more information about saved search expressions, see Using the Search Expressions page.

You can now better control your search for objects by enabling filters for sites, groups, or devices. This scope filtering is particularly useful for searching for interfaces.

The following figure shows the fields for a Top-N Metrics search.

Note the following:

 

Using these parameters, our search returned the following results for the top 10 devices by average Ping Round-Trip Time.

From the results, if you want to find more specific information, you can click the object name and go to its curated view, as shown in the following screen.

You can then select the Metrics tab, select a Metric Class, and click Load to get more information. The following screen shows Device Health metrics for the object of interest.

Search supports search by serial number and custom attribute values as well AppNetwork paths. You can also perform mass operations on search results such as deletion and custom attribute assignment.

A device’s serial number is now searchable and is returned in the search results as well as in a device’s information ribbon, as shown in the following screens.

An object’s custom attribute values are searchable, as shown in the following screen.

Monitored Paths are now presented as a filterable object in search results, and you can search for a specific monitored path by name, source, destination, and description, as shown in the following screen.

NetIM supports the following search operations:

You can perform mass deletion operations on the selected results of your search by performing a search, selecting the objects you want to delete, and then clicking Delete Objects.

You can perform, quickly assign, and edit custom attributes on the selected results of your search. Perform your search, select the objects on which you want to edit custom attributes, and then click Edit Custom Attributes.

You can also delete existing custom attributes, edit existing custom attributes, or create and assign new custom attributes, as shown in the following screen.

For more information about custom attributes, see Custom Attributes.

Once you have your search results, you can select items and add them to a site or group or create a new site or group from the selection. In the following example, you have selected several devices you want to add to a site or group. After selecting the items, you can click Add to Site/Group to launch the grouping dialog box.

The following screen shows grouping elements from Search by adding them to the group Routers.

After you select the site/group to which you want to add the devices, the Submit button becomes active. Clicking Submit saves and commits the change. If you attempt to add the devices to a site, you will see the warning shown below. If you click Submit, any devices belonging to another site will be removed from the existing site and added to the new site you have chosen, as shown in the following screen.

If you want to create a new site/group from your search results, select Create New Group. The following dialog box appears. Provide a name and an optional description, and choose whether you want to create a group or a site. When you click Submit, your new site or group is created, and your objects are added to it.

NetIM supports exporting tabular search data to CSV files from the Search page, which is accessed from the main navigation frame at the top of the UI.

To export tabular search data, click the export icon in the Search page, as shown in the following screen.

After clicking the export icon, the following screen appears.

Decide what the browser should do with the file, and then click OK.

NetIM supports the ability to create persistent search expressions that can be set to personal use (default) or global by the user who created them. The search expressions can be created on the Search Expressions page or saved to the Search Expressions page from the Search page and from the search section when creating a Performance Summary report on the Reports page. For more information about saving search expressions, see Managing search expressions.