This topic describes the content of the primary console window.
The primary console window consists of a menu, toolbar, marquee panel, status bar and a powerful, tri-panel window. The tri-panel window contains a Groups pane, a Group Contents pane, and a Tasks pane. Using drag and drop, users may rearrange the panes of the tri-panel window by dragging them by their labels. The panels may be displayed in 4 views. The tree view is shown in Figure 1. There is also a large icon, small icon and list view.
IBM Director is an extensible and integrated application. New managed objects can be created, configured and made available for use by other IBM Director components. Additionally, tasks can be created, configured and added to IBM Director. Depending on their configuration, they may show up on the toolbar, in the Tasks pane, and/or in the pop-up menus of applicable systems. Extensions can make use of and extend IBM Director's scheduling, alerting, filtering and monitoring services. When a new group, managed object or task is introduced to the IBM Director product, it must provide an image set consistent with other IBM Director groups, managed objects and tasks.
Figure 1 shows a snapshot of the primary console window. Note the tri-panel window with Groups, Group Contents and Tasks panes.
Figure 1. The primary console window.
The Groups pane consists of filters, some of which are automatically provided by IBM Director. The set of filters automatically provided by IBM Director is extensible by developers. You can create custom filters with IBM Director Console. Filters can be dynamically updated as systems are added and deleted or configured as a static set of managed objects. Dynamic filters may be exported and imported.
The image set required for the Groups Pane consists of a small and a large icon. Since the user is able to select a panel background color, it is important that these icons have a transparent background. The icons must be designed to be aesthetically seamless with their counterparts on the Groups pane. The small icons are 16 points while the large icons are 32 points. Examples of some group image sets follow:
The "All Systems and Devices" group:
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The "IBM Director Systems" group:
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The "Clusters and Cluster Members" group:
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The Group Contents pane displays the managed objects that belong to the Group that is selected in the Groups pane. These managed objects may be listed as shown in Figure 1, or they may be organized according to associations. Associations are extensible by product developers. Much information about managed objects in the Group Contents pane is readily visible to the user, such as security, type, state and status.
The image set required for the Group Contents Pane consists of 10 icons for managed objects and 12 icons for native managed objects. A native managed object requires the presence of a IBM Director agent to be managed and needs the two additional images to represent the "unlicensed" state.
Managed objects may show up multiple times if there are multiple ways of managing them. It is not uncommon to find an SNMP-enabled system with the IBM IBM Director agent installed listed once as an SNMP object and again as a native managed object.
Since the user is able to select a panel background color, it is important that these icons have a transparent background. The icons must be designed to be aesthetically seamless with their counterparts on the Group Contents pane. The small icons are 16 points while the large icons are 32 points.
These icons represent the online state of a system. These should be the first icons created.
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These icons represent an online system that is in an indeterminate state. They should be the same as the online icons and have the same green question mark in the lower-right corner as those shown in the following example.
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These icons represent an online system that has errors. They should be the same as the online system and have the same yellow warning triangle in the lower-right corner as those shown in the following example .
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These icons represent an offline state. They should be the same as the online icons but with the muted coloring shown in the following example.
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These icons represent an offline state of a system that has errors. They should be the same as the online system that has errors but with the muted coloring that their offline counterpart has.
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These icons represent an unlicensed state. They should be the same as the online icons, but with the same red unlicensed symbol in the lower-right corner as that shown in the following example.
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Figure 2. The primary console window with the associations menu displayed.
Figure 3. The primary console window with the Group Contents pane organized by
IP address with scheduled jobs.
The Tasks pane consists of a list of applications configured to run against zero or more systems or an entire group.
The image set required for the Tasks Pane consists of a small and large icon. This icon will match the icon that the task's TWGTaskFrame (see 2.0 - IBM IBM Director Console Extensions) will set into the upper-left corner of its frame. Since the user is able to select the panel background color, it is important that these icons have a transparent background. The icons must be designed to be aesthetically seamless with their counterparts on the task pane. The small icons are 16 points while the large icons are 32 points.
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Notice in Figure 4, that tasks and subtasks often use the same or similar icons, an indicator that they are related:
Figure 4. The primary console window. Some elements in the task pane are
expanded to demonstrate that tasks and subtasks often use similar icons.
The console toolbar uses 2 colorful, 24-point icons with transparent backgrounds - a toolbar icon and a rollover icon. These either change color or animate when they receive the focus.
Discover Systems:
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Message Browser:
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Event Action Plan Builder:
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User Administration:
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Scheduler:
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