Hierarchy Editable Properties (HEPs) within a Hierarchy

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information on Hierarchy Editable Properties (HEPs) within a hierarchy.

By default, all items replicated via Hierarchy are read-only and non-editable at the destination Child SMP servers. The purpose of Hierarchy Editable Properties is to allow this default behavior to be overridden at Child SMP servers for a select list of replicated Item types such as Policies and their particular configuration settings.

 

When a particular HEP is enabled at the Parent SMP server, in addition to allowing this setting to be editable at the child after replication, it also ensures that whatever the  Child SMP servers administrator has configured for this editable setting and it will remain intact upon any subsequent replications of this policy from the Parent SMP server.

Environment

ITMS 8.x

Resolution

The current HEP types are:

• ‘Enabled’ – This is the On/OFF state within the policy. When this HEP is tick selected at the SMP Parent server it means that the ON/OFF state of the policy after it replicates to the Child SMP server will be editable.
• ‘Resource Target’ – When selected at the Parent SMP server, it will allow the ResourceTarget section of the policy to be edited. Targets can be deleted/ added.
• ‘Client Schedule XML’ – When selected at the Parent SMP server it will allow the schedule section of the policy to be edited. However it does not allow the ‘extra schedule options’ section to be edited, this section will still be read-only.

If the same policy already exists at the Parent SMP server and Child SMP server before replication, the first replication always overwrites the existing policy settings at the Child SMP server. Once this first replication has occurred and the HEP setting registered at the Child SMP server, on subsequent replication of this policy from the Parent SMP server it will not override the settings if HEP is set for them.

 

Example below:

• The Parent SMP server user sets a Policy state to ‘ON’
• The corresponding policy at the Child SMP server is set to ‘OFF’
• The Parent SMP server user sets the HEP type ‘Enable’ to ticked/selected and replicates the policy down to the Child SMP server
• The policy will be set to ‘ON’ at the Child SMP server
• The Child SMP server user edits the policy and sets the state to ‘OFF’
• The Parent SMP server user replicates the policy again
• The State of the policy at the Child SMP server remains as ‘OFF’ after replication

Note: Software Management Solution has enabled all three of the above HEP types by default on the out of the box policies. This causes the above behaviour to not apply as the HEPs already exist at the child NS as ticked/selected causing the Notification Server to think it should not override the current settings even though it is technically the first replication.

Additional Information

Key Features of Hierarchy