How Hierarchy Editable Properties (HEPs) works within an Hierarchy?

Products

• IT Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Hierarchy Editable Properties (HEPs) 

By default, all items replicated via Hierarchy are read-only and non-editable at the destination child servers. The purpose of Hierarchy Editable Properties is to allow this default behavior to be overridden at child 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 NS, in addition to allowing this setting to be editable at the child after replication, it also ensures that whatever the child administrator has configured for this editable setting will remain intact upon any subsequent replications of this policy from the parent.

Environment

ITMS 7.x, 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 parent it means that the ON/OFF state of the policy after it replicates to the child NS will be editable.

‘Resource Target’ – When selected at the parent, 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 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 and child NS before replication, the first replication always overwrites the existing policy settings at the child. Once this first replication has occurred and the HEP setting registered at the child NS, on subsequent replication of this policy from the parent it will not override the settings if HEP is set for them.

 

Example below:

- The Parent NS user sets a Policy state to ‘ON’

- The corresponding policy at the child is set to ‘OFF’

The Parent NS user sets the HEP type ‘Enable’ to ticked/selected and replicates the policy down to the child NS

- The policy will be set to ‘ON’ at the child NS

- The Child NS user edits the policy and sets the state to ‘OFF’

- The Parent NS user replicates the policy again

- The State of the policy at the child remains as ‘OFF’ after replication

 

Note: Software Management Solution has enabled all three of the above HEP types by default on their 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 NS to think it should not override the current settings even though it is technically the first replication.