Lifecycle Management presents a set of available views. Each view contains the set of dependencies (known as items) that match its scope rule. Items are highlighted if their status has changed and the change has not been acknowledged.
For each item in a view, a number of day to day operations can be performed, including:

• Filter or search a view to find items of interest
• Sort the display
• Lower or raise the alert status on dependencies
• Mark an item as part of the expected infrastructure by setting the authorization status
• Examine the components of items
• Perform analysis of the possible causes of alerts to aid further investigation

Displaying the Contents of Views

Use the following procedure to display the contents of an existing view:

1. Log in to the Foundation UI as a member of either the lifecycle-management-administrator or lifecycle-management-user groups.
2. Click the "Change" tab at the top-right of the display. If the "Change" tab is already selected, you can click "Manage views" in the navigation bar below the large tabs.
3. Locate the view you want to display. If the view is not marked as one of your favorites, you may need to click "(Show)" next to "Other Views" in order to display all of the views on the appliance.
4. To see all items, click the name of the view to open it. This applies the filtering, sorting and keyword search settings last used with this view.
5. Items with a raised alert status are indicated in the details panel. To see only the items with an alert, click the text to open the view sorted by alert priority.

A view's content is shown in the screenshot below. This page is called the Show View page.

At the top of the page, the name of the view and a summary of its details are shown. Below this, options to filter, apply a keyword search or sort the items in the view are accessible by unfolding a panel. The current filter and sorting settings are displayed in the same bar. If a filter is currently applied, the page will load with the filter options panel unfolded.

The body of the page shows a list of the items in the view that match the current filter settings. The view displays only a fixed number of items per page. You can change this and the page number currently being displayed using the controls at the bottom of the display.

Item Summary Information

Each item of the current page is initially displayed as a summary bar that shows its name and its other properties, as illustrated in the screenshot below.

Displaying Item Components

Clicking an item's name on its summary bar causes the bar to expand to display the item's components and other information. To close the item, click its name again.

To expand all of the items on the page of the view currently displayed, or to return them all to their closed states, use the "Expand: All" or "Expand: None" links, respectively. These are located above the first item on the page and below the last.

An expanded item is shown in the screenshot below.

Use the tabs to:

• Show details of the components that make up the item
• Perform root cause analysis on the item

The table in the expanded view of an item lists each component's name, its lifecycle and further information about that component. To determine the kind of an item component, use the mouse to hover over the component's name. The icon next to the component name also indicates its kind.

To show information associated with any of the item components, click the link over its name. This allows you to drill-down to the page in the Foundation UI most relevant to that node.

The background color for each row of the table corresponds to the RAG status for the component, calculated exactly as the item's RAG status is. This allows you to identify rapidly the component whose lifecycle does not correspond to those for the rest of the item and so to the cause of alerts.

To immediately test the credentials of any item component that is a Host, click the "Test credentials" link. To arrange the rescan of a set of hosts, use the "Rescan Host" action, described below.

The right hand column of the item components table displays additional information. Some of these fields are generated by Lifecycle Management to assist users in determining the root cause of changes to the item's lifecycle. The remainder are summary details for the component chosen using Foundation's taxonomy.

You can customize the information shown for each kind of component by modifying the <summary-list> attribute for the corresponding node kind in the taxonomy. In this way, additional attributes on the node or relationships to other nodes may be displayed. Because of this, the fields described in this document may not correspond precisely to those that you see displayed.

Modifying this list may affect how nodes of that kind are displayed elsewhere in the Foundation user interface.

Fields generated by Lifecycle Management are described in the table below.

Actions on an Item

The Show View page offers two methods of setting the properties of the items that it displays. In either case, the actions available will be a subset of the ones described in the table below.

When you take an action on one or more items, you can supply a textual explanation. In most cases, the explanation is optional. However, in some cases it is required, as noted in the table.

If you provide an explanation, it will be displayed alongside your username. The date and time of the action on the affected items will be recorded as the provenance for the property that the action updated.

If you do not specify an explanation for the action, only your username and the date will be displayed on the provenance of the items' properties.

Selecting all Items in a View

Mass actions can be applied to every item in the view, not just those items visible on the page. When a user selects all items (Using the Select All feature), all items on the page are selected.

The following action area appears when the Select All link is clicked:

This shows the number of items currently selected and a count of the total items. An option is available to select all the items in the view. If a filter is applied then this is also indicated.

If all items are selected then the message changes to this:

An option to clear the selection is presented and once clicked the Select All in View message is removed. All selected items (including the selected items on the page) are deselected.

Once the Select All in View feature is invoked:

• If any item on the page is deselected then the Select All in View is cancelled
• If the user paginates or navigates to another page the Select All in View is cancelled
• If a filter is applied the Select All in View is cancelled
• If an item is expanded the Select All in View is NOT cancelled
• Once a mass action on all items in the view is invoked the Select All in View is NOT cancelled
• Once a mass action has been invoked the mass action flag stays

Performing Actions on Multiple Items

Use the following procedure to perform the same action on a number of items in a view at once:

1. Navigate to show the contents of the view in the Lifecycle Management user interface.
2. Use filtering, search and sorting to display the items on which to perform the action. Select the items by clicking the checkbox next to them.
3. To select all the items in the view, use the method described in the previous section.
4. Select the desired action from the actions dropdown located at the top of the page.
5. A pop-up window will prompt you to enter an explanation for your action. Unless the action you have selected requires an explanation, as noted in the table above, you can skip this step.
6. Click the Submit button.

The screenshot below illustrates the main actions dropdown and shows a number of selected items.

To select all of the items on the page of the view currently displayed, or to clear your current selection, use the "Select: All" or "Select: None" links, respectively. These are located above the first item on the page and below the last.

To select all of the items in the view as currently filtered, you can click "Select: All" then click the link in the message that appears to the right. Deselecting an item, changing the current page or clicking the "Clear Selection" link means that any action subsequently taken is no longer applied to items not shown in the current page.

Performing Actions on a Single Item

As an alternative to the above procedure, you can perform an action on a single item using the dropdown box accessible at the right hand side of the item's summary bar. Although this dropdown cannot apply the same action to multiple items at once, it is context-sensitive, in that it only displays actions that are meaningful for that item.

To perform an action on an item using its actions dropdown:

1. Navigate to show the contents of the view in the Lifecycle Management user interface.
2. Locate the item on which you wish to perform an action.
3. Click the down arrow on the right-hand-side of the item summary bar to open the actions dropdown.
4. Select the desired action from the pop-up window.
5. A pop-up window will prompt you to enter an explanation for your action. Unless the action you have selected requires an explanation, as noted in the table above, you can skip this step.
6. Click the Submit button.

The screenshot below illustrates this approach.

Filtering, Searching and Sorting

The "Filter and Sort Options" panel provides features for filtering, sorting and performing keyword searches to display only a subset of the items within a view.

All of the options selected from this panel are persisted for each user, and for each view. This means that for a given view, when a user re-enters that view using the usual link on its entry on the Manage Views page, their previous filter, search, and sort settings are reapplied.

Filtering Options

The "Filter and Sort Options" panel allows you to filter the view to show only items whose properties match a particular value. These are displayed in groups, one for each property, one check box for each value to filter on. To apply a filter, check the appropriate text box. The panel is shown in the screenshot below.

You can select any number of filters at once. To clear a filter, you can uncheck it. To clear all filters that are currently applied, click the "Remove All Filters" button in the top-right of the panel.

When you select multiple filters, they interact as follows:

• Selecting two or more filters from the same category operates as a logical or. That is, selecting two filters from the Lifecycle group, Current and Aging, shows all items that are either Current or Aging.
  Note that selecting all of the filter options from any one category is equivalent to selecting none of them from that category.
• Selecting two or more filters from different categories operates as a logical and. That is, selecting the Current filter from the Lifecycle group and the Me filter from the Owner group shows only items in the view that have both a Lifecycle of Current and are owned by the current user.

The filter "Manually excluded items" differs slightly in its behavior from the others. When it is unchecked, it implicitly filters the view to show only items whose Exclusion property is Included. When it is checked, it filters the view to show only items whose Exclusion property is Excluded.

To learn about the "Not yet reviewed" filter, see Reviewing Changes to a View.

Keyword Search Options

The "Filter and Sort Options" panel also allows you to filter the view by items whose components have attributes containing one or more free text keywords.

For example, entering "linux" is likely to display only items running on hosts whose discovered operating system is "Linux". This can be combined with the other filter options described above.

Enter the keywords in the "Keyword Search" text box, then press the return key or click the magnifying glass icon.

Sort Options

The following sorting options are available from the sort dropdown in the "Filter and Sort Options" panel:

After making a change to an item, the sort order is not updated immediately, in order to avoid any items that you are working on from being moved on the display. To refresh the view using the current sort order, click the "Refresh" button to the right of the sort dropdown.

Reviewing Changes to a View

Whenever the state of an item changes as a result of Foundation's discovery process, and that item needs attention, an alert is raised. When multiple users are managing a view together, one user can acknowledge that alert and address the problem. This means that other users are unlikely to respond to the same alert.

However, in some circumstances it is useful for a user to be able to see all of the changes made to a view, regardless of whether they have been dealt with. Lifecycle Management provides this feature through its "Not yet reviewed" filter.

When this filter is selected, an additional link, labeled "Set View to Reviewed", is shown below the filter options panel. The filter shows only those items that have changed since you last clicked this link. Those changes could have been made either by Foundation's discovery process or by user action. If you have not previously set this view to be "reviewed", then the filter shows all included items.

A review is per-user and per-view. This means that another user setting the same view to "reviewed" or you setting a different view to "reviewed" has no effect on the changes that you see.

To establish a state in which the view is "reviewed":

1. Navigate to show the contents of the view in the Lifecycle Management user interface.
2. Open the "Filter and Sort Options" panel, and check the "Not yet reviewed" filter in the "Review" category.
3. Click the "Set View to Reviewed link.

To review changes made to a view since you performed the above procedure, then update your "reviewed" state:

1. Navigate to show the contents of the view in the Lifecycle Management user interface.
2. Open the "Filter and Sort Options" panel, and check the "Not yet reviewed" filter in the "Review" category. Only items that have changed since the you last performed either this or the previous procedure are displayed.
3. You can review the changes, using any filtering, sort or keyword search options and take any actions on items that you want to.
4. When you have completed the review, click the "Set View to Reviewed" link.

Adjusting Items Shown in a View

The "Exclude item from view" action causes the selected items to no longer be shown as part of the view, nor to be included as part of any export that is based on the view.

You can view items excluded in this way by applying the "Manually excluded items" filter, while their lifecycle remains as either Current or Aging. You can then use the "Re-include item in view" action to recover such items and place them back in the view.
However, if an item is excluded in all of the views of which it is a member, and its lifecycle is Destroyed or Purged, or later becomes either of these, then that item is removed.

The removal of a Destroyed or Purged item that is excluded from all of its views causes the item's associated storage to be freed. The item may not later be recovered to the view. It also means that any notes that are associated only with this item are removed.

tem removal can also be triggered by deleting a view that was the last view in which a Destroyed item was included. Now that the item is excluded in all views of which it is a member, it will be destroyed and so no longer be recoverable from its remaining views.

Exporting a List of Items

Lifecycle Management includes the capability to export the summary names of a selected set of items by use of the clipboard or your configured email client. This simplifies exchange of information about changes to users without access to Lifecycle Management.
This feature allows you to select a list of items and to export their details. These details can then be emailed to relevant people.

To export a list of items:

1. Navigate to a view and select the required items using each items' checkbox.
2. Choose the "Export item list" from the mass action dropdown menu.
3. This then displays the items details in the following dialog box:
   
   

Either select/copy the text or enter an email address and click the Mail To button. The text displayed depends on the view type. The format is one of the following:

• BAI, SI, HOST – full dependency
• BAI, HOST – direct dependency
• HOST – host only dependency

In the following example the view type is direct BAI, HOST.

"Web Application","london_server01"
"Database Server","paris_db_serv00"
"My Trading Application","nyserver009"

To return to the Show View page either:

• Click the Close button in the top right hand corner of the dialog box, or
• Click anywhere outside the modal dialog, or
• Press the Esc key.

Importing and Filtering Items

This feature allows you to import a list of items and display only those items (i.e. filter on those items).

To import a list of items and display only those items:

1. Selects the "Manually Specified Items" filter option.
   The same modal dialog as for the export appears but with an import button.
   
   

The format permitted for imports are the same as for exports:

• BAI, SI, HOST – full dependency
• BAI, HOST – direct dependency
• HOST – host only dependency

The format of the import list is listed below the text area next to the Import button. If the paths are entered in an invalid format then the filter will fail and an error message will be displayed on the showview page. After the filter has been applied, you can then apply further filters such as alert==true.