Introduction to Filters & Groups

Filters allow you to organize and sort your devices in PDQ Connect. Filters can be applied to the Devices page once for a quick view of the devices that meet the filter criteria, or they can be saved as a Group for repeated viewing and targeting in deployments.

To learn about the logic used when configuring Filters & Groups, see Filtering Logic Explained.

Configuring Filters

To create a new filter, select Filter while viewing the Devices page, or Create Group with the Groups menu expanded.
Configure your desired filters and click Apply to apply the filters to the Devices page or Save as Group to save the configured filters as a new Device Group.
When a Filter is applied to the Device page, or when viewing a Group, a number will appear over the Filter button, indicating the number of applied filters.

Filter Menu Options

Add Filter: Adds an additional Filter to the main Filter Group.
Add Filter Group: Creates a new Filter Group, nested in the main Filter Group.
Clear Filters: Clears all the configured Filters.
Save as Group: Saves the configured Filters as a new Device Group.
Apply: Applies the configured Filters to the Devices page.

Filter Groups

Filter Groups are groups of Filters that use the OR, AND, NOR, and NAND logic gates to determine how the Filter Groups are to be evaluated together. Filter Groups can be nested to create complex filters with increasing granularity.

Click ++ in the Filter Menu to add a new filter Group.
Configure the logic gate AND, OR, NAND, or NOR to the left of the new Filter Group to determine how the Filter Group will be evaluated against the other Filters and / or Filter Groups.
Within a Filter Group, click the + to add a new Filter to the Filter Group or click the ++ to add a new Filter Group within the Filter Group.
Within a Filter Group, configure the logic gate AND, OR, NAND, or NOR to the left of the Filters to determine how the Filters will be evaluated within the Filter Group.

Absolute and Relative Date Filtering

For any value which can be expressed using a specific date:

Item	Date value
Device	Last seen, OS install date, When added
Drivers	Release date
Files and folders	Object created at, Object modified at
Software	Install date
Windows updates	Update date

It's possible to create a filter which compares that date to a specific, known value, and includes all devices which exist before, after, or equal to (is) that value, or if the value is/is not empty.

It is also possible to select a comparison relative to today. For example, here is a filter which would display all devices last seen 30 days or longer from the current date.

Groups which make use of relative date filters will be recalculated when a new date begins at 00:00 UTC, irrespective of which time zone the device exists in. For example, on US East Coast Standard time (EST, UTC -05:00) the groups would recalculate around 7:00 PM and devices will be added/removed. If based in the UK, the recalculation would take place around midnight (GMT, UTC +00:00) and so on.

Device Uptime vs. Last Seen

Last seen refers to the last point in time when the PDQ Connect agent successfully checked into the platform on a given device. Uptime refers to the amount of time (in hours) that a device has been powered on, as reported by Windows. This will not necessarily match the amount of time that the device has been reporting into Connect - for example, a device could be powered on for three days and then an admin could install the Connect agent. Such a device would report an Uptime of 72 hours and a Last Seen value of the time when the agent was installed today.

Both values can be used in filters and groups, but they are used differently.

The Device | Last Seen filter is a relative date filter, and can be configured to any of the relative values listed above, including before/after a specific date and time, or a specific period of time relative today. For example, this filter will show all devices (whether they are currently online or not) which have been seen online in the last week:

The Device | Uptime filter is an absolute date filter, and relies on a value for how many hours the device has been online. For example, this filter will show all devices which have been powered on for more than 1 calendar week (7 days/168 hours):

Variables

PDQ Inventory comes with pre-defined Variables that can be used within Filters & Groups. The Variables in PDQ Connect are the same Variables included in the PDQ Inventory Collection Library and are updated by the PDQ Packaging Team to reflect the application names, versions, publishers, etc..., as Package Library Packages are updated.

$(AppName_) - Application Name - The application name, as it appears in Programs & Features
$(AppPub_) - Application Publisher - The Publisher of the application
$(AppVer_) - Application Version - The latest version of the application
$(Date) - Current Date
$(HFName_) - Hot Fix Name (Updated to the latest Cumulative update KB# for a specific OS)
$(OSVer_) - OS Version (The full latest version number for a specific OS build)
$(RTName_) - Runtime Name - Used with Runtimes such as Java, .NET
$(RTVer_) - Runtime Version - The latest version of the Runtime