A group is a set of devices. You can group devices for easier viewing on the overview page, and you can create observability and analytics views for groups.

This guide will teach you how to create a group.

Prerequisite: Create a group tag

Before you can create a group, you must first create a tag which will be applied to all devices in that group. When creating the tag, make sure that This tag is used to create groups of devices is set to ON.

For more information, see Configure access levels with tags.

Step 1: Create new group

In Formant, in the upper-left corner, open the menu and click Settings >> Groups.
In the upper-right corner, click Add Group.

Step 2: Configure your group

Configure your group as follows:

Property	Usage
Name	Name of this group.
Description	User-friendly description of this group.
Display this group in the navigation sidebar and overview pages	If Active, this group will be shown on the overview page in the left-hand menu and the right-hand sidebar. For more information, see Configure the overview page.
Configure a color to be associated with this group	If Enabled, you can assign a color to this group for easy identification on the overview page.

Step 3: Select a group tag

Click the Tag header.
Select a tag which will be applied to all devices in this group.

Step 4: Select devices

Click the Choose Devices header.
Select all devices you want to add to this group. You can filter by tags for easy navigation of the list of devices.
If the selected devices do not already have the group tag applied, you can apply them through this workflow.

Step 5: Verify your work on the overview page

If you configured this group to appear on the overview page, you should now see it in the following two places:

In the left-hand menu:

In the right-hand sidebar, under the Groups tab.

Configure user access your group

If a user has the group tag applied, that user will be able to see the group on the overview page in the right-hand sidebar, under the Groups tab.

However, the user's access to the devices and data within that group will be limited by matching tag sets. This may result in the user being able to see the group itself, but not any devices or data within that group.

For example, consider the following organization structure:

Entity	Tag set
`device-1` through `device-10`	`site: santa-fe` (group tag)
`user-1`	`site: santa-fe, manufacturer: acme`

The user will be able to see the group site: santa-fe in the overview page, and will be able to see views for that group, but will not see any devices or data from that group, because the user's tag set is more restrictive than the tag set applied to the group.

If there is a device which matches the user's tags, as below:

Entity	Tag set
`device-1` through `device-9`	`site: santa-fe`
`device-10`	`site: santa-fe, manufacturer: acme`
`user-1`	`site: santa-fe, manufacturer: acme`

....the user would be able to see the group site: santa-fe, but only the device and data from device-10.

For more information, see Configure access levels and Create and apply tags.

Create a device group