Before we show you how to build a custom view,
we'll offer a quick word of caution
when it comes to managing views.
Building and editing custom views is really easy.
In fact, it might be argued that
sometimes it can be a little too easy.
You'll notice that in the top right-hand corner of my view
there's a handy little customize page button,
and this takes me directly to my view editor
where I can add resources and move things around.
While this is a very powerful capability,
most Orion users may not understand
that when they make a change to a view
that change isn't just applied for them,
it's applied for everyone with access to the view.
There are a lot of shared views in Orion,
but when you go into the view editor, there's no warning.
You have to understand what you're doing
when you're creating new views
and especially when you're editing existing views,
so that you don't mess things up for anyone else.
If you're the one and only Orion administrator
than this won't be a problem.
However, if you have a lot of users
logging into the web console,
you need to be extremely careful
about who gets view management rights.
View management rights is one of the permissions
in the individual user accounts.
If a user doesn't have view manager rights,
then they can't create new views,
and they also can't modify existing views.
So the customize page button
isn't even there for those users.
So, just a word of caution,
if you're managing a large environment
with a lot of Orion users logging in,
don't give them all view management rights.
With all of those warnings,
let's go ahead and build a custom view.
Go to the Settings menu and select the 'All Settings' link.
This will take you to the main settings
and administration page.
Scroll down the page to the Views resource
and select 'Manage Views.'
This brings up a list of all your existing views.
Here you can edit a view, make a copy of a view,
or create a new view from scratch,
which is what we wanna do.
So I'll click on 'Add.'
The first thing you need to do is give your view a name.
But let's pause again for just a moment
and talk a little about view management.
When building custom views, you shouldn't
build views for individuals,
but rather build views or certain roles,
like Network Admin or Helpdesk Staff or Security Admin.
Even if all the roles need the exact same information
it is not recommended that you share views between them.
Inevitably, one of those teams is
going to want something different
and make a change that affects other teams as well.
Instead, you can make a copy of the view
and assign one copy to one group
and another to the other group.
This makes our naming convention very important.
Next, you'll choose the type of view you're going to build.
If you click the drop-down, you'll see
that there are a number of view types,
and below the drop-down is a brief description of each type.
The view type you choose is going to determine two things.
First, it determines which resources
you have available to build your view.
You have literally hundreds of resources to choose from,
but not all those resources are
available in every view type.
So, make sure you choose the right view type
or you're not going to see what you want.
The second thing the view type determines
is whether or not the view has to reference an object.
If you look down through the list,
you'll see that we have two basic view types.
We have Summary views and Details views.
Details views have to reference an object,
Summary views do not.
You've probably already noticed this.
One of the first views most people see
is the Node Details view,
which has to reference a specific node
to populate the informational resources within the view.
Pay attention to the view type you choose
because once it's set, you cannot change it.
Once you've got a name and a view type click 'Submit',
and this brings you to the view editor.
Up at the top you see the name of the view
and the view type,
which again, notice you can not change.
Below that you have left navigation.
If you turn on left navigation
this will allow you to create subviews.
Subviews are identical to regular views
except that they are assigned to one of the navigation tabs.
In fact you'll see your subviews included in the list
with all the others when you click on
Manage Views from the Settings page.
They'll be saved as the name of the view,
the name of the tab.
So this subview would be called
"summary junior admin custom tab2."
Subviews are great. Anytime you have more information
that fits comfortably in a single view
or if you have a particular resource
that just takes up way too much screen real estate.
You can move that resource to a subview
where you still have easy access to the information
but it doesn't clutter up your main page.
We don't need subviews for
this particular view we're building
so we will just turn off left navigation.
Notice when you do you get a popup that says
do you want to delete subviews?
Be aware of this because this isn't a negotiation.
This is going to happen.
The subviews are going away,
but at least it gives you a friendly heads up
and a choice of whether you want to
preserve view information by cramming all the resources
onto the main view
or just let them be deleted with the subviews.
Below the left navigation check box
we have the view layout editor.
The view starts out with two columns by default,
but you can go up to as many as six columns.
Below each column you'll see the column pixel width.
Keep in mind that the columns are fixed pixel width.
They will not scale to accommodate resources
that are too wide nor will they scale to match
the full width of the display size.
So you need to keep those two things in mind.
How wide is the widest resource you're
going to include in the column
and what resolution will your users be viewing this page.
After you set your column widths you'll need
to click 'Done' to save the views,
because those column widths won't stick
until the view is saved.
If you don't save after changing the column widths,
the column width settings will end up being lost
when you make certain changes to the view,
like adding new resources or view limitations.