Kaseya VSA: Basics – Custom Fields

ProVal Tech’s expert Dan is back to over Kaseya VSA Custom Fields with you all.

Step by Step:

1. A custom field is simply a column that we can add to an organization or machine to provide custom information in key-value pair format.
2. This information could be input by hand, filled by a procedure, or even by API scripting.
3. These fields allow us to automate and report more efficiently and to a higher degree of customization than the default fields allow.
4. There are two types of custom fields that we can create and modify within Kaseya, organizational custom fields and machine custom fields.
5. Let’s start with a brief description of org fields organization.
6. Organization Custom fields are key value pairs that exist for every major organization within the VSA. These can be used within the agent feeds procedures and API calls to gather information about the organization that is not provided by default through other methods.
7. Existing organization custom field data can be viewed manually by going to system, orgs, groups, department, staff, manage.
8. Here if we select the organization that we want to view and click the custom fields tab at the top we can see the existing values. We can also edit the values of existing fields here.
9. Note that you can’t create new custom fields in this screen.
10. In order to create a new org custom field we have to go to system, customize, site customization.
11. Here we click on the org custom field title column.
12. Now we select an empty line here below the last entry, we can click on that empty line and then we click edit.
13. Here we’re going to create a new custom field called is internal so that we can see using these fields if the organization itself is our internal organization or not.
14. Now when we go back to orgs and manage and click on the custom field tab we can see the new field we just created.
15. Let’s select our ProVal organization.
16. Then select the new custom field and then type yes.
17. Now we have an org custom field so that denotes that this org is our internal organization.
18. Next let’s discuss machine custom fields like org fields machine custom fields allow us to set a key value pair of custom data that is not necessarily available by default.
19. The big difference here is that these field values can be customized on a per agent basis instead of just one entire org field.
20. To view and modify machine custom fields we need to go to audit, view individual data, machine summary.
21. On the summary tab here if we scroll down we can see all of our machine custom fields that we’ve created over the years.
22. And unlike org custom fields we can easily add, edit, remove, do anything we want with these custom fields directly from this page.
23. A note that when you do add a new machine custom field to an agent that custom field will be available on all agents within your VSA.
24. Let’s add a new custom field now.
25. First click on new custom field.
26. Next we’ll think of a good name for our field I’m going with test environment since I need to configure these new dev machines I recently set up.
27. Next under custom field type, select the appropriate type of data that will be entering that field nine times out of ten I end up choosing string here.
28. Great now that our custom field is set up I can modify the value of the field by clicking edit machine data, finding the new field in the list, modifying the value of the field, and clicking save.
29. Now we can see that our agent has the correct information in the custom field that we’ve just created we can also change custom and field information by using the update system info function in an agent procedure or by making an API request.
30. We can also see that this same custom field is available for all of these other agents as well.
31. Now this custom field will be accessible in the same way that other machine audit information is. For example, let’s create a new view that just shows us all of these development environment machines at a glance.
32. So, we want to go up here and click on new view then we’ll click save as and name this view dev machines.
33. All right now let’s go down to define filter.
34. In this new list that appears we can see our custom field here. We want to filter for any machine that has yes in that custom field just like I typed earlier when I was creating the custom field and putting value in it.
35. All right let’s apply these changes and now we’ll save the view.
36. Okay let’s close the window and go to our manage agents module.
37. Now when we select our new view here which we can easily do by type again, we can see the one machine that we set that yes value for is listed in this view.
38. Now later on I’ll go through and I’ll set yes manually for all of my other development machines and I’ll have a nice easy list of development machines that anyone using the VSA can use at a glance.
39. That’s all I wanted to show you today but keep in mind that custom fields are pivotal in customizing your VSA experience and are extremely powerful in views, policies, reporting, and more.