Overview

The IPHost client GUI displays all monitoring configuration controls, monitoring results and logs on one screen. This design is intended to save your time. Typically when you change the settings you expect to see the effect of your change in monitoring results, and when you see a problem in monitoring results you may want to adjust the monitoring settings or alerts.

The GUI uses a flexible visualization approach: it offers a number of dockable windows that you can arrange as you wish; it also has a standard Windows menu, toolbars and status bar. Here is the default GUI layout.

The default GUI layout

Here is an 'Internet pager-like' layout where only the Tree View pane is visible and you open the Reports window when you see some bad state change.

The 'internet pager-like' layout

The GUI components are described below.

Menu

The menu allows you to configure the GUI itself, configure the network monitoring and reporting process, print HTML reports, register the product, access help pages and online technical support. Please note that some menu actions have keyboard shortcuts defined.

Toolbars

Standard Toolbar

The standard toolbar provides navigation facilities and access to the most demanded functions. You can navigate over the monitoring system configuration using the familiar pair of Back and Forward buttons and a drop down list of recently visited places or open the Web interface's Dashboard tab that presents summary status of your system by clicking the "Web Interface" button. The following functions are also available through this toolbar: creation / deletion of a new host group / host / monitor, and network discovery; enabling / disabling GUI components, global setting configuration, and help pages.

Monitor Control Toolbar

The monitor control allows you to mainpulate the monitors tree and to perform actions on individual monitors and monitor groups. You can expand the current monitors tree, expand only the problematic nodes, collapse the tree, filter the particular monitor states out, search for particular host or monitor, start, stop an poll monitors and monitor groups and add monitors to the Favorites view.

There are small toolbars in the Log View and Report View dockable windows as well; they are described below.

Tree View

The Tree View pane provides different views of monitored objects and allows taking a quick glance at the system status. It contains a toolbox with five trees: By Host, By Monitor Type, By Current State, Discovery and Favorites. Each node of a tree carries an icon corresponding to the worst child monitor state within it. Changing the focus in Tree View reloads the contents of all the other dockable client windows on the screen. The most demanded actions are available from the context menu of the Tree View pane that appears when you right-click a selected monitor or group.

On top of the Tree View window there are "Search String" text field and "Filter by State or Agent" button which allow to filter monitors in the Tree View pane.

Property Editor

Property Editor is used to configure monitoring. It displays all properties of a currently selected object. For monitors the editor displays and allows changing the name, comment, polling frequency and monitor-specific parameters, availability settings such as timeout, performance level settings, and alerts to be performed on state changes. For monitor groups, the editor also displays a monitors state summary across the group. Some of the settings in Property Editor have specialized child editors (dialog windows) associated with them.

Report View

Report View displays an HTML report for a currently selected monitor or group. When a monitor is selected, a detailed report including a performance graph and all state changes of this monitor is displayed (the default report period is the last 24 hours and may be changed in the Global Settings dialog). When a monitor group is selected, a summary report for it is shown. You can navigate the reports you have loaded using the Back and Forward buttons on the toolbar in Report View, Refresh a report, and open the IPHost Web interface with this report loaded using the Open in Browser button. When you navigate the HTML links in a report or use the Back / Forward buttons, not only the Report View content is changed to display data for the new monitor or group but all the other dockable windows are updated too.

Log View

Log View provides access to log messages stored in the database. You can enable the displaying of either system messages or monitor state change messages or messages of both types in the Log View using its toolbar; it is also possible to adjust a log period (the default period is 24 hours) and to change log record order. The records of state changes and events are filtered in accordance with a currently selected monitor or group; only the messages related to the current selection are shown. Log records for hosts and monitors contain hyperlinks; by clicking on them you select a corresponding object in the Tree View pane and all the other dockable windows.

Global Settings

The Global Settings dialog provides access to settings that do not fit the Property Editor. These are administrator e-mail account settings on the E-mail page; access password and default user account on the Credentials page; System settings such as application paths and port numbers, global lists of reusable Alerts and Alerting Rules, the global Maintenance table, various Monitoring and Reporting settings, network Rediscovery parameters, SNMP monitoring parameters, and commands to start various Admin Tools.

Some of the settings found on the E-mail and Credentials pages may be entered in a Welcome Wizard that opens when you start the client for the first time.

Status Bar

The status bar displays the URL of a current report, indication of database operation, and the status of active Network Discovery or Rediscovery. You can stop the execution of Network Discovery by pressing the Stop button on the status bar that appears when the discovery begins.