Change manager needs some love

[Tod]

A few suggestions for the Change manager.

1. In preferences you can set an inclusion date range for changes.  When applied,  (clicking the refresh button, or start),  it appears to be looking at reports far outside the date range.  This dramatically increases the time it takes to generate the report. The output is correct, just takes longer that it should.  Maybe filter out reports outside the date range when it is generating the report?

2. Need a better way to 'include' computers in a report.  Currently the only option is to 'exclude'.  This is very time consuming if you have 25 computers,  and only want a report on 4 of them.  Maybe a checkbox selection list?

3. I can't seem to find a list of changes that were 'authorized'  Perhaps add that as a column  "Authorized  Y/N"  or something? Maybe add a filter. "Only show authorized/unauthorized changes" This one is pretty important.

4. Related to #2,  On the 'Computer' tab,   right click on a specific computer (or possibly multiple computers),  then choose Quick Report.  This should only apply to the computer that is selected,  not all in the list.

Thanks for your consideration :-)

 

 

 

[Fiery]

On ‎9‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 4:45 PM, Tod said:

A few suggestions for the Change manager.

1. In preferences you can set an inclusion date range for changes.  When applied,  (clicking the refresh button, or start),  it appears to be looking at reports far outside the date range.  This dramatically increases the time it takes to generate the report. The output is correct, just takes longer that it should.  Maybe filter out reports outside the date range when it is generating the report?

2. Need a better way to 'include' computers in a report.  Currently the only option is to 'exclude'.  This is very time consuming if you have 25 computers,  and only want a report on 4 of them.  Maybe a checkbox selection list?

3. I can't seem to find a list of changes that were 'authorized'  Perhaps add that as a column  "Authorized  Y/N"  or something? Maybe add a filter. "Only show authorized/unauthorized changes" This one is pretty important.

4. Related to #2,  On the 'Computer' tab,   right click on a specific computer (or possibly multiple computers),  then choose Quick Report.  This should only apply to the computer that is selected,  not all in the list.

Thanks for your consideration :-)

Thank you for your suggestions.  We'll work on them in the upcoming weeks, and will send you updates via this topic.

[Fiery]

On ‎9‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 4:45 PM, Tod said:

A few suggestions for the Change manager.

1. In preferences you can set an inclusion date range for changes.  When applied,  (clicking the refresh button, or start),  it appears to be looking at reports far outside the date range.  This dramatically increases the time it takes to generate the report. The output is correct, just takes longer that it should.  Maybe filter out reports outside the date range when it is generating the report?

2. Need a better way to 'include' computers in a report.  Currently the only option is to 'exclude'.  This is very time consuming if you have 25 computers,  and only want a report on 4 of them.  Maybe a checkbox selection list?

3. I can't seem to find a list of changes that were 'authorized'  Perhaps add that as a column  "Authorized  Y/N"  or something? Maybe add a filter. "Only show authorized/unauthorized changes" This one is pretty important.

4. Related to #2,  On the 'Computer' tab,   right click on a specific computer (or possibly multiple computers),  then choose Quick Report.  This should only apply to the computer that is selected,  not all in the list.

Thanks for your consideration :-)

Here are a few issues and questions about your suggestions:

1) AIDA64 Change Manager has to look outside the date range in order to assure that it can find the baseline (last state) of each computer involved in the selected date range.  For example, if you set the date range to January 01, 2018 ... October 29, 2018 (today), and a change occured on January 01, 2018, without looking back to previous reports (that were made before January 01, 2018) AIDA64 wouldn't be able to detect a change occured on January 01, 2018.

2) The exclusion is much easier to maintain, since that way AIDA64 doesn't have to first enumerate the list of computers in your currently selected date range.  Inclusion would either have to be manually listing the computers, one by one; or by first enumerating them (which could take a while) and then offer you a list of computers with a checkbox for each.  Let me know if either of those would suit your needs.

3) Do you want to also have the ability to reverse an authorized change?

4) The Quick Report is supposed to put all the changes in the currently selected list into a report.  It doesn't matter if you right-click on a computer or on a line between the changes of 2 computers (an empty line basically).  Do you want to keep the current logic when you click on an empty line or a line of a certain change event, but have the report for a single computer when you right-click on the name of a computer?  It would of course have to work different on other tabs than Computer, e.g. to report only the changes for the selected user on the User tab, etc.

[Tod]

1)  I do understand this need.  However,  what if I am only interested in seeing what has changed from Jan 1 to Oct 29?  Essentially,  this would use Jan 1 as the baseline for the report.  I think this would be possible?

2) I can't speak for others,  but I use exclusions rarely,  if at all.  In a perfect world,  I'd be able to group computers together "Workstations", "Web Servers"  etc,   then choose which  group I want to run the report on.  I'd love an option like this.    If this is not possible,  then a checkbox approach to which computers the report is ran on would work.

3) The ability to reverse an authorized change..  I am guessing you mean changing an authorized change to 'unauthorized'? I could see where this would be handy,  but definitely not a 'must have'.   Maybe an additional 'notes' field for each change.   Not sure if that would be even possible.

4) To be honest,  if #2 were implemented,  then you can ignore #4 completely.