Assign Policies to Assets - Policy Inheritance

[KB-Team]

Table of Contents

Video Tutorial
Overview
Assets & Policies Tab Features
Assign or Update Policies
Remove Policies
Add an Asset
Bulk Assign Policies
Billing for Policies

 

Video Tutorial

Release Update - Policy Inheritance

 

Overview

Once you have defined your policies, you can then assign them to assets both directly and indirectly through folders with what we call policy inheritance, AKA cascading policies. This will help as you grow, allowing you to build complex structures.

Let's look at one customer's assets and policies to explain how it works. We'll open a customer on the Customers tab, then click their Assets & Policies tab.

1. Customer folder — All customer accounts have a top-level folder with the customer name. This cannot be deleted or renamed. When you assign a policy to the top-level folder, it will propagate down to ALL the folders and assets within it.
2. A folder can be both a parent folder and sub-folder. This Servers folder is an example of that, as it is a child of its parent, Randy Cross, and the parent of the Randy-Win10-1 asset and East Coast sub-folder. Its sibling folder, Workstations, is not affected by anything done here.
   1. Sub-folders inherit any policies assigned to their parent folders, all the way up through the top-level folder. In this case, Servers will inherit the Base Package policy of its parent folder, Randy Cross. The parent policy or policies get combined with the policy assigned to this folder, becoming the Effective Policy. Click Show Effective Policy to see a read-only version of what policy items are being applied at any given level.
      
   2. Items in the policy assigned to this folder are added to, or override (depending on the setting) policy items in parent folders.
   3. The Policy assigned to this folder will propagate down to all assets and sub-folders within it. So the Randy-Win10-1 asset and East Coast sub-folder will both inherit the Default - Server policy, as well as the Base Package policy from the top-level folder.
3. Asset — This also inherits any policies assigned to its parent folders, which means assigning a policy to an asset is optional. Assets can live at any folder level and are the stopping point—nothing can live inside of them.
4. This East Coast sub-folder is a child of Servers and grandchild of Randy Cross. It inherits the policies from both of those. You can create sub-folders up to five levels deep from the Customer folder level. You can have unlimited folders at each level.

Things to note about policy inheritance, some of which bear repeating.

• You can only assign one policy to each folder or asset.
• You can have an unlimited number of folders at each level, up to five levels deep, not counting the top-level customer folder.
• Policies at any level include all the policies above it, comprising the effective policy. That's how the inheritance component works. All the assets in a folder inherit the policies of the folder they're in, plus the ones above it.
• Duplicate policy items in lower levels override those in higher parent ones.
• The exceptions are drive monitors, scripts, system tray items, third-party patches and Windows updates—they cannot be overridden but rather get added together. For example, if the current policy has script B, and its parent policy has script A, then the current policy (and any of its child policies) will run both scripts A and B.
• All policy assignment is done at the customer level. The exception is you can bulk assign one policy to all top-level folders within each customer, or those who do not currently have a policy in their top-level Customer folder.

 

Assets & Policies Tab Features

The buttons dynamically change based on whether you select an asset or folder and what its state is.

1. Assign Policy / Update Assigned Policy — Click to assign a policy, or to change or remove an existing one. Once the dialog appears, either click the dropdown to select a policy and then click Assign Policy, or click Remove Policy.
2. Edit Policy — Opens the Edit Policy screen in a new window. Once you change the policy, it will update on every folder and asset to which it is assigned.
3. Show Effective Policy — Shows a read-only version of the combined policies assigned to the selected folder or asset and all the policies assigned to the parent folders.
4. Rename Folder — Lets you rename the selected folder. Disabled when an asset is selected.
5. Add Folder — Lets you add a new sub-folder inside (below) the selected folder. Disabled when an asset is selected or the selected folder is already five levels deep.
6. Remove Folder — Immediately deletes the selected folder. It must be completely empty of sub-folders and assets to be able to be deleted.
7. Add Asset / Move Asset — When a folder is selected, the Add Asset button opens the New Asset screen in a new window. When an asset is selected, the Move Asset button lets you move the asset to a different folder. You can multi-select assets (use the Shift or Ctrl/Command key while clicking) in the same folder and move them simultaneously.
8. Move Folder / View Asset — When a folder is selected, the Move Folder button lets you move the selected folder or asset to a different folder. When an asset is selected, the View Asset button opens the asset screen.
9. Save Changes — Make sure to click this after making any changes.
10. Hamburger — Drag and drop an asset or folder to a new location using the hamburger icon. You can multi-select assets in the same folder (use the Shift or Ctrl/Command key while clicking) and move them simultaneously. Note: This does not work on Safari, as we do not support that browser. Use the Move Folder or Move Asset buttons instead.
11. Arrow — When a folder contains other folders and/or assets, click the sideways arrow to expand the folder and reveal its contents. Click again to collapse it.
12. Policy — The name of the policy assigned to the folder or asset. A "—" indicates no policy has been assigned, and it will inherit whatever policies are assigned to its parent folder(s).
13. Asset Quantity — Shows the number of assets in the folder, including all sub-folders inside it.

Below are more detailed instructions.

 

Assign or Update Policies

1. Navigate to the Customers tab.
2. Search for a desired customer and click their name to open their profile.
3. Click the Assets & Policies tab.
4. Click the desired folder or asset to which you want to assign a Policy.
5. Click Assign Policy or Update Assigned Policy.
6. In the dialog that appears, click the dropdown and select the desired policy, then click Assign Policy.
   
7. Click Save Changes. Your policy changes will now take effect.

If you assigned it to a folder, it will propagate down to all folders and assets inside of that folder.

 

Remove Policies

1. Navigate to the Customers tab.
2. Search for a desired customer and click their name to open their profile.
3. Click the Assets & Policies tab.
4. Click the desired folder or asset from which you want to remove a Policy.
5. Click Update Assigned Policy.
6. In the dialog that appears, click Remove Policy.
   
7. Click Save Changes. Your policy changes will now take effect.

If you assigned it to a folder, it will propagate down to all folders and assets inside of that folder.

 

Add an Asset

1. Navigate to the Customers tab.
2. Search for a desired customer and click their name to open their profile.
3. Click the Assets & Policies tab.
4. Click the desired folder to which you want to add an asset.
5. Click Add Asset. (In the upper right, you can also click New > RMM Agent Installer instead, but you will need to re-select the desired Policy Folder.)
6. This will open the New Asset - Create an RMM Agent screen with the Customer Name filled out and the Policy Folder selected. You can change the latter if desired.
   
7. If you want add an asset such as a printer, click Create Asset Manually and skip the rest of these instructions. These will not show on the Assets & Policies tab in a Customer profile.
8. By default, Windows (EXE) is selected. If desired, select one of the other options instead.
9. From here, you have two options.
   1. Click Get RMM Installer to download the selected file so you can put it on the desired asset and run it.
   2. Click Copy Link which you can then paste into an email or other communication method that will directly download the selected installer so you can run it.
10. Once you install the agent on the asset, it will show up in the folder you selected back in the Customer's Assets & Policies tab.

Note: Although you can still use old installers created prior to the launch of Policy Inheritance in November, 2021, we do not recommend it because they will always deploy to the top level Customer folder. Create new ones as listed above instead.

 

Bulk Assign Policies

For users with several hundred, or even thousands of customers, it’s a lot of work to go into each customer and set the top-level policy. So we added a way to do that in bulk, making it a one-click affair to set a top-level policy across all customers, or only those who do not yet have a policy at the Customer folder level.

1. Navigate to the Policies tab.
2. In the upper right, click Bulk Assign Top-Level Policy.
   
3. Click the Select Policy dropdown and click the desired policy to assign.
   
4. If you want to Only apply to top-level folders without an assigned policy, check that box.
5. Click Confirm.

Like the dialog says, changes may take up to 15 minutes to apply.

 

Billing for Policies

We make it really easy to "set it and forget it" when it comes to billing for your policies with our recurring billing system. For a complete list of steps, please see our Subscription Management and Recurring Invoices article.

Briefly, when you add a line item to the recurring invoice,

1. Click the Recurring type dropdown and select Policy Folder.
   
2. In the Name field, enter the Products & Services item for the rate you want to charge.
3. Click the Policy Folder dropdown and select the folder with the policy for which you want to bill.
4. Enter the rest of the data and click Add Item to Template.

In the above example with the Policy Folder item we added at the bottom, there is currently one asset in that folder. When you add or subtract assets, it will automatically adjust this line each month and bill accordingly.

If you add a billable item in the middle of the billing cycle, it will start billing on the next billing cycle.