yeah, you can create custom properies in the "custom property editor". Then create a new node list then use the custom property as the container.
Stoned is correct...I use the first part of the node name...we are very customer connection centric and I group on a custom field (GroupNPM) which is based on our router naming convention - see diagram. below is SQL I use to do this in a nightly job...
UPDATE Nodes
SET NPMGroup = (
SELECT SUBSTRING(
Caption, 1,( (
Select CASE
WHEN (CharIndex ('-', Caption, 4) > 0)
THEN (CharIndex ('-', Caption, 4)-1)
ELSE WHEN
(Caption LIKE 'PING%')
THEN (9)
ELSE
(LEN(HostName))
END ) )
)
)
WHERE NPMGroup = 'Ungrouped'
OR NPMGroup is Null "
not sure what you are looking for?
I don't think you can view another level of categorizing...so in my example, have a group AP then subgroups XRT,ENT, etc...
I don't know that the app can do that. You could certainly create that with custom properties (columns) and SQL to break out the names, but when you went to view, it would be one category or another (level 1...AP, level 2 ENT,XRT, etc..) so you would see all of AP stuff, including all nodes from subcategories, or if you group by level 2, when you expand, you would only get the nodes expanded under AP-XRT,AP-ENT if your SQL broke it out that way).
does that make sense?
I categorize strictly with the use of a custom property.
In our case, it's all based on customer number.
From the customer number, anything else relevant can be derived via the NPM database or other systems.
Of course, we have a couple of very large ones, but overall it makes quite a bit of sense.
