600+ Groups to add ... how please

So in almost all cases where someone showed me an environment with 600 groups in it I could usually see a fairly clear pattern where they didn't even need those groups, they just needed to get a better understanding of how to use custom properties.  There are a few exceptions but to be honest those exceptions are usually pretty advanced/rare use cases.  So before you sat down and buried some poor sucker in copy/paste work for the next week you might review "What are we even doing with these groups?" and make sure it is worth the investment to bring them over.  It can get a bit iffy to have someone remotely try to hold your hand through a Powershell script if you don't already have a pretty good handle on SWQL and the scripting in general.

I had a colleague at my old job who I know had written a full powershell script to migrate groups from one environment to another, maybe he can weigh in with an example of that kind of code if he still has a copy handy. gkjono?

Marc,

I hear what you say but I'm not sure I totally understand. The 'sucker' is mostly likely to be me and thus my question.

But let's address my elephant .... I have a, let's say, ok handle on CPs but I don't see how they replace or supplement groups? The use situation is could be broken down this way:

> Client
    >> Location
        >> Building / Site 1
        >> Building / Site 2
        >> etc

So, as you say, perhaps this is our issue and maybe you can explain for me an alternative way with CPs?

Each site group will need to have its own map if this makes any difference?

Thank you as always Marc.

I'll take your suggestions and put it to the guys to see what's what. I've also just found out that I now have access to the old Solarwinds for this client, so I'm going to go and see how they have done this. They may already have taken the approach of using CPs but I was basing what they have done on conversations thus far.

The maps unfortunately are non-negotiable and will need to be created/associated.

If the topology of your gear is being picked up nicely then each group will get their automatic map and when those work they are great, but i find that I'm never quite that lucky and end up preferring to build my own mapping.  Since I know that I wouldn't personally be interested in spending a lot of time doing anything relating to the old maps on a current release you could add a custom query widget with this query to the group details page.  It would require an extra click to pull up your map, but it's better than nothing while we continue to lean on SW to come up with a built in solution to that particular loss.

SELECT 

displayname as Map
, '/ui/maps/viewer/' + projectid as _linkfor_Map
, case when displayname = '${name}' then 'Custom Map for this Group'
else 'Other Maps Containing this Group'
end as Type


FROM Orion.Maps.Projects
where displayname = '${name}'
or data like '%Orion.Groups_${id}/%'

order by type, map

If it's not obvious I would save the map with the exact same name as the group for it to be my "official" map and then anything that didn't match that but contains a reference to this group would be the rest.

I truly appreciate that Marc and actually that code I am able to follow it through**.

One option I can see is rather than having a "live map" is that we export all their current maps and use your code to associate the group and map name together. So when a 'relevant' piece of kit is looked at it 'associates' the map to it. Hmmm. 

** which is very different from me 'writing' it but at least I understand it.