Device Groups
Part of: Devices — creating, configuring, and managing device groups from the grouped device list.
Device groups let you organize related devices and apply shared automation settings. Instead of configuring scan processing, cooldowns, motion detection, and location mapping on each device individually, you set them once at the group level and all member devices inherit the configuration.
Overview
A device group is a logical container for devices that should behave the same way. Common examples include grouping all readers at a loading dock, all portals in a warehouse zone, or all readers along a production line.
Device groups live on the Devices page: choose By group in the search bar to browse groups and their members. From there, or from a group's own detail page, you can:
- Create groups with shared automation settings
- Add and remove devices from a group, on the group's Devices tab
- Configure scan event processing, cooldowns, and motion detection
- Set the read point location that devices in the group inherit
- Monitor aggregate health status across grouped devices
Permissions
| Permission | What It Allows |
|---|---|
| View Devices | See device groups and their members |
| Manage Devices | Create, edit, and delete groups; add and remove members |
Access scopes control which groups a user can see and manage. Like devices, device groups are operational records, so the scope picker only lists site scopes (never the shared system scope) once your deployment has created one.
Finding Groups: Group the Device List
Device groups don't have a standalone list page. From Devices, choose By group in the search bar to see a tree of every group with its member devices nested underneath, plus an Ungrouped bucket for devices that don't belong to one. Each group row shows its member count, a health chip, and a scope badge if your deployment has more than one site. Clicking a group row opens the group, its arrow expands it, and its ⋮ menu offers Edit, Manage devices, and Delete to users who can edit the group. The tree respects the Devices page's search bar and filter drawer.
See The Devices Tabs in the Devices guide for the full behavior, including the ?view=group deep link and how filtering affects the tree.
Health Aggregation
A group's health is a distribution across its members, not a single worst-status verdict: the chip reads as a ratio, such as "12/14 healthy", with a tooltip breaking down the rest (for example "2 offline · 1 degraded"). A single offline reader out of twenty and nineteen offline out of twenty are very different situations, and the ratio tells them apart at a glance, which matters once a group has more than a couple of members.
Deactivated members are counted but kept out of the ratio entirely: a deactivated device is expected to stop reporting, so folding it into the health calculation would strand a group that has any deactivated members at a permanently degraded status. If every member is deactivated, the chip reads All inactive instead of a ratio; if the group has no members at all, it reads No devices. The same chip, tooltip, and colors appear on the group's tree row, its detail page hero card, and in Global Search results.
The Group Detail Page
Clicking a group's row in the grouped list opens its detail page at /device-groups/{id}. (The arrow at the start of the row expands or collapses the group's device list.) The detail page has two tabs, plus a Change history tab for users with View Audit Logs showing this group's entries in Change History.
Overview Tab
| Section | Contents |
|---|---|
| Hero cards | Member device count (links to the Devices tab) and health (links to the device list filtered to this group; see Health Aggregation above) |
| Basics | Name, description, and whether membership is restricted to a specific device type |
| Scan event processing | Processing mode, quiet period, max event duration, tag cooldown, and cooldown scope |
| Motion detection | Motion sensitivity |
| Read point location | Where this group of readers is. A Move Inventory action can send items here, and the "within read point's location" filter tests against it. Devices in the group inherit it unless they set their own |
| Audit information | Created and updated timestamps and users |
For detailed information on processing modes, windowing, and cooldowns, see the Scan Events guide.
Devices Tab
The Devices tab is where you assign devices to the group. A search box lists every device you can see; devices already assigned to another group still appear in the list, but disabled and labeled "Assigned to {group name}" so it's obvious at a glance where a device is currently linked.
Select a device and click Add. Devices added to the group inherit its access scope and follow its scan processing and location mapping settings. If the device's current access scope differs from the group's, a confirmation dialog explains that adding it will change the device's access scope to match the group's, since that affects which users can see and manage it afterward.
Click the remove icon next to an assigned device to take it out of the group. The device becomes ungrouped; its access scope is not changed by removal.
Note: The Devices tab is read-only for users without Manage Devices permission, or without edit access to the group's access scope. They can see the current member list but not the search box or Add/Remove controls.
Creating a Device Group
From Devices, open the header Add menu and choose Device Group.
If your organization has more than one site scope, the form leads with an Availability section: choose the site that will own the group. This decides which locations, device types, and transaction types the rest of the form offers, and it's the access scope every device added to the group will inherit. The remaining sections (Basics, Scan event processing, Motion detection, Inventory location mapping) only appear once a scope is chosen. If your deployment has only one site scope, this step is skipped and the group is created there automatically.
| Field | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| Availability (site scope) | The site that owns the group; only shown when there's a real choice | Yes, when shown |
| Name | Display name for the group | Yes |
| Description | Optional notes about the group's purpose | No |
| Restrict to Device Type | Limit membership to a specific device type | No |
| Processing Mode | How tag reads are grouped into scan events (Immediate, Single Tag Passage, Multi Tag Passage) | No (defaults to Multi Tag Passage; see Processing Modes for when Single Tag Passage fits better) |
| Quiet Period / Max Duration | Scan event windowing settings, disabled under Immediate mode | No (default 5 seconds / 15 seconds) |
| Cooldown Duration / Scope | How long, and where, a tag is suppressed after processing | No (defaults to none) |
| Motion Sensitivity | Motion detection threshold, from Conservative to Aggressive | No |
| Read point location | Where this group of readers is; devices in the group inherit it unless they set their own. See Read Point Location | No |
Use the section rail on the left to move between sections; the sticky footer shows whether the form is valid and whether you have unsaved changes.
Editing a Group
Select Edit from a group's actions menu (on its detail page or in the grouped list) to update its settings. All fields except access scope can be changed; changes to scan processing, motion detection, or location mapping apply to every member device immediately.
Note: Unlike create, the edit form has no Availability section. Once a group is created, its access scope is fixed; there's no scope transfer for device groups yet, so re-scoping means removing the group's devices, deleting it, and creating a replacement in the new scope.
Deleting a Group
Select Delete from the actions menu. A group can only be deleted if it has no devices; the menu item is disabled and labeled "Delete (has devices)" until you remove all members from the Devices tab.
Relationship to Devices
- A device can belong to at most one group at a time.
- Devices inherit automation settings from their group but can override specific settings at the device level.
- Adding a device to a group may change the device's access scope to match the group.
- The group's scan processing settings apply to all member devices unless individually overridden.
- On the Devices tab, a grouped device's actions menu includes a Go to group shortcut straight to its group's detail page.
- A device group is the read point for its members' read signatures: captures and signatures for a grouped reader live on the group's workspace, and the group's detail page shows a Read signature card with its state and next action. Deleting a group deletes the signatures captured at it.
Best Practices
- Group by physical proximity: Readers at the same portal, dock, or zone should share a group so they use consistent processing settings.
- Set processing mode at the group level: This ensures all readers at a location process scan events the same way.
- Use cooldown scope strategically: Per Device cooldowns work for independent readers; Per Group cooldowns prevent duplicates across co-located readers.
- Set the read point location once: Set it at the group level rather than on each device individually; a device overrides it only when it stands somewhere else.
- Restrict device types when appropriate: If a group should only contain RFID readers, set the type restriction to prevent other device types from being added.
- Choose Availability carefully at create time: since scope can't be changed later, pick the right site before saving a new group.