Creating dynamic groups

Use dynamic groups to perform actions on multiple entities that meet certain criteria, such as all meters that recorded an energy usage increase of 120 percent over the previous month. You can save dynamic group criteria for future use.

Any time you want to perform an action on a group, you can select the dynamic group instead of a static group. IEE evaluates the memberships of the group at that time, and then performs the action on all entities that meet the criteria.

  1. Go to Meter Data Management > Application Data > Advanced Configuration > Group Maintenance.

  2. Click Add.

  3. In the Group Properties window, enter a Name for the group.

  4. (Optional) Enter a Description for the group.

  5. From the Group Type dropdown menu, select Dynamic.

  6. From the Entity Type dropdown menu, select the type of entity you want to group together (accounts, customers, meters, or service points). This also defines how the group results are displayed and the initial Property used to define the group. The Property type can be changed in the Query area.

    For example, to define a group of customers in San Francisco, select Customer.

  7. Click OK. The Entities pane displays below the Group List.

  8. Within the Query area, use the Property dropdown menu to select an attribute on which to search. User Defined Attributes are listed at the top of the list and prefixed with a colon ':'.

    For example, to define a group of customers in San Francisco, select City.

  9. Under the Condition dropdown menu, select one of the following. This is a condition the property must meet:

    • Equals

    • Greater Than

    • Greater Than or Equal To

    • Less Than or Equal To

    • Less Than

    • Not Equals

      For example, to define a group of customers in San Francisco, select Equals.

  10. In the Value and Or fields, define the search criteria. Depending on the Property selected, the Value and Or, the fields may be a free-form text box, or a dropdown menu. IEE gathers all entities that meet these conditions. You can define as many as three values for each property.

    For example, to define a group of customers in San Francisco, enter San Francisco for the Value box. To define a group of customers in either San Francisco or Las Vegas, enter San Francisco for the Value box, and Las Vegas for the first Or box.

    • Dynamic group parameter variables. The value of a group parameter is dynamic and can be replaced with a specific value at run time. Dynamic groups with dynamic parameter variables reduce the need for additional groups to be created that have the same business entities, but with different values. For more information on creating dynamic groups with dynamic parameter variables, see Dynamic group parameter variables.

  11. Click View Results to run the query. The members of the group display in the Results area.

  12. Right-click the new group and select Save.

If you use only one query to define a group, you can employ a (*) wildcard as a variable in the value box. For example, if the query is City Equals San*, IEE may return results with the value of San Francisco, San Jose, and San Antonio.

Add multiple queries to increase the membership of a single dynamic group. For example, if the first query is City Equals San Francisco and the second query is Time Zone ID Equals Eastern U.S., the group includes any entity that is in the City of San Francisco or the Eastern U.S. time zone.