Template Groups not working as expected

Hi techreg,

No apology needed, I hear you loud and clear. We need to fix these lingering issues with template groups. I will bump up the priority and try to have a look at it personally.

Templates are extremely powerful but at the same time very frustrating/difficult to use, in part due to the issue you've outlined above. In the past, since they are not widely used we haven't put much effort in improving or even fixing issue with them. A vicious circle that needs to stop.

Best regards,

I've started looking into your request, doing the low hanging issues first. FYI, I'm on vacation next week. They should be releasing a new build sometime next week.

Yesterday I got this done, it's a start.


Best regards,

Hi Stéfane,

Thank you for the follow-up and the update. Nice!

I'm working on Edit / Edit (Special Actions) / Convert with Template

What I got working now is what I call "simple template groups", that is a template group that can be converted back to the old parent/child, so that we can apply it. Here is an example of a simple-TG and a non-simple-TG



In this case the Simple-TG is now available in the Convert with Template screen (see below).

Note: I also enhanced the form to save the check box values from one action to the other (it was already saving but was lost on restart of RDM). I also save the currently selected tab (Shared vs Local) & selected template.

In my example below, if you select the "My Parent" connection and apply the "shared - TG" from the screen shot below, we will delete Child (red icon) & random and add child (blue icon), since both Sub Entries check boxes are checked.

I believe this now works exactly as it did prior to the changes to sub-entries. Let me know if I'm missing something.

I also now validate that when you apply an Entry Conversion with Template to a sub-connection that the change doesn't require to make sub-sub-connections since we don't support multiple levels of sub-connections. Example, you select Child (red) and try to apply shared - TG, we simply kick out and do nothing. That is unless you uncheck Add template sub entries


Is this looking usable? Any comments/questions?

Best regards,

Hi Stéfane,

I was off a couple of days, sorry for replying so late. It seems good!

I would like to comment on sub-sub-connections not being supported (yet?). In a couple of cases sub-sub-connections could have helped us. For instance, when you deal with some kind of cluster (NetApp, Citrix, Hyper-V, ...) it's quite common to access the cluster directly by double-clicking on the cluster entry. The cluster entry could be, like in a Citrix Netscaler case, a web entry pointing to the management console, but then you may want to access the cluster via SSH, hence you create a sub-connection with that entry.

The next logical step would be to set as sub-connections also the nodes composing the cluster. In the case of a Citrix Netscaler node, the entry is again a web entry, but the node as well can be accessed via SSH, and it has also a management interface (LOM, as it's called). Due to the fact sub-sub-connections are not supported, the cluster nodes cannot be grouped below the cluster entry. Currently, our entries for one of such clusters are deployed as below:



Here LB-CLS-1 is the cluster entry, and LB-NS-1 / LB-NS-2 are its nodes. Ideally, they should be arranged as in the mock-ups below:



Or, in a more compact view:



But in reality, all you need to show and use 99% of the times is the main cluster entry, and double-click on it:



It's just a use case that you may (or may not) take into account for a future improvement of the product.

Many thanks!

Thank you for the detail explanation. We've started discussing the possibility of supporting sub-sub-connections.

Things are not simple on our end, unfortunately. Part due to the way we implement Folders (including virtual folders). The holy grail would be that everything is folder. So that you could add a Folder to an RDP connection for example.

We will keep your comments/suggestions in mind as we move forward with this.

Best regards,

Quick update, drag & drop (d&d) will be available starting next release.

You can:

• Only a single node (including sub-nodes) can be dragged and dropped at a time. Example:
  • Parent node with sub-entries -> allowed
  • Entire folder structure -> allowed
  • Multiple entries -> we only move the dragged node, not all the other selected nodes. Visually you will notice that the drag only includes that node.
• Drag & Drop between Template Group (TG) or within the same to move things around
• If Drop onto a Template (T), you will be prompted to convert it to a TG
  • You can't undo the T -> TG action (at this time).
• CTRL + Drag & Drop will create a copy/duplicate of the node(s)

Give it a try once the version is released and let me know what you think.

Best regards,

Hello Stéfane,

We have checked what you have described with version 2023.2.32.0 and it seems to work pretty well. Well done!

Thank you.