Overview of the Essentials Console

  • Article

Applies To: System Center Essentials 2010

System Center Essentials 2010 introduces a unified management console for managing your IT environment. The console can be run on either the Essentials management server or on a remote computer and provides access to all Essentials 2010 features and data.

To facilitate your management tasks, the Essentials 2010 console displays the following panes:

  • Navigation pane

  • Views pane

  • Details pane

  • Tasks pane

This pane is in the lower-left section of the console and is usually the first pane you use for navigation in the console. It provides the entry point for all the Essentials 2010 features.

The navigation pane contains the following buttons:

  • Computers—Provides access to the Computers Overview pane for computer and computer groups management, inventory, update management, and software deployment. For more information, see Computers Pane in Essentials.

  • Monitoring—Provides access to the Monitoring Overview pane, which is used for monitoring objects. For more information, see Monitoring Pane in Essentials.

  • Updates—Provides access to the UpdatesOverview pane, which is used for software update management. For more information, see Updates Pane in Essentials.

  • Software—Provides access to the Software Overview pane, which is used for software deployment. For more information, see Software Pane in Essentials.

  • Reports—Provides access to the Reports Overview pane, which lists the Essentials 2010 reports that you can run to view various types of information. For more information, see Reports Pane in Essentials.

  • Authoring—Provides access to the Authoring Overview pane, which is used for customization and configuration of Essentials 2010 monitoring settings. For example, you can customize settings for management pack groups, management packs, distributed application modeling, and other monitoring configurations. For more information, see Authoring Pane in Essentials.

  • Administration—Provides access to the Administration Overview pane, which is used for administrative tasks such as device management and provides access to Essentials 2010 settings for features that are set up in the initial configuration wizards. For more information, see Administration Pane in Essentials.

Views Pane

This pane is located in the upper central section of the Essentials 2010 console. It displays overview panes, reports, and lists of objects as appropriate for the selected item in the navigation pane. You can use the Views pane to create custom views, and in some views, you can filter the object lists based on your defined criteria.

Tip

You can also copy and paste selected rows from this pane into other applications, such as Microsoft Excel, without losing the view that you have created.

Details Pane

This pane is located in the lower central section of the Essentials 2010 console. This pane displays specific details of objects that have been selected in the Views pane, such as alert details or computer inventory.

Tasks Pane

This pane is located on the right section of the Essentials 2010 console. It displays tasks and actions appropriate to items that have been selected in other panes.

See Also

Concepts

Computers Pane in Essentials
Monitoring Pane in Essentials
Updates Pane in Essentials
Software Pane in Essentials
Reports Pane in Essentials

Other Resources

Administration in Essentials
Authoring in Essentials