PMC Endpoint Manager supports six levels of device grouping:

• Organization
• Subnet Groups
• Subnets
• Name Scopes
• Asset Tag-based Groups
• Manual Groups

This allows PMC to build a tree of device groups, like:

Organization is the top-level device group and contains all devices. Organization contains Subnet Groups.

Subnet Groups are created manually. Subnet Groups contain Subnets (and all devices belonging to contained Subnets). We advise using Subnet Groups to put together the Subnets from the same geographical location.

Subnets can be created automatically or manually based on combination of:

• Ethernet or Wi-Fi IP addresses and subnet masks reported by devices during PMC check-in.
• Device IP address visible by PMC.
• Subnet Tags reported by devices during PMC check-in.

Which parameters will be taken into account when determining the devices’ Subnets memberships? It depends on the PMC deployment mode (Standard vs. IP-neutral; see below...) Subnets can contain Name Scopes, Asset Tag-based Groups, and Manual Groups.

Name Scopes can be created manually and are device groups within Subnets, where the membership is determined based on the Names the devices report during PMC check-in.

Asset Tag-based Groups can be created manually and are device groups within Subnets, where the membership is determined based on the Asset Tags reported by devices during PMC check-in.

Manual Groups can be created manually and are device groups within Subnets, where the Subnet devices can be freely added by PMC administrator.

For devices checking-in with empty Subnet Tags, the device Subnet affiliation will be solely determined based on the Ethernet/Wi-Fi/Visible IP addresses and subnet masks.

With non-empty Subnet Tags, in ‘Standard mode’, PMC still considers the network addressing when assigning devices to Subnets. This mode is ideal for deployments in corporate local- and wide-area networks with predictable subnet addresses. It helps to further differentiate device groups in multiple locations.

With non-empty Subnet Tags, in ‘IP-neutral mode’, PMC ignores network addressing when assigning devices to Subnets. This mode is ideal for deployments with some users working from home. It uses the Subnet Tag as the only factor when assigning devices to Subnets.

If customer’s intention is to only manually assign devices to Groups, the method is: 1. Deploying PMC in ‘IP-neutral’ mode, 2. configuring sameSubnet Tag on all devices, 3. creating Manual Groups and assigning selected devices to specific Manual Groups. This will force PMC to put all devices into one single “tagged” Subnet, where the PMC administrator will have the freedom of assigning the devices to Manual Groups. Note: each Subnet device can only belong to one Manual Group.

Here is an example of PMC GUI depicting a Subnet with a Name Scope, Asset Tag-based Group, and Manual Subnet created: