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It seems that smart groups include all machines when no criteria is specified. On the surface, that seems like the way it should be, but it's causing a problem for us. We like to make smart groups the scope for certain software install policies. So we make a smart group called "Photoshop CS6" for instance. To this smart group, we add static groups and name them according to specific teams like "Team A" and "Team B". So if we add a computer to the static group "Team A" then they automatically inherit the smart group "Photoshop CS6" and thus get Photoshop CS6 installed through policy.

But we've run into a few situations where we remove the static group(s) from the smart group. When we remove all static groups from the smart group, then the smart groups includes all machines. In the absence of criteria, it assumes that you want all machine in that group. Like I said initially, that makes sense, but it causes a problem for us because all of the sudden every machine in our organization will get Photoshop CS6 installed.

Should we be architecting this differently? Should the absence of criteria not include all machines by default?

Yeah, this is new behavior in Casper Suite 9.x. Don't think this happens with previous versions.

Vote up this FR. You're not the first person to notice this, which is a good thing I guess.
https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/featureRequest.html?id=1659

Personally I think this is a dangerous design choice and frankly can't understand why it was designed this way. It should be the opposite behavior. No criteria means no machines selected. The entire purpose of a Smart Group is to create some subset of systems, not to default to all when no criteria is present.
That's what the "Assign to All Computers" button is for (or whatever its labeled now in version 9)

I too have just discovered this behaviour and it i causing me some concern as I'm trying to create a 'Test Group' whereby I certainly do not want all our production machines included!
However I do wish to add certain 'test' machines as needed.

I noticed that when I removed the first machine in the list it automatically added all machines! Then when I tried to delete the group and then re-create it - it once again tells me there all the computers in the group. Not the behaviour I require!!

OK so it would seem that the new 'default' is adding all machines when there is no criteria set. Once I added one machine then then all the others were removed!

As stated above - not liking this behaviour!

I am actually getting almost the reverse of this in a smart group with no criteria, there appears only one computer not all.
There is a real inconsistent behaviour in how smart groups are viewed. I can create a smart group with "Building is Corporate Services Building" and have only two computers show up out of a possible six. Yet i can create another smart group with "Computer Name like ITS*" and have no computers show out of forty possible.

Changing the wild card does nothing to alter this behaviour. i have used, % both before and after the name characters.

Using "like" shouldn't require wildcards there are implied wildcards either side on the string. Computer Name like ITS
Also just for FYI the behaviour originally described above was changed somewhere in the JSS 9.XX series to no longer show all machines when there are no criteria.

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