Perhaps this will be viewed as more of a 'rant' than 'discussion'. However I truly hope it's something I am just missing. If so I'll gladly admit that I blew it and will thank everyone profusely for showing me the light.
This is what I'm struggling with; Why is there so much information collected by the JSS that is seemingly useless to administrators?
There have been countless times where I find info I need in the JSS, yet can't do simple things like base a Smart Group off of it, use it as criteria in an "Advanced Computer Searches", or even generate a report that will display that information. In those cases I end up writing an Extension Attribute to pull that data back again so that I can then take action on it, or simply just report on it.
My latest example of this is the UID of User Accounts found on the local machine. While I can quickly browse to the "Local User Accounts" section of any Computer record in the JSS and see UID, Username, Full Name, etc. I'm unable to create a Smart Group, run a report, or even display it in an 'Advanced Computer Search'.
Now I'm left with the same dilemma; Do I now write an Extension Attribute that will return the UID of each local user account so that I can take action on it? Do I use MySQLWorkbench and write a SQL query, then figure out how to build a Computer Group based on what I find? Or is there is another option that I'm just missing?
What this comes down to for me is this. Every piece of data (without exception) on a user or workstation that is collected by the JSS should be usable by an administrator. That includes, but is not limited to being able to create Smart Groups and Generating Reports based on that data.
From my point of view, if I'm not able to report on a piece of data or take action on it, then I'd rather it not even be collected.
