Blank Criteria in Smart Groups

[luke_reagor]

We found out today that if you have a Smart Group with no criteria, it will grab all devices. (It was on exclusions and we only noticed because apps started disappearing.) Can anyone verify that this acts the same way on their setup? I feel this is probably a bug since there is nothing matched to return results. Can anyone from Jamf verify the actions and explain why it works this way if it is intended?

[jtrant]

If you're referring to Mobile Devices and applications scoped to those devices, these are more like configuration profiles than policy-based deployments. If you un-scope or add an exclusion, it gets removed. I found this out the hard way.

Having said that, are you saying that a smart group with no scope and 0 members being added as an exclusion list resulted in an application being uninstalled from all clients? This is strange if it's what you're seeing. I have smart groups with 0 members (but do have a scope) and it works as intended.

[Look]

Yes a smart group with no criteria will contain ALL members.
Yes it is a freaking terrible design decision almost destined to cause new users to make terrible mistakes!
Yes it has been like this for years.
Yes it's been logged as a feature request multiple times with JAMF.
No nothing has been done about it...

I absolutely hate this as the default behaviour! It make absolutely no sense and is just a train wreck waiting to happen.

[greend]

Since I am new and never thought this would happen, I ran into a major problem when I removed the criteria from my smart group. Every computer started installing software I didn't want on the machines. It caused a major problem on our network. I agree, this is a very poor design. So if you don't want computers in a smart group anymore, what do you need to do? I want to transfer computers from a smart group to a static group. Do I need to delete the smart group and not just remove the criteria?