A group is a collection of objects that share some common similarities based on the currently active grouping algorithm. Grouping is an efficient way to address scalability issues in the topology: a collapsed group of potentially many entities takes up much less screen area than the individual entities of that group normally would.
The topology viewer displays groups in such a way that you can still access the content of the group even if the group is collapsed. Status overlays provide information about groups without having to show individual objects inside the group. Both the graphical and tabular views of the Topology Viewer support groups.
In the graphical topology view as well as in the tabular view, grouping is applied by default so that collections of objects are shown as groups whenever possible. However, groups can be expanded and collapsed by double-clicking them, by using the expand/collapse indicators in the upper-right corner of the group, or by using the options in the context menu for that group. Note that pinned objects within a group will remain visible, even when that group is collapsed.
In the graphical view, an expanded group is shown as a rectangular box with the group label at the top, a collapse/expand indicator in the upper right corner, and icons each object the group contains.
Many objects can have user-defined properties assigned to them. User-defined properties are useful for describing specific properties of an object or set of objects. User-defined properties can also be used to group objects with similar characteristics.
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