The Object List widget displays a list of the objects available in the environment.

How the Object List Widget and Configuration Options Work

The Object List widget displays a data grid with objects in the inventory. The default configuration of the data grid appears in Object List Widget Options section. You can customize it by adding or removing default columns. You can use the Additional Column option to add metrics when you configure the widget.

You edit an Object List widget after you add it to a dashboard. Configuration of the widget helps you observe parent and child objects. You can configure the widget to display the child objects of an object selected from another widget, for example, another Object List or Object Relationship widget, in the same dashboard.

Click the legend at the bottom of the widget to filter the objects based on threshold. Point your cursor over any of the boxes to view tooltips.

Where You Find the Object List Widget

The widget might be included on any of your custom dashboards. From the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards to see your configured dashboards.

To customize the data that appears in the dashboard widget, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. To create your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, click Create. To edit your dashboard, from the left menu, click Visualize > Dashboards. From the Dashboards panel, select the dashboard you want to edit and select Actions > Edit. Toggle between the Views and Widgets option to view and add a widget or view to the dashboard. The widgets list panel displays a list of all the predefined widgets. Drag a widget to the dashboard workspace in the upper panel.

Object List Widget Toolbar Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Show Toolbar icon to access the toolbar options.

Option Description
Action Selects from a set of actions specific for each object type. To see available actions, select an object from the list of objects and click the toolbar icon to select an action. For example, when you select a datastore object in the graph, you can select Delete Unused Snapshots for Datastore.
Dashboard Navigation Navigates you to the object. For example, when you select a datastore from the list of objects and click Dashboard Navigation, you can open the datastore in vSphere Web Client.
Reset Grid Sort Returns the list of resources to its original order.
Reset Interaction

Returns the widget to its initial configured state and undoes any interactions selected in a providing widget.

Interactions are usually between widgets in the same dashboard, or you can configure interactions between widgets on different dashboards.

Object Detail

Select an object and click this icon to show the Object Detail page for the object.

Perform Multi-Select Interaction

If the widget is a provider for another widget on the dashboard, you can select multiple rows and click this button. The receiving widget then displays only the data related to the selected interaction items.

Use Ctrl+click for Windows, or Cmd+click for Mac OS X, to select multiple individual objects or Shift+click to select a range of objects, and click the icon to activate the interaction.

Display Filtering Criteria

Displays the object information on which this widget is based.

Page Size
Filter

Locate data in the widget.

You can search for objects or filter the list based on the values of the metrics or properties in the additional columns of the Configuration section.

Object List Widget Data Grid Options

The data grid provides a list of inventory objects on which you can sort and search.

Option Description
ID Unique ID for each object in the inventory, randomly generated and produced by VMware Aria Operations.
Name Name of the object in the inventory.
Description Displays the short description of the object given during creation of the object
Adapter Type Shows the adapter type for each object.
Object Type Displays the type of the object in the inventory.
Policy Displays policies that are applied to the object. To see policy details and create policy configurations, in the menu click Administration, and then in the left pane click Policies.
Creation Time Displays the date, time, and time zone of the creation of an object that was created in the inventory.
Identifier 1 Can contain the custom name of the object in the inventory or default unique identifier, depending on the type of inventory object. For example, My_VM_1 for a VM in the inventory, or 64-bit hexadecimal value for VMware Aria Operations Node.
Identifier 2 Can contain the abbreviation of an object type and the unique decimal number or parent instance, depending on the type of the object. For example, vm-457 for a VM and an IP address for VMware Aria Operations Node.
Identifier 3 Can contain a unique number identifying an adapter type. For example, 64-bit hexadecimal value for vCenter Adapter
Identifier 4 Additional unique identifiers for the object. This option varies and depends on the adapter type that the object uses.
Identifier 5 Additional unique identifiers for the object. This option varies and depends on the adapter type that the object uses.
Object Flag Displays a badge icon for each object. You can see the status when you point to the badge.
Collection State Displays the collection state of an adapter instance of each object. You can see the name of the adapter instance and its state in a tool tip when you point to the state icon. To manage an adapter instance to start and stop collection of data, in the menu, click Administration, and then in the left pane click Inventory.
Collection Status Displays the collection status of the adapter instance of each object. You can see the name of the adapter instance and its status in a tool tip when you point to the status icon. To manage an adapter instance to start and stop collection of data, in the menu, click Administration, and then in the left pane click Inventory.
Relevance Displays the user interest on objects based on the number of clicks. The relevance is determined using a system-wide ranking algorithm that rates the object with most clicks as most relevant object.
Internal ID Unique number that VMware Aria Operations uses to identify the object internally. For example, the internal ID appears in log files used for troubleshooting.

Object List Widget Configuration Options

On the title bar of the widget, click the Edit Widget icon to configure the widget.

The configuration options are grouped into one or more sections. You can select the objects on which you want to base the widget data and refine the objects in the following sections. Each section filters the objects further and pushes the filtered objects to the next section. The widget data is based on the objects that are the output of the last section.

The Configuration section provides general configuration options for the widget.

The Input Data section provides options to specify input for the widget. This section appears when the widget is in self provider mode.

The Input Transformation section provides options to transform the input for the widget.

The Output Filter section provides options to restrict the widget data based on the selected filter criteria.

The Additional Columns section provides options to select metrics that are displayed as additional columns in the widget.

Option Description
Title

Enter a custom title that identifies this widget from other instances that are based on the same widget template.

Configuration
Refresh Content

Activate or deactivate the automatic refreshing of the data in this widget.

If not activated, the widget is updated only when the dashboard is opened or when you click the Refresh button on the widget in the dashboard.
Refresh Interval

If you activate the Refresh Content option, specify how often to refresh the data in this widget.
Self Provider
Indicates whether the objects for which data appears in the widget are defined in the widget or provided by another widget.
  • On. You define the objects for which data appears in the widget.
  • Off. You configure other widgets to provide the objects to the widget using the dashboard widget interactions options.
Auto Select First Row Determines whether to start with the first row of data.
Input Data
Objects
Select objects on which you want to base the widget data.

  1. Click the Add New Objects icon and select objects in the pop-up window. The selected objects appear in a list in this section.

    While selecting objects, you can use the Filter text box to search for objects. You can also expand the Tag Filter pane on the left hand side to select one or more object tag values. A list of objects with the selected tag values appears. If you select more than one value for the same tag, you can choose objects that have any of the tags applied. If you select more than one value for different tags, you can choose only the objects that have all the tags applied.

  2. Optionally, select objects from the list and click the Remove Selected Objects icon to remove the selected objects.

    Click the Select All icon to select all the objects in the list.

    Click the Clear Selection icon to clear your selection of objects in the list.
All

If you select this option, the widget data is based on all the objects in your environment. The following sections provide options to refine the objects for the widget data.
Input Transformation
Relationship

Transform the input for the widget based on the relationship of the objects. For example, if you select the Children check box and a Depth of 1, the child objects are the transformed inputs for the widget.
Output Filter

Basic

Pick tags to refine the widget data. The widget data is based on the objects that have the picked tags applied. If you pick more than one value for the same tag, the widget includes objects that have any of the tags applied. If you pick more than one value for different tags, the widget includes only the objects that have all the tags applied.

If the objects have an input transformation applied, you select tag values for the transformed objects.

Advanced

Refine the widget data further based on the filter criteria for object types. The widget data is based on the objects for the filtered object types.

If the objects have a tag filter applied in the Basic subsection, you define filter criteria for the object types of the objects with tag filter applied. If the objects with tag filter applied do not belong to any of the object types in this filter criteria, the widget skips this filter and includes all the objects with tag filter applied.

If the objects have an input transformation applied, you define filter criteria for the object types of the transformed objects.

  1. In the first drop-down menu, select an object type.
  2. In the second drop-down menu, select the option based on which you want to define the filter criteria. For example, if you select Metrics for the Datacenter object type, you can define a filter criteria based on the value of a specific metric for data centers.
  3. In the drop-down menus and text boxes that appear, select or enter values to filter the objects.
  4. To add more filter criteria, click Add.
  5. To add another filter criteria set, click Add another criteria set.
Additional Columns
Empty drop-down menu

Specifies a list with attributes to display.

Add metrics based on object types. The selected metrics are displayed as additional columns in the widget.

  1. Click the Add New Metrics icon to add metrics based on object types. The metrics that you add appear in a list in this section.

    While selecting object types for which you want to pick metrics, you can filter the object types by adapter type to pick an object type. On the metrics pane, click the Select Object icon to select an object for the object type. Pick metrics of the selected object from the metric tree.

    For example, you can select the Datacenter object type, click the Select Object icon to display the list of data centers in your environment, and pick metrics of the selected data center.

  2. Optionally, you can double-click a metric box in the list to customize the label of the metric and click Update.