Here is the latest UI design for our Tag management work!
Thank you @Heitor @szeestraten @mdeluca @alanbach and @iaginde1 for you feedback and input. We are more than happy to hear more use cases from everyone as we go.
Summary
The biggest highlight for our tag management work is to expose the automatic tag functionalities in the UI. Read more about automatic tags. In the process of exposing this feature, we also want to make our tag management experience more foolproof as it is a very powerful concept.
What’s new in the Tag form? (Machine listing page)
When you select multiple machines in our Machine listing page then select Tag from the Take action menu. The new form will look like the image below.
The first column of the form shows a search area where you can select existing tags or type in something new to create a new tag.
The second column of the form handles tag changes. Where you can view all tags that are assigned to the selected machines (blue), new/existing tags to be assigned to selected machines (green), the tags that you planned to remove from selected machines (red), and automatic tags (gray), which MAAS handles it’s tagging operation for your so you cannot perform manual actions here.
If you click on any of these colourful tags, the right most column will show you its details.
Confirm your changes by clicking save.
This will allow you to manage tags for multiple machines more conveniently.
How do I see all of my tags?
Apart from the tag form, we also introduce the new Tags tab, locating next to the Resource pool tab. This tab should show you all the tags in your MAAS. You can search, filter, view only specific tag types, create, update, and delete any of these tags.
If your tags are also applied to controllers or devices, the count will be displayed under the applied to column.
Creating an automatic tag
You can create an automatic tag in the Tags tab, by selecting the green button Create new tag.
This form will allow you to add a definition and kernel_options to a tag. This definition will try to match machines with information gathered from the hardware lister (LSHW) using the XPath expression and automatically tag those machines for you. One the automatic tag is created it will start with Applied to 0 machines. The number will increase while MAAS is running in the background, this can take sometime for all matched machines to show up. If you add new machines or update the automatic tags, MAAS will also automatically tag those machines in the background if they match with the definition.
Updating and Deleting tags
When updating and deleting tags with kernel options, one thing to be careful about is the kernel options. Kernel options are applied during boot time. So if a machine is tagged, the kernel options be applied when it is deployed. On the other hand, if you update a tag that is assigned to a deployed machine and that machine is deployed, that machine will have the previous kernel options. And only until that machine is redeployed will the updated kernel_options be deployed.
So when a tag is updated or deleted we will provide a warning when a deployed machine is tagged with kernel options.
Caveat: you cannot update a manual tag and turn it into an automatic tag or vice versa. It is recommended that you create a new tag entirely.
