Custom sites are an extremely nice way to collect related content together into one easily manageable group.  I am an avid believer in Agile software development and believe that BigFix is perfectly setup to support this methodology.

The use of custom sites is great way to organize content (IE: Tasks, Fixlets and Analyses) together and also allow for sub-categorizing using Domains… don’t forget to learn how to fill in the extra properties related to custom content.  They also allow for multiple non-master operators to work with content generated by other users including editing and stopping actions.

Creating a custom site is easy… here’s a simple step-by-step to do so:

You’ll need to enter a short-name for your project.  In many cases I’ll just name it the vendor of the software… for example, I have published multiple free software under the name Moran IT, therefore it’s logical that my custom site be called “Moran IT”.  This could also be the name of your project… in one project I developed content related to the management of BigFix.  I called my project and my custom site “Core Infrastructure” since it directly relates.

I now have my custom site.. but I’ll need to add further detail like the description and put it into the correct Domain.  (FYI: For simplification, try not to put anything into the “All Content” domain.  You will benefit long-term if you avoid this domain.)

You’ll need to specify which endpoints are part of this project.  In some cases this might be all Windows computers, in others it might be all Windows computers with a certain software already installed.  You have very granular control over which endpoints are subscribed.  You can even use a complex relevance statement to subscribe only the computers related to the project.  I would encourage you to get very specific here since it will make it easier to not affect systems not part of your project.

The next most important part is specifying the operators that are allowed to view and manipulate your content as well as actions.  If you have a 5-person team of developers, with only one on-call at any one time… you’ll want to give all 5 appropriate permissions to this custom site.  If you get that 2am page, they can stop actions or activate troubleshooting tasks without engaging team mates in the middle of the night.

I hope you’ve come to realize the true value of sites in the organization of projects and developers… if you have any questions or comments please leave them below!