Creating a Collection in SCCM 2012

The good thing about collections in SCCM 2012 is we have separate nodes for Users and Devices Collections helping us to segregate in a better way. There is a new node called “Assets and Compliance” that deals with the users, systems, metering and compliance settings.

While creating collections, we now have an option to include or exclude certain collections from the newly created collection. This is highly useful when you have to maintain an infrastructure where there are validated machines and the management doesn’t want to bring those machines under the radar.

Here, I am creating a device collection that consists of Windows 7 operating system machines.

1.Go to Assets and Compliance> Right click on Device collections> Click on Create Device collection.

2.   General tab:

Enter the collection name: here it is “All Windows 7 Systems”

Enter description, and most importantly click on browse and select a limiting collection.

Limiting collection has to be specified in CM 2012 to create a collection, it is mandatory.

Click Next.

3.  Membership rules:

Click on “Add Rule”, there are 4 options

·         Direct Rule- equivalent of “direct membership rule in SCCM 2007”

·         Query Rule- creating collection based on a “query or criteria”

·         Include collections: we can include collection using this option

·         Exclude collections: we can exclude collection using this option.

“Dynamically add resources” that was available in SCCM 2007 has been changed to “Use incremental updates for this collection”.

            Schedule a full update as desired

4. Query rule properties:

Enter the query rule name. Here it is “Windows 7 System”

Select the resource class; here I have selected “system resource”.

Click on Edit query statement to write a query or define a criterion.

Click on “Show query language” to write a query or click on “criteria” to define a criterion.

5.  Enter the query statement in query language as shown. 

     Click OK and click next

         Here, I am creating a windows 7 collection and so the below query is used.

         We can also use “criteria” method if we are not sure of the query.

Review summary and click Next to proceed. Click on Close to complete the wizard.

6. The collection is created now and available under “Device collections” node as shown.

Right click on the collection and click on “show members” to see the computers that are part of this collection.