Tenant management

A tenant is the record Overseer keeps for one client. This page covers creating tenants, arranging them as parents and children, the settings each one carries, and moving computers between them.

What a tenant is

A tenant is the record for one of your clients. Each tenant has its own computers and its own people, and can have deployments, schedules and settings that apply to it alone. Each client's computers, deployments and history are kept apart from every other client's.

Your own business is a tenant as well, so your own computers are managed in the same way as a client's.

Tenants matter because so much else points at them. A deployment can target one client. A schedule can cover one client. A report can read one client. Getting the tenant list right is what makes those choices mean what you expect.

Creating tenants

There are two ways to create a tenant.

• By hand. Create the tenant on the Tenants screen. It needs a name. A description is optional, and so is a parent tenant.
• From an integration. When an integration is connected, the clients it reports can be brought in as tenants. Review what was imported before you rely on it, and adjust any settings that need to differ.

Whichever way you choose, use one naming convention for every tenant. A consistent list is easier to search, filter and target.

Parent and child tenants

Tenants can be arranged in a hierarchy. A child tenant sits under a parent, and usually represents a separate business that shares some arrangements with the parent.

To make one tenant the child of another, edit the child and choose its parent.

A child tenant inherits these from its parent:

• deployments, where the deployment is set to pass down
• maintenance windows
• integration mappings

You can override an inherited setting on the child when that client needs something different. Keep the hierarchy true to the real relationships between the businesses. A hierarchy built for convenience is hard to reason about later.

What each tenant carries

• Schedules. A schedule can target one tenant, so that client's computers get detection and maintenance at times that suit it.
• Preferences. Each tenant has its own preferences, such as which computers are left out of maintenance.
• Deployments. A deployment that targets one client applies to that tenant's computers and no others.
• Branding. Each tenant can have its own brand, used on the email Overseer sends for that client.
• Tags. A tag on a tenant lets you target or filter several clients together.

People in a tenant

Each tenant has its own people.

• By hand. Add the person on the People screen with a name, an email address and the tenant they belong to.
• From your identity provider. When an integration with your identity provider is connected, it can bring a client's people in for you.

Moving computers and retiring tenants

Clients change. Overseer lets you move computers and tidy up the tenants they leave behind.

Move computers to another tenant

1. 1Open Computers and select the computers to move.
2. 2Press Batch actions.
3. 3Choose the change of tenant and pick the tenant the computers should belong to.
4. 4Check that the computers now appear under the new tenant.

Merge two tenants

1. 1Decide which tenant is kept.
2. 2Move every computer from the other tenant into it.
3. 3Update any deployment that targeted the tenant you are emptying.
4. 4Delete the empty tenant.

Delete a tenant

Select the tenant on the Tenants screen, press Batch actions and choose delete. You can select several tenants and delete them together.

Keeping tenants in good order

• Name consistently. Pick a convention and keep to it.
• Mirror real relationships. Use parents and children only where the businesses are related.
• Review regularly. Look over the tenant list and each tenant's settings from time to time, and remove what is no longer needed.
• Write decisions down. Record why a tenant is set up the way it is, so the next person does not have to guess.

Next steps