Interface Overview: Management Application

Macula Console is a straightforward graphics user interface tool with access to all possible server settings. To ensure comfortable and easy navigation, it is important that you become acquainted with its structure before starting to use it.

Note that Macula Console appearance slightly depends on your software package and license limitations. Nevertheless, its logic always remains the same. Those sections, which are unavailable due to license restrictions, will be grayed out but still listed to get you acquainted with all available features. You can hide those features via Macula Console settings or upgrade your Macula server to a superior version.

The blue panel on top serves as navigation bar and its usage is similar to that of Windows Explorer. Here are its main components (from left to right):

Left and Right arrows enable navigation through your browsing history and allow you to switch between previous and next locations; you can also use Backspace on your keyboard to go back
Your current location is displayed right next to these arrows
Currently logged in User account button with options to view user profile, switch servers*, or to log out
Refresh button - reloads current item list
Search field - only items matching the search criteria will be displayed in the list

*The option to switch servers is hidden by default and can be enabled via application menu.

Application menu button in the upper-right-hand corner gives you the following launches the options:
launch the Setup Wizard
import the configuration from an XML file
import the configuration from another GSF Macula server database
change Macula Console settings
enable cybersecurity checks
set up automatic configuration backup
remotely upgrade system components
open the software documentation
open the About section

This menu offers the following options:

View current user profile and adjust their settings, if necessary
Quickly change the password for the current user (will not open the user profile dialog)
Switch server: if enabled in the application menu, this option allows quick switching between different servers with the same user account
Log off and return to the initial Macula Console login interface

The server switching option allows you to pre-configure a list of servers and then switch between them with a single click. This feature is useful for engineers who maintain multiple locations/customers, and for Macula Enterprise system engineers to quickly switch between Macula Enterprise and servers.

Main Macula Console Sections

With the latest release of Macula, a major update to the Components Panel (Left panel) is introduced. This chapter will describe new options and help you to streamline and personalize your console interactions.

The very top of the Component Panel allows you to search for a Component by its name.
With the update, all four Sections (Configuration, Events & Actions, Monitoring, and Audit) are represented by corresponding icons at the bottom of the panel.
The main part of the Left Panel now displays all available Sections and Components, allowing for the expansion or collapse of the corresponding Section.
You can also create a new custom Section (Pinned) from the pinned Components and hide everything else, streamlining your access to the Components that matter most to you.

Design and Operations

Textual Search

At the very top of the Component Panel, you can find a new input field. You can quickly search for any Component by name. Search will hide any irrelevant Sections and Components. If the relevant Section was in a collapsed state before the search input, you will need to expand it to see the Component you are looking for.

Expanding Sections

You can still visually navigate through all the Components or make your Panel look cleaner by clicking on the arrow symbol to the left of the Section name. To collapse the Section, click the arrow symbol again.

Hide/show sections

At the very bottom of the Left Panel, you can find the Section Icons. Icons for the Configuration, Events & Actions, Monitoring, and Audit will always be visible. One more Icon for Pinned Components is displayed dynamically - only when any Items are pinned. Click the Section Icon to show only the selected Section. To unhide other sections, click the displayed Section Icon again.

Pinned Components

Macula continually adds new features and Components, which can make the options overwhelming. To help you organize and prioritize frequently used Components, the Pinned Section is introduced. To add a Component to this Section, follow these steps:

Find the Component you want to pin from the existing list.
Click the Pin Icon at the top-right corner of the screen.

If no Components were previously pinned, a new Section named “Pinned” will appear at the very top of the Left Panel. The selected Component will appear inside this Section. You can collapse or expand the Pinned Section like any other section. Additionally, a new Pin Icon for pinned components will appear at the very bottom of the Left Panel. Clicking this Pin Icon allows you to show or hide other sections.

Some chapters of this manual might contain screenshots from the previous versions. Most of the descriptions remain relevant, except for the changes to the panel itself.

Item List

The main part of the Macula Console window displays items in the selected category depending on the search and/or item filters. You can select one or more items at once using the Shift or CTRL button.

Click any column title to use is as a sorting basis for the whole item list; the little arrow near the column title indicates that it is currently being used for arrangement - either ascending or descending. Right-click item list header for sorting options and column fit settings. The Best fit option will assign automatic size to all columns based on their name width. You can change column width simply by dragging their boundaries in the header row: these adjustments will be remembered and restored after you go to other sections, or close and re-open the Macula Console application.

For each category, it is possible to define the set of columns to be displayed, and freeze one or several leftmost columns for convenient horizontal scrolling. To do this, click the grid icon in the upper right corner just below the application menu (the rightmost button in the upper panel). An additional window will pop up, allowing you to define the column layout.

One the left, you will see the currently displayed details. On the right, there will be all available columns.

Use the Add and Remove buttons, or simply double-click items to move them from left to right and vice versa to select and deselect them.
Use the Up and Down arrows to sort your selected columns on the left side.
The grid button next to these arrows allows you to freeze/unfreeze the leftmost columns (i.e., those on top of the list). These will stick to the left window side as you scroll the table horizontally. You can freeze as many columns as you like, but only the ones on the far left side. For the columns in the middle of the list, this button will be grayed out (inactive).
To discard all changes and restore the default (application original) list of columns, click the Reset button.

When done adjusting the table layout, click OK. Your new column configuration will appear: adjust the width of the newly appeared details, as desired.

Item Actions

The panel above the item list displays the available actions, if applicable. Usually, the buttons here will allow you to create a new item, edit or delete existing ones, create or edit contiguous items, etc.

Item Filters

The bottom panel contains miscellaneous item filters, such as: recently added and updated, corresponding groups etc. Click any of the filters to apply them; use the X button to reset and display the full item list.

Application Settings

To change Macula Console application settings, go to the main application menu in the upper-right-hand corner and choose Settings. The preferences here only affect the current Macula Console instance, no matter to which server it connects. The interface language setting also affects the Macula Monitor application installed on the same machine.

For your convenience, the settings have been grouped into several tabs.

Here, it is possible to:

change application language (by default, the language chosen during installation is used)
show or hide software features restricted by license
show or hide object identifiers (internal object IDs mostly necessary for addressing GSF Macula entities via HTTP API)
show or hide Organizations
enable quick server switching
reset all Don't show this again checkboxes, which have been set so far

Monitoring

This section contains settings related to the Monitoring section of Macula Console, namely:

auto refresh interval in seconds for the Monitoring section dashboards (set 0 to disable autorefresh)
show or hide monitoring warnings (critical errors will always be showed, only warning level info can be turned off)
reset monitoring section warnings, which have been cancelled (set to be ignored) so far

See the Monitoring section documentation for more information about warnings.

Cybersecurity

The following setting is related to cybersecurity:

show cybersecurity warnings

Cybersecurity warnings are different from those in the Monitoring section. Security warnings are displayed as shields in the server and channel settings, indicating that the related setting does not match the defined security level. See below for more information about warnings.

Errors and Warnings

The Macula Console application will sometimes warn you about certain misconfigurations. For example, when the entered setting value is out of range, invalid, or incoherent with the system settings in some way, you will see a corresponding mark next to the preference.

The following marks are used:

security shield indicates that the setting value does not meet the current cybersecurity level preference
number of issues shows how many warnings (orange) or errors (red) are in the current category
an X icon is used to mark a completely invalid value (e.g., the field cannot be empty)
other kinds of red or orange marks on top of the item icons, or text color