It would be extremely useful if Atera offered a way to define dynamic device groups. These groups could be created based on:

- Folder structures
- Naming conventions (e.g., Notebook*, Desktop*, Server*)
- Custom filters
- Manually assigned devices

Once defined, these groups could be used as target collections for various actions, including:

- Script execution
- Software deployment and removal
- Patch management
- Reporting and analytics
- Other automation tasks

This would allow administrators to perform recurring tasks across multiple customers, locations, or device types without having to repeatedly search for and select individual devices.

Practical Example
Today, I can use software reporting to identify devices that have an outdated application installed. I can also generate a list of all affected devices.
However, at that point the workflow becomes cumbersome. It would be much more efficient if I could:

1.) Select a predefined device group directly from the reporting interface.
2.) Scan only the devices that belong to that group.
3.) Immediately launch a script, software installation, or uninstallation task from the same dialog.

For example, if an outdated application is detected on devices within the "Notebooks" group, I should be able to directly initiate an update, uninstall, or remediation script against all affected devices without leaving the report.

Alternative Enhancement
Another valuable approach would be to allow actions directly from the software reporting results. After identifying affected devices, administrators should be able to:

- Select all or specific devices returned by the report.
- Run a script on those devices.
- Deploy software packages.
- Trigger automation profiles.

This would significantly reduce the number of steps required for software maintenance and remediation, streamline administration, and improve efficiency when managing large environments.

As long as I can select a group of devices and bulk move them to a different folder or site. I suggest you find inspiration from the way Intune does it with the CSV method, its not perfect but it works!

Please add option to bulk assign folders\site to devices, this is already on every other MDM it can be done easily via CSV on intune for example. We want the same option here in Atera, so if lets say I need to switch 300 devices to a more "aggressive" patch profile I dont need to manually assign them 1-by-1.

HOW IS THIS NOT A THING?

I have to create groups, per customer, where i add servers in, same for workstations. When a server/workstation is added, i have to put this in the correct group.
If a dynamic group is possible, this would save a great deal and less errors in the future.

Like more features i find Ciritical, this is one of them. And this feature doesn't seem to hard to make. But Atera knows this feature is needed sinds 2021....

Create group
where os name = server
make a script that can be run manually and one that runs every 24 hour, to update the dynamic group :)

I am new to Atera, and still getting to know all the features. We use devices attributes in intune like group tag. We already have dynamic groups for users and computers in Azure so those syncing to Atera would help. However it would be amazing as an example have Atera move a device to a site based on attributes or group. Then use either one to trigger an actions like a script.

I would also like to see some kind of movement on this. Samuel brings up a great point, our jobs are about building solutions for clients. If I build a script that starts a needed service for a widely used program like QuickBooks. I would want that script and threshold to apply to all servers that met some kind of profile. Lets say our profile can group all devices that are equal to "windows server" and has a program called "Quickbooks Database Server Manager". This solves the problem across all my clients including new clients that are brought on.

This would be so useful to patching and running scripts as with Win 11 21H2 going EOL if there was a dynamic group these machines could easily be upgraded to the latest version but at the minute i have to do each on manually because if i turn on upgrade windows 11 that will upgrade all the win 10 machines to Win 11, which we're not at a place to do yet.

We came to Atera from using PDQ Inventory/PDQ Deploy and were admittedly spoiled rotten with how well that solution worked. This is in the scope of what PDQ refers to as "dynamic collections" - and this is something Atera would benefit hugely from, should they choose to go after this. I tried to keep this brief, and failed miserably - my apologies in advance, and gratitude to anyone that reads to the end ;)

For full context this video does a good job outlining dynamic collections in PDQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVWzNhZHPV4

Here's the scenario:
We have ~50 3rd party software titles that we manage on subsets of computers. In PDQ, to manage 3rd party software we simply created a dynamic collection containing "devices with software 'xyz' installed", which we could then target for automated 3rd party software updates and patches.

Take for example our deployment of Visual Studio Code and AutoCAD Inventor. There's maybe 30 users in our company that require VS Code on their computers, and about 40 that require AutoCAD inventor. These are not mutually exclusive lists; there are some users who require both VS Code and AutoCAD Inventor on their computer, and many others that need only one or the other.

We have "overlaps" like this all across our 3rd party software deployments.

I've worked with Atera Support on this and they offered the solution of using folders for 3rd party patch automation - but unfortunately, as an agent can only be a member of one folder at a time, this doesn't help our "overlaps" discussed above.

For the time being we’ve been able to achieve a “good enough/close enough” solution with Atera using the following:

1.) Create 3rd party software bundle and automation profile
2.) Use custom views in the Devices tab to create our “dynamic collections”
3.) Assign Step 1 automation profile to the devices in this view

It’s Step 3 that gives us the trouble, as the automation profile is assigned to devices in the view, rather than the view itself. When we perform Step 3, it only applies to the devices that were in that view at that specific date/time the automation profile was assigned.

This means that, if we were to repurpose a device and it no longer needed the 3rd party automation profile from step 3, it would still have this automation profile assigned until we remove it manually. Likewise, new devices coming in do not pick up the automation profile either – even though they are dynamically added to the saved view. I think if we had the ability to assign an automated profile to a saved view, rather than the devices in the view at that point in time, that would make Atera even more powerful and beneficial to us.

Thanks for considering!

Dynamically assign an agent to a customer folder based on the device host name
e.g PC name = Customer-Admin-01 is moved to the Admin folder for that customer

Here's a good use case:

If I have a client that has my full package, I'll want to make sure they have my anti-malware package in addition to the RMM agent. To do this, I'll want to make a group that automatically adds computers which do not have the anti-malware software installed. Now when an endpoint becomes a member of this group I want Atera to run a script that I specify (this would be to install the anti-malware software). This way, I don't have to worry about whether endpoints have the software because it's being actively deployed precisely when it's required. Set it up and forget it.

This is such a big component of automation in the RMM space that so many overlook.

These groups can then be used to bill for devices when generating invoices.

Atera has a bunch of monitoring points and data it collects about an endpoint. I'd like to use that data to create dynamic groups. Essentially what I'm looking for is a way to create a group based on the filters available on the Devices page. When an endpoint meets the criteria of the group (or Device page search criteria), it should automatically become a member of the group I defined. When that same endpoint no longer meets the criteria of the group, it should be removed. These groups should be treated like the folders that are currently available, in that they can have Thresholds and IT Automation Policies applied to them, but these groups should NOT be tied to customers only - that should be specified in the group criteria.

This is really needed to simplify everything, another idea, which would be even more flexible, for Windows machines, when you deploy the agent, you can also deploy a GPO/Reg values, that will assign to the correct client/folder based on these settings

J

We would like to be able to use device filters in order to assign automation profiles. This could be one way to do it but a device would need to be able to be dynamically assigned to multiple folders.

Allow creating of folders based in filtered criteria (e.g. servers).

This way we don't have to remember to manually add new servers to the folder that is getting server based automation.

Add feature to group several customers and/or devices.
Also, add feature to apply a threshold profile or running a script on a group.

Just one example: Group that contains all servers, so I can apply a threshold profile or run a script on all servers at once.