GUI: Extend the text field length in all rules and forms in relation to the text to be expected

12 votes

In many places, the text fields are ridiculously short compared to the expected content. This also applies to the text fields for hosts and services, especially if you have many objects in the cloud and container environment.

It is also very cumbersome to read the text in the text box because the fields are so short. You have to click in the text box first and then scroll through the text to be able to read all the text in the box.

In the age of cloud and container applications, where generally all names are much longer and everyone has a wide screen, it should be possible to provide longer text fields to customers.

Released Suggested by: Lars Sörensen (23 Dec, '22) • Upvoted: 22 Feb, '23 • Comments: 8

Comments: 8

05 Jan, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
This is a very generic request, for which it is hard to define a state. For Checkmk 2.2, we at least extend the field length for:
* Name and alias of a service group
* Name and alias for a host group
* New password page - password field
* New password page - Share with lists
* Command line
There are other changes in this regard as well, but they are hard to track in our internal ticketing system
09 Jan, '23
Lars Sörensen
1.) Comment in Rule Properties
2.) Host/Service Labels in all Conditions
3.) Explicit hosts/Services in all Condition

4.) Name and Title in "Add host attribute"
5.) Services (Regular Expressions) in "Windows service discovery"
6.) Restrict by description/service unit name in "Systemd single services discovery"
7.) Process Name, Process Matching, Operating system control group information in "Process discovery"
8.) Include/Exclude Pattern in "Group patterns"
9.) Name of Queue in "IBM MQ Queues"
10.) Discovered process name in "State and count of processes"

11.) Comment for the downtime in "Recurring downtimes for services"
12.) Email address, Display name in Parameters for ASCII Email and
13.) Mount point in "Filesystems (used space and growth)"
14.) Description in "Edit User"
15.) Path to categories in "Retention intervals for HW/SW inventory entities"
16.) Interval in "Periodic notifications during service problems" (and change decimal to integer for minutes)
09 Jan, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
Lars, thank you for your list. I numbered the lines, so I can refer to them in some comments:
1.) Field is 71 chars by 4 lines and auto-extends itself. The full description is shown in the list of all rules. Is this not sufficient?
2.) Field has an initial length, but expand to the selected length or the entered label. What would you like to improve?
3.) Field show 29 characters. What would be an appropriate length?

4.-10.) This is a standard input field of 21 characters, which can be insufficient. Let me check, if this can be changed in a general way.

11.) See comment 1.)
12.) Field length shown is 36 chars. What would be a reasonable size? The length would apply to all from and reply fields
13.) Field length shown is 27 chars. Any recommendation?
14.) I can not find this. Can you please refine your description
15.) Field length shown is 54 chars. Any recommendation?
16.) If this field is changed to integer 99999 mins can be entered. IMHO this should be sufficient
24 Jan, '23
Ralf Spenner
I'm a bit confused about the questions how long a field should be. Normally we see only one field in a row, no matter what we define or which rule we use.
Wouldn't it be better to set a minimum lenght of 80 chars for each field per default and maybe reduce the lenght after having entered and stored a value?
24 Jan, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
The same ValueSpec are also using in filter, which are limited in width. So unfortunately this is not an option
15 Feb, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
Part 1 of the implemented changes (sorry, numbers do not exactly match):
2.) Custom host attributes - Name & Title
3.) Windows Service Discovery - Services
4.) Systemd single services discovery - Restrict by Description & Restrict by service name
5.) Process discovery - Process name & Process matching > Executable & Name of OS user >regex matching|exact match & OS control group info > regex matching|exact match
6.) Group patterns - File Grouping pattern > Name of Group & Incl./Excl. Pattern
7.) Filesystem Grouping pattern - All 3 fields in a group
8.) IBM MQ Queues - Name of Queue

Not done due to technical limitations
1.) Ruleset name: extra_service_conf:notification_interval

Part 2 will follow
22 Feb, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
Part 2 of the implemented changes
2.) Recurring downtimes for services - Downtime comment
3.) Parameters for ASCII Email - From email, from display name, reply to email, reply to display name, subject for host notifications & service notification
4.) Parameters for HTML Email - From email, from display name, reply to email, reply to display name, subject for host notifications & service notification, ITML, Enable synchronous delivery
6.) Edit User - Full name, Username, Email, Pager address
7.) Periodic notification during services - Interval

We could not make changes to
- State and count of processes
- file systems (used space and growth)
because of the risk of unwanted side effects
15 May, '23
Thomas Lippert Admin
Will be shipped in Checkmk 2.2.0. Moved to done, so I can share the plans for Checkmk 2.3.0 by marking the respective tickets