Creating Device Collection with SCCM 2012 to categorise Hardware

Device collections provide us with a way of categorizing hardware so we can perform operations such as applying driver updates to the appropriate hardware and

In order to classify the hardware by finding out something distinguishable from the laptop e.g. it's model number. To do this we should use the Recourse Explorer by going to Assets and Compliance >> Devices >> Device Name >> Right-hand click and select >> Start >> Recourse Explorer. We should now expand the Hardware Node and then the Computer System Node and finally there should be an atribute named "Model".

We should create a new query (Monitoring >> Overview >> Queries >> Create Query) as follows:

select distinct SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Manufacturer, SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.Model from  SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_COMPUTER_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId

We can then proceed to create a device collection based on the results of this query.

So we should go to Assets and Compliance >> Overview >> Device Collections >> Create Device Collection.

In this example I will be creating a device collection to identify all of the Dell Latitude E7440 laptops - so by selecting appropriate name such as "Latitude E7440" and choosing a limiting collection e.g. "Company Laptops" we proceed to add a membership rule. A membership simply defines a set of variables that the hardware in scope (the limiting collection) should match in order to become a member of the collection.

We should select "Query Rule" and then "Import Query Statement" - selecting our query we created earlier and then "Edit Query Statement" - here we should select the "Criteria" tab and select "New Criteria as follows:

Criterion Type: Simple Value
Where: Attribute Class = Computer System, Attribute = Model
Operator: is equal to
Value: Latitude E7440

That's it! Refreshing the collection should now return all laptops with the model ID: E7440.