SMS adds resources to collections by one or more membership rules that you define. Within a collection, you can specify multiple membership rules.
A membership rule can specify:
For example, "GREEN2" or "2345908908."
Those resources that meet the query criteria you specify are included in the collection. For example, "All computers running Windows NT 4 Service Pack 3 (SP3) with at least 16 MB of RAM" or "All users in the Corporate domain."
In both cases, a membership rule can use any resource class (User, User Group, System, or a custom resource class).
If you define collections with query-based membership rules, SMS updates the list of resources included in a collection by using the latest information in the SMS site database when the collection membership is evaluated. You can update the collection resource resource list on demand, or you can schedule collection evaluations.
By default, SMS provides collections that contain the contents (systems, users, and user groups) of the central site of the current SMS site database. These collections are scheduled to be updated every hour.
Related Topics
About Collection and Resource Security
How Collections are Replicated to Child Sites
Using Collections to Manage Resources Overview