The Customer Overview.
The page Octotor opens on shows every customer you look after as one of four states — needs action, watch, OK, or no data yet — worst first, with the open problems listed underneath. One click opens a single customer with every topic in full. It is built to answer one question in the first few seconds of the morning: where do I go first.
What it does
- One card per customer. Each card carries the customer's state, how long it has held that state, how many items need action and how many are to watch, and seven squares — one per day for the last week, each holding the worst state that customer reached that day. A run of red squares shows a problem that has been standing for days rather than one that started this morning.
- A "Needs action now" panel listing every open problem across all the customers you are allowed to see, newest trouble first. Each row names the customer, the machine and what is wrong.
- Tiles per topic. Servers, computers, backups, disk space, network switches, firewalls, Active Directory, Microsoft 365, scheduled tasks, manual runs and the AI assistant each get a tile showing a short answer, the detail behind it, how long it has been that way, and the real date and time of the reading it used.
- Every tile links into the rest of Octotor already filtered — the Servers tile opens the asset list showing that customer's servers, the Backups tile opens the machine on its backup tab.
- It reads; it does not act. The colours are a view of what the collectors have already recorded. To be told about something, an alert rule still does the telling.
Who it is for
IT teams and managed service providers who carry several customers at once and start the day needing to know which of them is in trouble. With a single customer it works the same way: the page opens on that customer instead of on the cards.
What you need
Octotor v3.3.11 or later, and the collectors you already run — the overview reads what they record and needs nothing new installed anywhere. It is included in every plan: there is no separate licence for the overview, for marking items as known, or for tiles you build yourself.
The four states
A topic turns a colour on its own rules, and the customer takes the worst colour among the topics shown on that customer. These thresholds colour tiles only — to be notified, use an alert rule.
| State | What puts a customer here |
|---|---|
| NEEDS ACTION | A server is offline, a backup job failed, a disk is under 5 % free, a switch or firewall is offline, an account list could not be read, every scheduled task is failing, or more than 25 % of the customer's computers are offline at once. |
| WATCH | Something is wrong but nothing needs action: a warning alert, a backup job that ended with warnings, a disk under 10 % free, a port running below its speed, an account list that is out of date, some tasks failing, 20–25 % of computers offline. An item somebody has marked as known also sits here. |
| OK | Nothing is wrong. |
| No data | Every collector for that customer has gone quiet, or nothing is set up yet. A reading that is older than expected says so on the tile's last line rather than being counted as good. |
The numbers behind the colours — the 25 %, the 5 %, the 10 % — are yours to set under Settings ▸ Dashboard, and they apply to every customer alike.
How to read one customer
Click Open customer on a card. Every customer is described the same way.
1The state, and how long it has held
The coloured word beside the name, with a line such as Needs action for 7 h, counted from the moment the oldest problem behind that state opened — not from when you opened the page.
2Daily Status
Seven squares, oldest on the left and today on the right, each holding the worst state that day. Every tile carries the same seven squares for its own topic, so you can see whether the backups have been failing all week or only last night.
3The counters
Servers, computers, people, switches, firewalls, backup servers, directories, Microsoft 365 tenants and open alerts, each a total with a short note under it — 3 offline in red, 42 online in plain text. A counter for something the customer does not use reads not set up rather than zero.
4The tiles
Each tile gives the short answer (2 of 6 offline), one line of detail naming what is behind it (SRV-02 offline since 06:12), how long it has been in that state, and when its reading was taken. The 24 h, 7 d and 30 d buttons at the top change the stretch of time the activity tiles count over — alerts, scheduled tasks, manual runs and the AI assistant. The health topics describe the situation as it stands now, so those buttons do not change them.
5Tiles you do not want
Every tile carries a pin. Unpin one and it drops to a strip at the bottom, stops counting toward that customer's state and stops putting items in the panel. Its alerts are untouched. Pinning is per customer and everyone sees the same arrangement.
Marking something as known
A problem you already know about should stop shouting without disappearing. Click I'm aware on its row, leave a note if you want one — a ticket number, who is on it — and choose how long it stands, 7 days by default.
The item leaves the needs-action count, its tile turns yellow instead of red, and the row stays listed under Acknowledged — still listed, not counted with who marked it, when, and until when. Everyone sees the same thing. It clears itself when the problem goes away or when the date passes, and Withdraw ends it at once. If the item stands on an alert, marking it here marks the alert too, and marking the alert counts here — one record in two places. Every one of these is written to the audit trail.
Action numbers, and dealing with several at once
Every row in the panel carries a number, shown as #41 in the first column. The number belongs to that problem on that customer for as long as it stays open, so you can put it in a ticket, send it in a message, or read it out on a call, and the person who opens the page sees the same one. Numbers run in a single series across the whole installation, so no two actions ever share one. A problem that clears and comes back later counts as a new occurrence and takes a new number, so #41 always means the one event you were talking about.
To handle several together: tick the box at the start of each row, or use Select all in the panel header. A bar appears showing how many are selected; type a note and choose the period once, and it is used for every row you ticked. A selection that mixes open rows with rows already marked as known is not refused — each button acts on the rows it can act on and then tells you what it did and what it left alone, so one row a colleague handled a minute ago never blocks the rest.
A site loses power overnight. The next morning the panel lists eleven open actions for Brightwater Labs, #88 through #98, every one of them server is offline. You know why, and the electrician is booked for Thursday.
- Tick the eleven rows. The bar reads 11 actions selected — 11 open actions.
- Type power cut, electrician Thursday, ticket 5120, choose 7 days, click I'm aware.
What happens: the message reads 11 actions marked as known, all eleven rows move to Acknowledged — still listed, not counted carrying your note and your name, Brightwater Labs turns from red to yellow, and the needs-action count drops by eleven. Had a colleague marked #93 while you were typing, the message would instead read 10 actions marked as known; 1 action left alone (already acknowledged) and nothing would be lost. When the power returns and the servers answer again the marks clear themselves and those numbers close; a future outage on the same servers gets new numbers.
Tiles you build yourself
A custom tile counts any group of assets you can already filter on the asset list, for each customer, and gives that count a colour rule of your own. It sits beside the built-in tiles, counts toward the customer's state when it turns red, and can be marked as known like anything else.
Click + Add custom tile at the top of the page. Name it, pick an icon, choose what to count — computers, people, switches, firewalls, Active Directory accounts, Microsoft 365 accounts or Check Point accounts — and add up to eight filter rows. Then set the colour rule: good when nothing matches, watch from N matches, needs action from M matches; or information only, which shows the count without a colour. Choose whether everyone sees it or only you, and whether it applies to all customers or a chosen few. A preview and a table of matches per customer follow every change you make, so you can see what the tile will say before you save it.
You want to see, per customer, how many computers still have the whole Domain Users group sitting in their local Administrators group. Name the tile Domain Users are local admins. Count Computers. One filter row: attribute Local administrators, include, contains, value Domain Users. Colour rule: good when nothing matches, watch from 1, needs action from 6. Visible to everyone, on all customers.
What happens: the table on the right fills in as you type — Brightwater Labs 5 — Watch, Alder Clinic 0 — OK. Save it, and every customer's card carries the new tile. Brightwater Labs shows 5 match in yellow and names the five computers on its own page; a customer with six or more shows red and puts one row in the panel, which can be marked as known like any other. The tile's link opens the asset list filtered to exactly those computers.
What you can change
| Setting | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Landing view | Which view opens first: automatic (one customer opens that customer, several open the cards), always the cards, or always one chosen customer. |
| Tiles and their order | Which topics appear for everyone, and in what order. |
| Thresholds | The disk percentages, the share of computers offline that counts as a site problem, and how long a reading may be before a tile is treated as having none. |
| Page refresh | How often the page reloads its data, from 15 to 600 seconds. 60 by default. |
| The panel | Whether the "Needs action now" panel is shown on the cards view, on a single customer's page, or both. |
| Links in a new tab | Whether a tile's link opens in a new tab, leaving the overview where it was. On by default. |
These sit under Settings ▸ Dashboard and are set once for everyone. What each person keeps to themselves is small and remembered per login: the sort order and which view they last used.
Who sees what
The overview never shows a customer a login is not allowed to see — the cards, the counters, the panel and the tiles are all built from that person's own permissions. A viewer sees the page and reads everything on it, without the controls that change anything: no marking as known, no withdrawing, no pinning, no tile editor.
Ask the AI assistant
The assistant can read the overview and answer in plain words. It sees exactly what you see — only the customers your login may open — and it can only read: it cannot mark an item as known, pin a tile or change a setting. Ask it "which customers need action right now?", "why is Brightwater Labs red?" or "what has been wrong at Alder Clinic this week?" and the answer comes from your own database.