WSUS 3.0 Developers' Blog: UI Terminology for reporting issues/questions
It'll help with bugs/questions if we all use the same terminology, so I
thought I'd run down a few of the features in the UI. I've posted this in the beta newsgroup as well for easy reference.
MMC hosts "Snap-ins" within a "Console." You can run MMC.exe and add
multiple snap-ins to a console file - for instance hosting the GPMC snap-in
and WSUS snap-in within the same console file. The .MSC file is your
console file. (And yes, we know about the icons for the snap-in in the
add/remove snap-in UI.)
Within the MMC snap-in for WSUS:
The left side "Tree View" has "Scope" nodes.
The right side collectively is is the "Result Pane."
We have three main types of result panes:
1) Summary panes/pages: these are the views with a summary over the scope
nodes immediately below. For example, there's the "Snap-in summary page"
that goes with the snap-in scope node. It shows a basic status over all the
servers you've added to your console. (You should use the scope node
"Action" to connect to more servers instead of adding multiple WSUS snap-ins
to the same console.)
Other summary panes:
The Server summary page is your best "home page" for your server. All
sorts of useful info here.
Update summary page - shows summaries over all update views you've
created.
Computers & Groups summary page - shows summaries over all groups on
your servers, including the built-in "All Computers" and "Unassigned
Computers."
There are others as well...
2) "View" pages. These are result pane pages for a scope node like
"Critical Updates." Generally there's a toolbar at the top with filtering
options, a "grid view" with results, and a "preview pane" at the bottom.
3) Other pages. As an example, the page for the Options scope node.