Update a host's display name

[noahtalerman]

Goal

As a Fleet UI user, I want to see a default display name for hosts that makes the Fleet UI and Fleet product easy to understand and use.

Figma

https://www.figma.com/file/hdALBDsrti77QuDNSzLdkx/?node-id=5930%3A255765

Notes

• When working from home the hostname of the device can be whatever the Internet service provider (ISP) assigns to the device. This makes corporate management more difficult.
  • For example, currently the Fleet UI will display hosts like aianas-mbp.cable.rcn.com when what I really want is computer_name from the system_info table.
• This issue includes another example in which it would be useful to see a better display name for hosts in the Fleet UI: #4753
• Customer discussion is here for another example: https://fleetdm.slack.com/archives/C02Q38LSD2R/p1644524291590799

Child Issues

• #7135
• #7136

[xpkoala]

@chiiph @zwinnerman-fleetdm Are there any performance concerns to adding the <computer_name> field to the searchable criteria on the hosts, query target, etc pages?

Is there a way we could test this out in the load test environment?

[zwinnerman-fleetdm]

We would need to add it to this index:

`FULLTEXT KEY `hosts_search` (`hostname`,`uuid`),

But in general this is not a source of load at this time.

This can be tested in loadtesting if a branch with the change is pushed to github by following the readme in the loadtesting folder.

[xpkoala]

Thank you @zwinnerman-fleetdm.

Note to Reed and @noahtalerman : We need to revisit where all changing hostname to computer_name could cause a breaking change in the api. As examples, web hooks, logging, etc. A good place to start looking for these issues would be searching https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/rest-api#hosts for hostname.

If we are doing a breaking change, we should consider moving this to a 5.x.y release. We should also consider doing a larger change from using device (or some other descriptor) instead of host in the UI.

[noahtalerman]

@tgauda this issue was discussed during product office hours on 06-16-2022. Customer codename "customer-schur" requested this improvement.

For now, this issue will not be prioritized (released in the next 6 weeks). This is because the interface team has been asked to prioritize the "Expansion of host vitals" #397

Please feel free to bring this issue back to any future product office hours. This way, the issue can be reconsidered.

[noahtalerman]

@lukeheath I assigned you this issue for UI review and specification.

Here's a Loom video in which I demo the feature: https://www.loom.com/share/4ad17ce84e6a43d5845b14937280606f

[lukeheath]

@noahtalerman @xpkoala Currently the GET /hosts and GET /hosts/{id} endpoints returns hostname, computer_name, and display_text.

Regarding this item:

We haven’t audited any of the API endpoints that rely on hostname yet. Will these changes affect other areas of the UI that make calls to endpoints that rely on hostname? One of these endpoints: https://fleetdm.com/docs/using-fleet/rest-api#translator

I'm not seeing how adding a display_name property would affect endpoints that rely on hostname, because we are not removing hostname. Maybe I'm missing something?

Is it necessary for us to have both display_text and display_name? It seems like adding display_name could be a bit redundant. Currently, display_text is added at the API-layer (not stored in the db), and it is just an alias for hostname.

[davidschoefberger]

@noahtalerman, can you give any updates about that topic? We would like to start the roll-out with around 2000 clients, but having weird display hostnames like in your examples is a problem.

[noahtalerman]

weird display hostnames like in your examples is a problem

@davidschoefberger sorry you're running into this issue.

This feature is in development and will be included in Fleet version 4.22.0 targeted for release on 10/20/22.

[davidschoefberger]

@noahtalerman thanks for that quick reply! Really looking forward to the release.