Patent Document ID: 9154372
Application ID: 10627328

Base Claim:
1. A method of enabling a user to edit an operational property of two or more network objects, the method comprising: (A) providing a user interface comprising a viewing component for displaying a table comprising an abstracted view of a plurality of network objects representing different network devices on a communications network, the plurality of network objects associated with a plurality of network object types, the table including one or more columns, the user interface further comprising a view definition editing component enabling the user to specify one or more of the plurality of network object types to be included in the table; (B) in response to the user specifying the one or more network object types to be included in the table via the view definition editing component, populating at least one column of the table with operational properties of the one or more network object types, the operational properties represented by numeric or Boolean values in the table, and enabling the user to change operational properties of two or more of the plurality of network objects by editing a column of the table via the viewing component, the operational properties representing one or more aspects of two or more of the different types of network devices; and (C) in response to the user editing the column of the table via the viewing component, changing the operational properties of the two or more network objects to cause a change in the one or more aspects of the two or more different types of network devices.

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Claim 5:
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein act (A) includes providing the user interface further comprising the view definition editing component to enable the user to specify a first network object type of the plurality of network object types, the method further comprising acts of: (D) determining whether the first network object type is an indexed network object type; (E) if the first network object type is an indexed network object type, determining an indexing variable for the first network object type; and (F) determining whether the indexing variable determined for the first network object type is compatible with an indexing variable being used for the table, wherein, act (B) includes editing at least one column via the view definition editing component based at least in part on results of act (F).