I would love to have the ability to simply check or uncheck a node for managing rather than setting a date range. This way I have positive control as to when the node comes back online.
Currently, using the date range I tend to forget that a device was unmanaged and then it pops back up as being down for x amount of days. Our helpdesk then scrambles around trying to determine if it is a new trouble issue.
I have tried to counter this by developing an alert to report the unmanaged period but it is still not as desirable as having a checkbox in addition to a date range.
What I ended up doing was creating a custom property in the Custom Property Editor called DefaultUM and Set the value to Yes for all the nodes I don't want to be managed, but still want them in ORION. Then I used the Database Manger and performed the following Query
UPDATE Nodes SET Unmanaged = 1, UnmanagedTo = '1/1/2099 12:00:00 AM' WHERE DefaultUM = 1
If you need to manage one later you just go to System Manager or Node Manager on the web and click Manage.