21. The non-transitory medium of claim 17 , wherein the operations further comprise: determining that the first group is empty after the device is disassociated from the first group; and automatically deleting the first group.
17. A non-transitory medium bearing instructions to cause a machine to perform operations comprising: obtaining information from a device to obtain an actual status of the device; comparing the actual status of the device to a prior status of the device, the device initially being associated with a first group that corresponds to the prior status; determining that the actual status is different from the prior status based on the comparing, wherein, initially, no group exists that corresponds to the actual status; consulting a rule to determine to create a second group that corresponds to the actual status of the device, the rule for triggering group creation when no group exists that corresponds to the actual status; creating the second group in accordance with the rule, the second group being part of a group hierarchy comprised of multiple groups at different levels in the group hierarchy; automatically disassociating the device from the first group and automatically associating the device with the second group; sending a notification to the second group; and sending the notification to one or more groups that are above the second group in the group hierarchy based on failure to receive acknowledgement from the second group.