Accessing attached files of closed Change Requests

Posted on 20/04/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Due to a bug in Service Manager, it is no more possible to access attached files once a Change Request has been closed. The only thing you can do to get access to the files is changing the status of the Change Request back from “closed” to “completed”. Because this is not a very ITIL-friendly task, the GUI does not let you change the status once it is set to “closed”. Based on a customer request, I created a small, simple, quick-and-dirty GUI-based script. Because this could be helpful, I share it to the community. Feel free to optimize it Smiley

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Placing objects in the Service Manager console – wherever you want!

Posted on 15/04/2011 by Marcel Zehner

The Service Manager Console let’s you create different type of objects in different places. For instance you can create new folders under “Configuration Items” and then store your views in it. This is pretty cool, but unfortunately you cannot create new objects in all places because the Console restricts this. But with a little bit of hacking, you can place objects wherever you want – and you can also create your own wunderbars!

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

System Center Service Manager 2012 – Preview

Posted on 12/04/2011 by Marcel Zehner

A few weeks ago, the first public details of the new Service Manager 2012 (formerly known as Service Manager 2012 R2) were released by Microsoft. To get a good overview, I will publish the most important details in this post.

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Starting the SCCM Remote Control Client from the Service Manager Console, Part 2 (aka “how to dynamically add information to tasks”)

Posted on 03/04/2011 by Marcel Zehner

A while ago I have written an article about how to create custom tasks. One question that came up was: “How can I bring information from an incident to the task (as a task parameter)”? This article shows how.

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Opalis Integration Pack Extension for Service Manager

Posted on 02/04/2011 by Marcel Zehner

I started a new Opalis Integration Pack project that allows administrators to easily communicate with Service Manager. The Integration Pack that Microsoft delivers is great, but some often used activities (I use) are not present and you have to use scripts to achieve your goals. I try to fill this gap with my own Integration Pack that will be continuously extended over the next months. Input, Ideas and Feedback are very welcome to help Service Manager administrators and engineers doing more with less!

UPDATE: Version 2.0 released!

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM, System Center (without SCSM) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Speaker@Microsoft TechDays 2011

Posted on 31/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Microsoft TechDays is the largest technical event for Microsoft technologies (developers and IT Pros) in Switzerland. Together with Markus Erlacher and Walter Pitrof (both Technical Solution Professionals for Microsoft Switzerland) I will present some stuff around Service Manager – the actual version and the upcoming Service Manager 2012! I would be very interested in answering your questions as well as talking about and sharing experience with the product. If you attend the event, try to grab me. If you are not registered yet, do it now 🙂

Hope to see you there!
Cheers, Marcel

Posted in Events/Speaking | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

SCSM Troubleshooting

Posted on 24/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Even the best products generate problems or show strange behavior sometimes – even Service Manager! So it’s very important to know what tools and techniques are available to analyze and troubleshoot problems. In this blog post I will cover the most important things you need to know to bring your Service Manager environment back to a green state.

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Automatically delete Objects that have the Status “Pending Delete”

Posted on 16/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

When Configuration Items are deleted from the CMDB, these objects are not deleted instantly. Instead they are marked as deleted and are removed from the CI views. These CIs are now in the status “Pending Delete” and will remain in this state. Such Objects are visible in the folder “Deleted Items” under the Administration wunderbar. When objects are marked in this folder, you have the possibility to restore them back to a regular state or delete them permanently. Permanently means, that the status again changes, this time to “Deleted”. And those (and only those) objects are removed by the purging workflow from the CMDB (Important: They will not be deleted from the Data Warehouse!). This blog post shows how you can bulk delete objects that are in the “Pending Delete” state by using a simple Powershell script.

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Marcel@MMS Las Vegas

Posted on 16/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Hi all

Next week I will attend the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas. Always a good time to learn and make interesting contacts. So If you’re interested in discussions about Service Manager (and of course more :)), drop a line here. We already have a couple of Service Manager geeks together – seems to become a great week!

stay tuned
Marcel

Posted in Events/Speaking | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Formatting Problem when Reports are exported

Posted on 10/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Service Manager can be used to create Reports, either by creating them directly in the console or by using a schedule to automatically create reports based on a defined interval (see this blog post for more details). There are times when you want to export created reports in different formats, let’s say PDF. And this is the point where you could run into troubles. Some reports use a width (US letter) that does not fit on european A4 format. As a result you will get your PDF divided on 2 pages. Not really what you are looking for. But don’t worry, this blog post shows you how to solve this problem.

Continue reading →

Posted in SCSM | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment