Scheduled Reports

Posted on 09/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

One question that comes up frequently is how Service Manager reports can be scheduled. The good news: This can be done, hooray! The bad news: It cannot be done using the Service Manager console and it can be a bit complicated depending on the report you are interested in šŸ˜¦ In this blog post I will show how to create a scheduled report for Incidents.

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Starting the SCCM Remote Control Client from the Service Manager Console

Posted on 06/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Tasks can be used to start different actions directly from the Service Manager Console without leaving the Console. This indeed makes sense because you can save a lot of time because you do not have to switch between multiple consoles and your desktop. Out of the box you will find a bunch of tasks that are available, but it could make sense to add your own tasks. One task that Iā€™m using a lot is th ability to start the SCCM Remote Control Client directly from the Service Manager Console to connect to other Systems ā€“ especially when the Remote Desktop Connection can not be used (Client Computers …).

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Huh, Change Request Status not updated … what now?

Posted on 01/03/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Sometimes you can run into trouble with Change Requests that do not update their status correctly. Normally, when you create a new Change Request you add at least one Activity to it. The whole Change Request as well as the first Activity switch their status to ā€œIn Progressā€. Now, sometimes this is not really the case and you have to deal with uncompleted Change Requests ā€“ either in status new, submitted or pending ā€“ that will not update their status whatever you do. The GUI does not let you change the status of Change Requests in most situations. But here is a way you can do it to eliminate the ā€œstaleā€ Change Requests from your Service Manager Environment.

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Multi-Language Support for Mail Notification

Posted on 28/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Service Manager allows you to notify people (endusers, analysts, bosses etc.) by mail. Larger companies that span accross multiple countries may have a requirement to send out mails in different languages ā€“ depending on the language a specific person speaks. Service Manager allows you to do this by using multilanguage notification templates.

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Microsoft System Center vNext

Posted on 19/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

These days I am at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond to learn about the next Versions of System Center Products. Very interesting, but unfortunately most stuff under NDA. I will be back with SCSM blogging in a bit šŸ™‚

Regards
Marcel

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Bringing discovered SCOM objects to Service Manager – Part 2/2

Posted on 13/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

In the first part of this series I showed how to synchronize objects that live in SCOM to the Service Manager CMDB. This works fine, but in some situations itā€™s possible that objects will not be visible ā€“ because they do not synchronize as expected. In this second part I will show you why and how to solve this problem. For this example I will use the class ā€œIIS 7.0 ASP.NET Application Endpointā€. One of my customers needed this class in the CMDB, so this is a real world example.

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Bringing discovered SCOM objects to Service Manager – Part 1/2

Posted on 10/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Service Manager allows to build a comprehensive CMDB by using connectors. One very important connector is the SCOM CI connector (System Center Operations Manager) that allows objects that are discovered and monitored by SCOM to be synchronized with the Service Manager CMDB. This is very important because Service Manager itself does not have a discovery engine. So one thing you have to deal with is bringing already discovered objects from SCOM to Service Manager – automatically!

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Creating special Activities – Part 2/2

Posted on 09/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

Using Activities in Service Manager allows you to collect Information about tasks and build them together in Change Requests. In the first PartĀ I talked about custom activity classes and how to use them in Templates. In the second Part I want to show you, how these tasks could be fully automated by using Microsoft Opalis to save time and money ā€¦ and make your life easier!

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Creating special Activities – Part 1/2

Posted on 07/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

After installing Service Manager there are two types of activities that can be used in Change Requests: Manual Activities and Review Activities. When planning a Change Request you can chain multiple of those activities together. unfortunately, the attributes of those activities are hardcoded and any special information that you want to include in the Change Request has to be entered in the description field. However, with a little bit of customization itā€™s possible to create custom activities that hold exactly the information you will need.

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Using the Service Manager Dashboard

Posted on 02/02/2011 by Marcel Zehner

If you want to become your bossā€™ best friend, you need to impressĀ him with great graphics and meaningful diagrams :). One way to achieve this goal is using the Service Manager Dashboard. It is based on SharePoint and can be used to visualize Information from the Service Manager Data Warehouse.

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