When installing Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM) 2010, 90% of the time the independent installations of Service Manager or the Data Warehouse are successful. Microsoft has done a great job in managing all the pre-requisites of an installation prior to an Administrator actually selecting the “install” button. Even with all these fail safes in place, there are a few occasions where the installation does encounter an issue and errors out. Now if an Administrator has not snapshot their VM prior to installation (shame on you), you may find yourself in a precarious situation and will most likely start from scratch as to have the “cleanest” install possible.

Problem
In this remaining 10% of installation errors, our team runs into the below screenshot the most. It states “an error occurred while executing custom action:RollbackCleanup”.

If you were to take a look at Event Viewer, within the System event log you will see the following error:

—

Log Name: System

Source: Service Control Manager

Event ID: 7009

Task Category: None

Level: Error

Keywords: Classic

User N/A

Description: A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the System Center Management Configuration service to connect.

—

This problem occurs because a .NET Framework 2.0 managed assembly that has an Authenticode signature takes longer than usual to load. The signature is always verified when the .NET Framework 2.0 managed assembly that has an Authenticode signature is loaded. Additionally, the .NET Framework 2.0 managed assembly may take longer than usual to load because of various other settings. For example, the .NET Framework 2.0 managed assembly may take longer than usual to load because of the network configuration. For additional information about the cause of this problem, see the Microsoft Support Web site article (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=207190).

Solution
In order to solve this issue, you must increase the Service timeout settings within the registry in order to allow for Service Manager adequate time to restart its services. Beware that this workaround is a global setting, and it will affect timeouts for every service. The following steps outline how to make these changes:

To work around this problem, modify the registry to increase the default time-out value for the service control manager. To increase this value to 600 seconds, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
3. In the right pane, locate the ServicesPipeTimeout entry
   Note: If the ServicesPipeTimeout entry does not exist, you must create it. To do this, follow these steps:
1. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
2. Type ServicesPipeTimeout, and then press ENTER.
4. Right-click ServicesPipeTimeout, and then click Modify.
5. Click Decimal, type 600000, and then click OK
This value represents the time in milliseconds before a service times out.
6. Restart the computer.

For additional details about the registry key, see the Microsoft Support Web site article. After these changes are made, your Server instance will allow adequate time for Service Manager to restart its services and perform a successful installation.

Recommendations
The Cireson team recommends making these modifications prior to every Service Manager and Data Warehouse installation.

Problem Description:

DW registration fails with a generic error message. No errors are logged in the event log, the DW test connection succeeds, however the registration still fails.

Cause:

The DW registration wizard uses a PowerShell cmdlet underneath the covers to perform the registration of the DW. The out of the box PowerShell execution policy prevents the execution of registration cmdlet and results in the DW registration failure.

Resolution:

To ensure that the PowerShell execution policy isn’t the issue here, perform the following steps on the machine where you are attempting the registration from.

1. On the computer where you are attempting the registration from, on the Windows desktop, click Start, point to All Programs, Accessories, Windows PowerShell, point to Windows PowerShell , right-click Windows PowerShell, and then click Run as administrator.

2. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

3. Close the Service manager console if already open. Launch the console and attempt the registration again.

PROBLEM:

Management Pack deployment fails for Datawarehouse registration with below errors due to Proxy being configured.

Log Name: Operations Manager
Source: Deployment
Date: 4/11/2012 2:49:30 PM
Event ID: 33403
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: .westpharmalab.LAB
Description:
Deployment Execution Infrastructure encountered an error while executing a deployer.
MP element ID: ac782b74-cf23-4a00-bb96-beb15789d0c3
MP name: ServiceManager.ServiceManagement.Report.Library
MP version: 7.5.1561.0
Operation: Install
Error message: Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.DeploymentException: Install ‘ReportFolder’ operation failed from within ‘install’ Installing report folder store = http://:80/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx parameters are foldername = SystemCenter, folderpath = /, folderid = 9da27aeb-76ef-c8a0-8dd0-0e8930e96feaThe request failed with HTTP status 502: Proxy Error ( The host was not found. ). at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse(SoapClientMessage message, WebResponse response, Stream responseStream, Boolean asyncCall)

RESOLUTION:

We changed proxy settings on Service Manager Management Server & Data Warehouse Management Server for SM Service Account to bypass local addresses.

1. Log into the server (or do a run-as on IE) as the SM Service Account User.
2. Open IE and go to Tools | Internet Options | Connections | LAN Settings.
3. Uncheck ‘Automatically detect settings’.
4. Check ‘Use a proxy server….’ and enter “Proxy”.
5. Check ‘Bypass proxy server for local addresses’.

Then we restarted the System Center Management Service on DW MS and restarted deployment for failed MP’s from console. Now we see all the reports MPs are deployed and we verified it from console that we see all the reports.

Read more from Travis Wright’s - Principal Program Manager on the System Center engineering team.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2012/03/26/new-partner-cireson-new-solutions-for-work-item-assignment-and-csv-import.aspx

The System Center experts at Cireson have just released the much anticipated browser and device agnostic Analyst Web Console. Read more….

The Challenge

System Center Service Manager (SCSM) provides a fully robust IT Management solution that enables companies to automate and standardize business processes IT across the enterprise.

We live in a hyper-connected world, which often means not physically being in the office. With Service Manager Console, Analysts are unable to manage their Incidents via a web browser, smartphone or tablet.

The Solution

With the Cireson Analyst Web Console, Analysts are able to manage day-to-day operations from any browser, tablet or mobile device. Access to all Incidents, CMDB and Reports for easy access on the go! Architecture is built on cutting edge HTML 5 for awesome portability. Contact team@cireson.com

Purpose: Visual part of adding a field to the right of an existing field on the Incident form.

First, I would like to thank all the Microsoft MVP for the Incident Extension blogs and video, and others who have provided information on extending the Incident and Service Request. We all know the Authoring Tool can be tricky. To complement what is already out there, I have provided the instructions to add the fields perfectly to the right of existing fields. It will show up as if Microsoft put it there in the first place. Great links on extending the Incident are at the bottom of this blog.

Results of following all three procedures: Image of Entire Incident Form with all 3 fields Added

This blog will show how to add:
A List Picker to the Right of the Contact Method Field
A Date Picker to the Right of the Priority Field
A Text Box to the Right of the Classification Category Field

However, this technique can easily be modified for a User Picker, or Single Item Picker.

I chose the above locations, because some fields on the Incident Form have plenty of space to spare to the right. After you have extended your Incident class and have selected to “Customize” your form, follow these steps.

To Add a List Picker to the Right of the [ContactMethod] Field

Console View for New List Picker (Division)

1. Modify the Contact Method Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Contact Method Text Box
Width = 200
Horizontal Alignment = Left

3. Add a New Label and New List Picker
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Contact Method label and text box when you hovering over it. 

Drag a List Picker and drop it into the grey box that includes the Contact Method label and text box, and Label1 when you hovering over it. 

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = – 45
Vertical Alignment = Top
Left Margin = 215
Width = Auto
Rename Content Text: Used “Division:” for example 

5. Modify the New List Picker
Top Margin = – 22
Left Margin = 215
Width = Auto
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch 

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one

7. Authoring Tool View for New List Picker (Division)



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To Add a Date Picker to the Right of the [Priority] Field

Console View for New Date Picker (Delivery Date)

1. Modify the Priority Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Priority Text Box
Minimum Width = 45

3. Add a New Label and New Date Picker
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Priority label and text box when you hovering over it.

Drag a Date Picker and drop it into the grey box that includes the Priority label , text box, and Label2 when you hovering over it.

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = – 43
Vertical Alignment = Top
Minimum Height = 22
Left Margin = 60
Width = 80
Rename Content Text: Used “Delivery Date:” for example

5. Modify the New Date Picker
Top Margin = – 22
Minimum Width = 0
Left Margin = 60

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one

7. Authoring Tool View for New Date Picker (Delivery Date)

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To Add a Text Box to the Right of the [Classification] Field

Console View for New Text Box (Reference #)

1. Modify the Classification Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Classification List Picker
Horizontal Alignment = Left
Minimum Width = 300

3. Add a New Label and New Text Box
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Classification label and text box when you hovering over it.

Drag a Text Box and drop it into the grey box that includes the Classification label, text box, and Label3 when you hovering over it.

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = -44
Vertical Alignment = Top
Minimum Height = 22
Left Margin = 310
Width = Auto
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch
Rename Content Text: Used “Reference #:” for example

5. Modify the New Text Box
Top Margin = -22
Left Margin = 310
Minimum Width = 0
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch
Width = Auto
Height = Auto
Minimum Height = 22
Delete Text: TextBox1

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one 

7. Authoring Tool View for New Text Box (Reference #)

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Image of Entire Incident Form with all 3 fields Added

This should help explain how to add the fields correctly. If you have any questions in regards to this, send me a message on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Damon_Mulligan) and follow https://twitter.com/teamcireson. Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

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Links on Extending the Incident Form

(Travis Wright) Adding a Customer Field to the Incident Form in System Center Service Manager (Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5RSGAPwA9E
(Marcel Zehner) Adding a custom field to Incident Forms (Screenshots)
http://blog.scsmfaq.ch/2011/01/04/adding-a-custom-field-to-incident-forms/

Anyone who has ever installed and configured Service Manager knows the pain involved in setting up notification workflows for work item re-assignment. This becomes even more time consuming when setting up notifications for support group changes or reviewer changes.

A large part of this pain is because you almost always need to export Management Pack XML and configure relationship subscriptions and notification template Guids. It is also not uncommon to have to create two workflows for each Support Group, one for create and another for update.

Cireson now have an app – the Notify Analyst app – that takes away a large part of this pain.

Take a look at the image above, this is the free version of the app.

All you need to do to get this working is:

1. Import 2 Management Packs.
2. Copy a DLL to your workflow server.
3. Create two notification templates, one for Incidents and another for Service Requests.
4. Select the templates in the settings GUI and enable the workflows.

No more exporting Management Packs and fiddling around in XML!

You can request a download of this free app from here:

Notify Analyst App

This version is free, but of course, there is full version available for purchase and I will now explain what you get for the paid version.

General Settings

The app can send notifications when Incident or Service Request Support Groups change automatically. The workflows look for an AD group that matches the name of the new Support Group and sends a notification to all members. You can opt to have all of these groups start with a given prefix, for example, “SCSM-”.

You can also skip Support Group notifications for an analyst if the work item is already assigned to that person or if the analyst assigned the work item to themselves.

Incident Settings

You can select a template for Support Group change notifications, and enable the workflow for creating and/or updating. You can also opt to skip notifications for the default support group configured in the Service Manager Incident Settings.

When these workflows are enabled, your analysts will automatically receive notifications for any tier that they are a member of. Just one workflow for all incident tiers! All you need to do is create AD groups with matching names and populate these with your analysts.

Service Request Settings

Service Requests have the same settings as Incidents except there is no option to skip a default Support Group as SCSM does not have such a setting.

Problem, Change Request and Release Record Settings

For Problems, Change Requests and Release Records, you can specify templates for assignment changes and enable or disable the workflows.

Manual Activity Settings

You can select notification templates and enable workflows for when Manual Activities are assigned and for when their status changes to in-progress. This allows you to control whether emails are sent to analysts immediately or only when the MA is in-progress.

Review Activity Settings

Review Activities have similar settings, one workflow for when a Reviewer is added, another for when the status changes to in-progress.

Other Activity Class Settings

The remaining Activity classes all have settings for assignment and status changing to in-progress.

So, using the Cireson Notify Analyst app you can now setup and control all of your assignment, support group and reviewer notifications from one place. Nice!

But, there is more, the app also includes a reminder notification email that can be sent to analysts to remind them of their currently assigned work items…

Reminder Settings

These settings allow you to configure and enable a workflow that can run daily at a set time, or every x number of hours or minutes.

You can specify the email subject and from address and you must also set an AD group that contains the analysts to send the notifications to.

The notification for each analyst includes all of their directly assigned work items and also optionally any unassigned work items with a Support Groups that they are a member of via matching AD groups.

Optionally you can include failed and cancelled work items.

An example of the notification sent looks like this (click to view full size image):

This problem was bugging me sometime back and I’ve only just got around to blogging about it…

Suppose you create a SQL Server Reporting Services report and you bundle this report up into a Service Manager Management Pack and deploy it to the Data Warehouse.

If you are watching the deployment process running under Data Warehouse\Management Packs, you may see that the deployment status changes from “Running” to “Failed” very briefly. After a few seconds it will change from “Failed” to “Completed”. You’ll not even notice the brief failure unless you are sitting there hitting F5 or perhaps if you later examine the Operations Manager event log on the Data Warehouse server. Especially as your report will now appear in the console and run perfectly, well, assuming you made no mistakes

But suppose you make changes to your report and rebundle your Management Pack after increasing the version by at least one…?

When you import the new version and deployment starts to run, you will see the deployment status change from “Running” to “Failed” and now it will never change to “Completed”.

If you see this, then you have hit this issue.

If you look in the Operations Manager event log on the Data Warehouse server you will see:

Event 33411, Deployment

Report deployment failed for report with ID c510195c-f3ee-b95c-e414-f184eaca7e5a and name YourReport.

One possible reason for this error is the Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Reporting.Code.dll may be missing.
Please make sure you follow the instructions in the Service Manager Deployment Guide to deploy this DLL to the Reporting Services server.

This event is a complete red herring, it is nothing to do with Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Reporting.Code.dll, unless you actually haven’t configured it correctly as per the documentation, in which case, you wouldn’t even have got this far…

Next you will see:

Event 33403, Deployment

Deployment Execution Infrastructure encountered an error while executing a deployer.
MP element ID: 17cf36cc-31ec-f306-bb8f-03e71138240b
MP name: YourReportMP
MP version: 1.0.0.0
Operation: Update
Error message: Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.DeploymentException:
Install ‘Report’ operation failed from within ‘install’ Installing reports
store = http://YourSSRSServer:80/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx parameters are folderpath =
/SystemCenter/ServiceManager/YourReportsFolder, report name = YourReport in AddReport within SRSResourceStore AddReport ;
After initialize within SRSResourceStore AddReport ;Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Microsoft.SystemCenter.ResourceAccessLayer.SrsResourceStore.AddReport(String folderPath, String name,
String reportDescription, String reportId, IResource rdl, Boolean overwrite, Boolean visible)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.ReportDeployer.CreateReport(Boolean overwrite)

Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.DeploymentException
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.ReportDeployer.CreateReport(Boolean overwrite)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.ReportDeployer.Update()
at Microsoft.SystemCenter.DeploymentEngine.ExecutionManager.Run(DeployerBase deployer)
at Microsoft.SystemCenter.DeploymentEngine.ExecutionManager.Run(IXPathNavigable instance)

Followed by:

Event 33410, Deployment

Deployment Execution Infrastructure has retried the maximum number of times and is giving up on this execution step.
MP Element ID: 17cf36cc-31ec-f306-bb8f-03e71138240b
MP name: YourReportMP
MP version: 1.0.0.0
Operation: Update
Error message: Install ‘Report’ operation failed from within ‘install’ Installing reports
store = http://YourSSRSServer:80/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx parameters are folderpath =
/SystemCenter/ServiceManager/YourReportsFolder, report name = YourReport in AddReport within SRSResourceStore AddReport ;
After initialize within SRSResourceStore AddReport ;Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Microsoft.SystemCenter.ResourceAccessLayer.SrsResourceStore.AddReport(String folderPath, String name,
String reportDescription, String reportId, IResource rdl, Boolean overwrite, Boolean visible)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Deployers.ReportDeployer.CreateReport(Boolean overwrite)

The only error here is “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” which, of course, is not very helpful.

If you, the reader, also has this problem, here is how to fix it…

When you save your report from Report Builder, it will automatically reset the DataSource path (if you used it) and the property ReportServerUrl. These need fixing.

Open your report RDL file in Visual Studio or another appropriate editor directly.

At the top, find this section:

And remove the path in DataSourceReference:

Next scroll to the end of the file and locate this line:

Remove this line completely.

Now, if you created your report by copying an existing one, you must make this a new Guid:

You can easily create a new Guid from Visual Studio via Tools\Create GUID, selecting “Registry Format” and clicking “Copy”.

Paste in the new guid, replacing the old one, and removing the {}:

You only need to change the Guid once if required, do not change it again but you must check and make the other changes every time before you rebundle your changes.

OK, the next thing to know is that this won’t fix your currently imported Management Pack. You must delete it and wait for the Status under Data Warehouse\Data Warehouse Jobs\MPSyncJob to say “Disassociated”. Order the jobs by Batch Id descending and monitor the latest one. Disassociation will delete everything the Management Pack defines. For this reason, you should never put anything else into your reports MPs such as Data Warehouse extensions or class extensions.

Now you can import your new Management Pack and if you always reset the data source path and remove the SSRS server URL your Management Pack will now upgrade correctly every time!

Purpose: Send an email notification to a specific Support Group based on a specific SLO Warning/Breach

First, I would like to say a few words about Cireson’s attendance of Microsoft’s 2013 Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas. It was great to finally put a face to all the global partners we have been emailing and talking to recently. We saw some familiar faces from MMS and we were also able to make a lot of new relationships with people from countries like Germany, Spain, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Chile, India, South Africa, Australia, Netherlands, Argentina, and Canada. It was nice to see all the innovative companies related to Microsoft products. I could not pass on the deal for the Surface RT and Pro, so I bought both and I am still deciding which one to keep and which one to pass along to a colleague. We are looking forward to the next conference and meeting more people from the System Center community.

Scenario
Instead of creating a notification that applied to all SLO Warning or Breached statuses, we only wanted to notify the Support Group if an Incident had not been assigned to an analyst. We had multiple SLO’s, but did not want notifications for them all.

Prerequisites for this email Subscription
1. SLO with metric from Created date to First assigned date
2. Support Groups with email addresses
3. Identify a key word from the SLO you want this notification to apply to (“Assigned to” used in this example)
4. Create an Email Template

This can obviously be tweaked to notify any Support Group of any SLO status change.

Subscription to create for each Support Group

Result: An email notification will be sent to the Support Group when the Assigned to SLO is breached; Informing them that the Incident is still only assigned to a Support Group and should be assigned to an analyst.

Feel free to provide any tweaks you made to customize this in your environment. If you have any questions in regards to this, send me a message on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Damon_Mulligan) and follow https://twitter.com/teamcireson. Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

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Building a dynamic Service Desk: 10 questions & areas to focus before and after deploying Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (Intro)

The purpose of these series of blogs is to explain some of the mysteries of how Service Manager is deployed successfully and what steps need to be taken to ensure your solution is one that fits the needs of your business and provides tangible outcomes you can count on. These articles will include tips, tricks and best practice advice that you should consider utilizing for yourself. Obviously, there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach with Service Manager or any other Service Desk solution for that matter, so please take the information gleamed at face value, weigh it against your own objectives and determine the best approach for you. At the end of the day you will be thankful you did.

If you have interest in building a dynamic Service Desk then you have come to the right spot. Firstly, what does building a dynamic service desk mean? It means having an integrated service desk solution that provides a wealth of information at your fingertips. Moreover, a dynamic service desk should be just that – dynamic. In order to be dynamic we need to understand the core aspects of the integrated CMDB and where our data is *truly* originating from, everything from Active Directory to disparate siloes of information. We need to understand the flow of information from origination source to our CMDB and determine if there are information or systems that cannot otherwise not be integrated and how we mitigate these types of scenarios.

Starting this process prior to deploying service manager is ideal, however, this guide can be a valuable resource for new ideas, initiatives and periodic service desk alignments. These blogs will be a resource for everyone, so don’t fret if you have already deployed Service Manager and want to align your deployment to the outcomes in these documents, it can be done. Truthfully, it can never hurt to review this from time to time as I will be giving some pretty specific prescriptive advice and long term objectives based on the implementations I have done in the past. Again, take the pieces that work for you and leave the rest.

Below, please find the topic outline to this series. Check back over time, I may decide to add additional topics based on the feedback and input I receive from the community.

1. How, and where you start the journey?
2. Current solution evaluation.
3. Deploy yourself, hire a consultancy or both?
4. The migration question
5. Right-size planning your infrastructure.
6. Planning for ITIL processes.
7. Customer facing interactions
8. Workflows and Automation
9. How do you know you’ve arrived?
10. Building the roadmap.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I will have writing them. As always if you have any thoughts, ideas or just plain would like to see something added/changed etc. leave a comment or feel free to contact me directly – information below!

Chris Ross, System Center MVP Email: chris dot ross at cireson dot com Twitter: SCSMUS
Check out our System Center App Store: www.cireson.com/app-store Join the Service Manager User Group: http://scsm.us/user-group

The latest version of the Cireson Asset Management Import app (v3) supports importing relationship data for “to-many” relationships such as related configuration items.

This blog is a quick guide to this new feature, using “Windows Computer” and “Is Related to Configuration Item” as examples.

To enable this new feature, you must first select this option within “Administration\Settings\Cireson – Asset Management Import Settings”:

This new feature is only available when importing from CSV.

When you create or edit an Import Connector, you can select a target class and combination class (type projection) as per versions 1 and 2:

You must select a combination class in order to add the relationship mappings to the “Data Mappings” tab, for example:

Here you can see I have selected the “Is Related to Configuration Item” relationship and a target class of “Windows Computer”.

Selecting “Windows Computer” populated the text below it with “Mapped property must be path to input file in this format…” and I have mapped this to the column “Related Computers” which is taken from the header row (1st line) of my input CSV file.

The text tells you what format the input file must be in, based on the keys of the selected class, in this case, just “PrincipalName”.

My test input CSV file looks like this:

“Principal Name”,Name,”Related Computers”
“PC1.domain.com”,”PC1″,”\\scsmserver\CSVImport\InputFiles\PC01_RelatedComputers.txt”

“PC01_RelatedComputers.txt” is a text file containing a list of PrincipalNames, one per line like this:

PC02.domain.com
PC03.domain.com
PC04.domain.com

You can add as many lines as required.

When the import connector is run, PC1 will be created or updated, and PC02, PC03 and PC04 will be added as related items.

This feature can also be used to add attachments:

In this case, the mapped property in the CSV file must be a path to a text file as before but in this case it will contain a list of file paths, preferably UNC paths, or at least a full local path available to the Workflow Account on the Workflow Server.

When the Import Connector runs, any files specified in the target file are attached. If an attachment with the same name already exists, that attachment’s contents will be updated.

Adding attachments requires version 7.5.3.1 or later of the Asset Management Import app.

Another year has passed, and another year Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM) is still not on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for “IT Service Support Management Tools”. Now granted I am referring to the Magic Quadrant dated for August 2012, as seen here:

Gartner 2012 IT Service Support Management Tools – Magic Quadrant

…and we still do not know what is to come for 2013, but as someone who is vested in the System Center space complimented by the fact that customers constantly ask our team about this positioning, I find it absolutely interesting why Microsoft is left off.

Not to establish credibility, but more importantly to frame my acute perception on the other vendors, let me also theme the next few talking points around the fact that I have worked for HP (well Peregrine back in the day), BMC Software (well Remedy back in the day), Altiris, LANDesk, Axios Systems and have extensive experience with FrontRange, CA Technologies and ServiceNow. All of these products in their own right are very good, but in comparison to these competitors – come on – SCSM should absolutely be at least an orange blip somewhere on this radar.

With all that said, let’s break down what we are really looking at! Here are some raw themed bullet points from the “Market Definition/Description” for the IT Service Support Management Tools Gartner Report:

• Tighter integration of functions that correlate with the activities of the broader IT support organization
• Leverage a business view of IT services, allowing to quickly resolve or escalate issues and problems, improving root cause isolation, and provide higher levels of business user satisfaction
• Using this business view, manage Incidents, problems, changes, releases and request management
• Enables tools to provide modules that enable business end users to find knowledge to support/resolve their computer related issues

So effectively a basic ticketing system, which aligns you with ITIL best-practice and mixed in with some ITSM common sense qualifies you for this quadrant. Fair enough, have to keep it broad to include most likely the 200+ Service Desk vendors to have a fighting chance at being in this mix.

Again, as I have worked for other vendors that are on this Magic Quadrant, let me passionately say all qualify and should be part of this conversation. There is no doubt in my mind that every single vendor deserves their recognition, however there is 1 very large, huge, and most important item left out of this Market Definition/Description:

Business Process Automation

I mean, at the end of the day what are we trying to do here? What every CIO on the planet should be trying to do is leverage a Service Desk solution to measure their business activity, understand operational cost and in an attempt to save the company a lot of money automate as much as humanly possible. Some key examples include:

• Password Reset
• Automate New Hire / Termination Processes
• Hardware / Software Procurement Processes
• Server Provisioning
• Access Requests
• The list goes on…

Again, as I have worked for other vendors some of them on this Quadrant have the capabilities to do these as a platform to complement their Service Desk story. There are however a few on this quadrant that don’t even come close, remotely close, and in their attempts to do so just introduce more hassle to their customers then needed.

The reality is Microsoft System Center is the only platform that can automate any tactical IT process, all from its own product eco-system, with the ability to reach out of its product eco-system and interact with other enterprise solutions. This is a very strong story, and really wish this reality was strongly interpreted inside of this Magic Quadrant evaluation.

The one other startling reality that flat out should put SCSM somewhere on the Gartner Magic Quadrant is in its few years of existence, SCSM has garnered more customers than some of these other vendors combined! That in itself should shake up the perspective.

I will leave you with one last thought, coming back to the “raw themed bullet points” from above:

Mr. CIO, what would you rather have:

• A Service Desk solution that can manage a Service Request, giving your team the ability to know when someone is asking for Software?
• A Service Desk solution that can manage a Service Request, giving your team the ability to know when someone is asking for Software and with the simple introduction of an automated business process have that piece of software automatically be deployed to the requesting customer based upon a business approval?

If I were a CIO with 500 software requests annually, and I could automate 80% – 90% of those requests freeing up my team to do much more business aligned strategic initiatives – then my decision would be made for me. Let’s no longer measure a Service Desk solution by feature function any more, but as a business solution that aligns with the simple reality of saving $$$.

The key theme we should walk away with is:

System Center Service Manager is not a Service Desk solution, it is a gateway into understanding, measuring and automating your business.

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM) has been a very successful Information Technology (IT) management platform. It is an excellent tool for implementing the best practices and procedures found in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Beep! Beep! Back the truck up. I can’t do it, nope just can’t do it. There’s just too many acronyms in IT. So enough with that. If I wanted to write that way I would’ve been in business development not software engineering for the last 30 years.

In my world this is an elegant paragraph:

var keepingScore = (from t in my.Stuff where t.MyStuff > t.YourStuff order by t.MyStuff.Cost)

So don’t expect a lot of discussions about paradigms and automation strategies and blah blah blah in this blog post. Just bring a sense of humor.

We’re going to talk about Recipes for Success in Service Manager. I mean exactly that! This is the first part of a four-part series on how to create a Recipe Management System (RMS) in Service Manager. Yes, you read that correctly a Recipe Management System (RMS) in Service Manager.

Why a RMS? Well, part of it is to demonstrate just how customizable Service Manager can be and the other part is I was bored one day. I was also looking for an entertaining way to explain various ways Service Manager can be customized. I will save the Fantasy Football System (FBS) for next year.

The posts will cover these areas of our RMS

• Part 1 – Data Definitions i.e. ClassTypes, Relationships, Enumerations and TypeProjections
• Part 2 – Workspace i.e. the “wunderbar” and views.
• Part 3 – Custom Forms
• Part 4 – Reports & Datawarehouse (Gulp!)

When we are done you will be able to browse recipes and plan meals in between completing activities and reassigning incidents to that guy who stole your parking place this morning.

Let’s get to it.

The first thing we have to do is create the domain model. Yeah I know it’s one of those programming terms. All it really means is a design of how the data is to be structured and to make sure we have all the information necessary to create the best Crème Brûlée.

The domain model our RMS is below

The Domain model contains the two classes Recipe and Ingredient with their respective properties. We then translate that to the XML for the management pack. It can be seen here.

Both of our classes inherit from Entity found in System.Library mp. We get certain default properties called generic properties in every Service Manager class. Here’s a list of the generic properties

• Id
• Name
• Path
• FullName
• DisplayName
• LastModified
• TimeAdded
• LastModifiedBy

The Id property is a Guid and is referred to the BaseManagedEntityID and as “$Id$” in XML criteria.

We also have to create a relationship between Recipe and Ingredient. The XML is linked below and should be very understandable. Notice that the value of the Base attribute is “System!System.Membership”. This means that Ingredient is dependent on Recipe and if you delete Recipe all of the related Ingredients will be deleted as well.

You can find the Relationship code here.

There is an excellent discussion of relationship types on the SCSM Blog.

Now that we have our data, let’s look at the recipe type. This is a perfect example of how to use a list in Service Manager. The recipe type is how we organize our views later in the console.
I think a good list of recipe types for our RMS would have the following types:

• Appetizers
• Soups
• Breads
• Meats
  • Beef
  • Pork
  • Lamb
  • Pork
  • Poultry
  • Fish
• Vegetarian
• Desserts
• TimeAdded
• Adult Beverages

We can’t forget the Adult Beverages! I haven’t and I’m enjoying a very nice Gary Farell Reserve Pinot Noir right now.

We create the RecipeType list in xml as EnumerationTypes for the management pack here.

Finally, we have to create the TypeProjection. A TypeProjection is like a SQL view that we will use to retrieve Recipes with their respective Ingredients. We will use the TypeProjection in views and the forms. The XML representation looks like this.

Well that’s enough for this post. Stay tuned for part two where we create the workspace more commonly known as “wunderbar” and views.

You can download the current MP here.

Getting started with development using the Systems Center Service Manager SDK can be overwhelming. Thankfully there are plenty of great resources that go over the basics. In this post I am going to go over an extension of the basic functionality of connecting to the management server using specific user credentials. I will then demonstrate how this ensures that User Role Security trickles down to the custom implementation.

For beginners, here is a post that demonstrates some basic functionality: http://scsmnz.net/c-code-snippets-for-service-manager-1/

To expand on the connection code, we have the capability of connecting to the management server with specific user credentials. Here is the code in C#:

var settings = new EnterpriseManagementConnectionSettings("localhost");
 settings.UserName = "MyUserName";
 settings.Domain = "MyDomain";
 settings.Password = new System.Security.SecureString(); 

 foreach (char letter in new char[] { 'M', 'y', 'P', 'a', 's', 's', 'w', 'o', 'r', 'd' })
 {
     settings.Password.AppendChar(letter); 
 } 

 var group = new EnterpriseManagementGroup(settings); 

In my own development I ran into a snag with this implementation. What if you specified the NetBIOS Name upon installation which is different than the FQDN? Using the FQDN will cause the following exception:

Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Common.UnauthorizedAccessEnterpriseManagementException: The user does not have sufficient permission to perform the operation. ---> System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: The caller was not authenticated by the service. ---> System.ServiceModel.FaultException: The request for security token could not be satisfied because authentication failed.

In this case you will need to use the NetBIOS name instead of the the FQDN for the Domain property of the EnterpriseManagementConnectionSettings.

You may be asking, “Why do I need to connect as a specific user in the first place?” Of course security is likely the top answer. Not only do we want to make sure our users are valid but implementing our connection in this manner also allows security set up within Service Manager to trickle down.

For instance lets say you need a listing of available Service Request Templates. We know that the Template availability can be set by the User Role in the console by going to Administration > Security > User Roles.

Consider the following code:

 .....establish connection using variable called "group" ..... 

 ManagementPackClass mpc = group.EntityTypes.GetClass(new Guid("04b69835-6343-4de2-4b19-6be08c612989"));

 foreach (ManagementPackObjectTemplate mpot in group.Templates.GetObjectTemplates())
 {
     var mptpType = group.EntityTypes.GetTypeProjection(mpot.TypeID.Id); 
     if (mptpType != null && Equals(mptpType.TargetType, mpc)) 
     { 
         //do something with each template 
     } 
 }
 

If we connect to the management server without specifying user credentials all templates will be returned. However, if we make the same call while connected with specific user credentials only the templates visible to the user’s role will be returned.

Without out any additional development we have now ensured that User Role Security for templates is implemented in our custom implementation.

Enjoy and happy coding!

Ever wondered exactly what permissions a given user has? A user can be a member of a user role directly, but a user can also be a member of a user via membership in an Active Directory group that is a member of a user role. Further, a user can be a member of a group which is a member of a group which is a member of a group which is a member of a user role. You get the idea.

Going through each user role, looking at each group in the user role, and then going to AD to look at the members of that group, and the members of the groups in that group, and so on can be very intimidating and a big waste of time.

So, let’s let the magic of PowerShell do the work for us!

Awhile ago, I wrote a PowerShell script that will display the display name of the user roles, the user role profile that each of the user roles are based on, all of the users in each user role (including groups) and the permissions that are available to members of each of the user roles. You can find this blog post and the PowerShell script here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2011/12/01/userroles-powershell-report-using-smlets.aspx

So – now what we are going to do is combine that with some other PowerShell magic using the ActiveDirectory module. Basically, what this new Get-UserPermissions.ps1 PowerShell script does is:

1. Get all user roles using Get-SCSMUserRole from SMLets (what would we do without SMLets??)
2. For each user role, get the members of the user role
3. For each member of the user role, determine if the member is a User or a Group by using the Get-ADObject cmdlet and then testing the .ObjectType property of the returned object. If the ObjectType = User then we know it is a user or if it is a Group then we know it is a group.
4. If it is a user, then we test to see if the user’s name is the same as the one that are looking for. If it is, then we stop there and tell the person running the script that the user is directly a member of this user role and prompt whether or not to show the permissions for that user role or not.
5. If it is a group then we test to see if the user is a member of the group recursively using the Get-ADGroupMember cmdlet using the -Recursive parameter. We compare all the users returned by this cmdlet to the username of the user that we are looking for. If there is a match, then we inform the person running the script that the user is a member of the user role via membership in that group and prompt whether or not to display the permissions of that user role.

Simple enough right?

This is what the script looks like in action:

I’ve made the script available on the TechNet Gallery here:

http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Service-Manager-SCSM-User-ebcdfcd6

Enjoy!

	Travis Wright   Partner, Director of Product Management   Cireson
	Follow Me!

A common question I get from clients is, “How do you setup a Review Activity with the affected user’s Manager as reviewer?” Wait a minute, isn’t there a very simple solution to this? Let’s take a look at a Review Activity.

Aha! Do you see it? Bottom right of the image. Isn’t that what this “Line Manager Should Review” checkbox is for? Problem solved!

Well, not exactly. You see, the question specifically asks for the, “Affected User’s Manager”. The problem with the out-of-the-box workflow that targets the “Line Manager Should Review” check box is that it targets the “Created By User’s Manager” as the reviewer.

Note: This out-of-the-box functionality is particularly useful for Change Requests, where during the Risk Assessment stage, the Manager of the “Created By User” is required to approve the Change Request before it moves along to the Planning and Testing stages.

But, again, that is not what the question asked for. So, the out-of-the-box functionality will not quite work for us. So how do we go about answering this?

Well, if you happen to know me, then you will be used to hearing these words, “Orchestrator can do it!”. This mini blog series will cover the following topics to walk you through how to make this happen.

1. (Part 1) Runbook Overview and Download (see below)
2. (Part 2) Runbook Deep Dive (check back soon!)
3. (Part 3) SCSM Templates Configuration (check back soon!)
4. (Part 4) Making it all work in your lab (check back soon!)

Runbook Overview and Download

Now, before we start I think it is important to mention that this type of runbook could be accomplished 100 different ways. For this particular Runbook, I am striving for “Ease of Use” by the end user who is putting their SR or CR template together. And that is, simply add a Runbook Automation Activity (called, “RBA – Affected Users Manager Approval”) in the place of the Review Activity, and allow Orchestrator to do the rest.

Initiate

The first thing we need to do is setup our “Initiate” Runbook. This is the main runbook that is Invoked by SCSM and controls the flow of all Activities and “Function” Runbooks.

Activities:

1. Initialize Data
2. Get Runbook Automation Activity Properties
3. Get Related Service Requests
4. Get Service Request Properties
5. Create Review Activity related to the Service Request
6. Invoke Runbook D3.2-2: Get Manager
7. Create Reviewer Related to Review Activity
8. Related Manager with Reviewer
9. Invoke Runbook D3.2-1: Increment Activity Sequence IDs

Note: These activities are defined in greater detail within the , “Runbook Deep Dive” follow-up post.

Functions

The “Initiate” Runbook Invokes two “Function” Runbooks which are split out to simplify the “Initiate” Runbook. Otherwise, we will have a mess on our hands!

The first “Function” Runbook is the “Increment Activity Sequence IDs”. This Runbook is responsible for incrementing the Activity property, “Sequence ID” for each Manual, Review, Parallel, Sequential, and Runbook Automation Activity related to the Service Request. Why do we do this? Here is why……

Each Activity related to a parent Work Item has a Sequence ID (number starting at 0). This Sequence ID tracks the order of each activity related to the Work Item. An activity with a Sequence ID of 0 is the first activity to go “in-progress” once the parent Work Item has been created. Once that activity completes a SCSM workflow increments to the next Sequence ID (1 in this example) and that activity goes “in-progress”. However, if there are two activities with the same Sequence ID, then the SCSM workflow does not know how to handle the situation and neither activity goes “in-progress”. Essentially, the activity chain is interrupted and manual intervention is required. Not good.

During the “Initiate” Runbook, once we “Create Review Activity related to Service Request” the Review Activity is created with a Sequence ID of (RBA Sequence ID + 1). So, if the RBA was the first activity related to the SR (Sequence ID 0) then the Review Activity will be created with a Sequence ID of 1. If there is an existing activity with Sequence ID 1, then we now have a conflict. Thus is why we have this “Function” Runbook to increment all of the Activities related to the Service Request. (note: ignoring any activity with Sequence ID < Review Activity)

The second “Function” Runbook is the “Get Manager”. This Runbook is responsible for getting the properties of the Manager related to the Affected User. This information is returned by this Runbook which is used later by the “Initiate” Runbook in order to add as Reviewer to the Review Activity that is created.

Download and Try It Out!

Check out the Runbook posted at Microsoft’s Technet Gallery. Questions? Comments? Please post below, I look forward to your feedback!

Purpose:
To provide SCSM administrators an easy and quick way to login as a different user, such as a user with Administrator level permissions.

Situation:
If you are an SCSM administrator, you should still login to the SM console as a standard user. This way you can see any potential issues with your security roles, tasks, and views that you have scoped down for normal console use. But then you have to start the console as a different user all the time by right clicking the icon, run as different user, entering the username and password. This may not seem like a lot of work, but at least in the beginning, you will have to do this many times.

Solution:
To open the console as a pre-defined “different user” by clicking on a shortcut, and entering a password. Quick. Simple.

Steps:
1. Right-click on the desktop, point to New, and then select Shortcut

2. In Type the location of the item, enter runas /user:DomainName\UserName “Path of SCSM .exe“

Example below:
runas /user:Demo\scott.watkins “C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.UI.Console.exe”

Based on the version and location of your install path, your entry may look different

3. Select Next, type a name for the shortcut, and then click Finish

4. Right-click on the shortcut that was created, select Properties

5. Select the Change Icon… button

6. Select OK

7. Select Browse…

8. Navigate to the install path for the SCSM .exe you entered above

C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.UI.Console.exe

9. Select Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.UI.Console.exe,
and Select Open

10. Select OK

11. Select OK again

12. You are Done

13. Double-click on the shortcut

14. Enter the password for the Run As User

15. You should see some extra lines in the CMD window, then Service Manager will open as that user

16. You can now pin this to the Task Bar, Start Menu, or assign a keyboard shortcut

Cireson recently released our new View Builder app, see the press release here.

Amongst other things, this app allows you to add some custom columns to your views, including some that show SLA data:

You can add these columns to any view to automatically show this SLA data like this:

As you can see, I am not very good at meeting my SLAs

This data is shown even if you do not target your view to a combination class (type projection) containing the SLA information, the data is pulled automatically behind the scenes for you.

In fact, you shouldn’t target such views to include the SLA data because in this case it will be pulled twice.

However, pulling this data can result in very poor performance, especially on views containing a large number of items or views that are using a large combination class that targets a lot of relationships.

To help with this, you should always target views using a combination class that is the narrowest one possible, that contains only the relationships that you want to display data from. So, using the “Incident (Advanced)” combination class to display Incident data is usually a very poor idea as your view needs to pull the following data for every single Incident:

Incident class data
Work Item is related to Work Item
About Configuration Item
Affected User
Assigned To User
Closed By User
Contains Activity

It you only want to display the Assigned To User and Affected User it is much better to use the “Incident (Typical)” combination class instead, for example.

To especially help with the problem of pulling large amounts of SLA data, the View Builder app caches the SLA data for you based on the following View Builder administration setting:

When you first load such a view, the entire SLA data is loaded as the view items are displayed. Items that are off the screen that you need to scroll down to see do not have their SLA data loaded until you scroll down and make them visible. You will notice a slight pause as you scroll down to view each page of data. So, if you scroll from the first item to last, all of the SLA data is loaded.

This means you can now refresh the view to see new items, scroll up and down and order by columns without having to load the entire SLA data again, until the cache expires.

The caching setting lets you set how old the cache is before pulling the data again. In the above image, I have set this to 2 minutes. This means that SLA data is up to 2 minutes old. You can set this value to meet your SLA needs versus console view performance.

Some people have mentioned that you cannot sort by the custom SLA columns. This is true. And this is the same for the out-of-the-box views that show SLA data (they actually sort on something like Created Date). This is because the view columns need a class property to sort on, and they cannot sort on a value that is returned “behind the scenes” in this way.

Lastly, if you noticed the options for colour coded columns above, here is what they look like:

Don’t worry, the choice of colours can be configured via the admin settings

(Translated article from Computer Sweden)

Travis Wright has been at the heart of Microsoft for eleven years, where he worked with the core components of System Center. Now he is working with a business that makes additions to Microsoft’s administration tools.

For nine years , starting in 2002, Travis Wright drove the evolution of Microsoft’s various administrative tools , acting as a Product Manager for Operations Manager and Service Manager in System Center family.

His way into the IT industry was not fully anticipated . After graduating in business administration in 2000, he started working as an economist at a smaller company . He managed to write Excel Macros simplified information management deal . That led to a job in the IT department of the company, before joining Microsoft in 2002 .

“When I started at Microsoft , we worked to create an ambitious administration which had the working title smx . We thought we’d be done with it in two years. After a month the project was down and we focused on getting started with a lower level of administration , said Travis Wright.”

He tells us that there was no holistic approach to administration in the beginning, both for Microsoft and its customers .

“However, with time increasing scope . From being focused on administering Windows Server , we also created solutions such as Unix devices and network equipment.”

Regarding the administration’s ” big four ” a familiar concept . This refers to the senior administration tools from giants IBM, HP , CA and BMC . Microsoft competes with them?

“It’s more a competition between Microsoft System Center and specialized tools , like Servicenow to manage cloud environments.”

In a comparison with the four incumbent supplier’s products , he thinks that System Center is more modern and that the parts are better integrated.

“System Center has been developed as an integrated solution from the beginning. The others have been largely acquired different parts.”

“Today is a lot of work at Microsoft to harmonize the administration of traditional local environments and cloud environments. Features available in one environment is continuously moved over to the other and movers goes both ways . It is natural, partly because the project teams for the development of Windows Server and System Center are working a lot together .”

The last two years at Microsoft, Travis Wright worked and managed external contacts, for example with MVP’s, then outside individuals who received an award for his skills. Of the approximately 4,000 MVP’s will be available for Microsoft Technology has over 500 recognized for skills for Windows Server and System Center. Work with external contacts also meant to be involved in conferences and writing blog posts.

In the end , he lacked to be directly involved in creating software and sought out the smaller American company Cireson who develop add-on to System Center . He started as a product manager at Cireson two months ago .

“There are differences when compared to Microsoft. We have less developer resources, but it is also less bureaucracy.”

He does his job from his home in Park City , Utah, USA and on the move, something he also did in the last days a Microsoft. Why Park City?

“I love to go Snowboarding and three of the top ten spots in the U.S. are near my home.”

See the original article in Swedish here: http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.537309/mote-med-mr-system-center

Hey there! I have put together a little Festivus present (or whatever holiday you may happen to celebrate) for all my Service Manager friends. Today, I am making my Service Manager Self-Service Portal icon pack available to the community. I have taken a ton of time finding, downloading and organizing a set of icons you can use for Service Manager Self-Service Portal.

As always, you should use icons that are 32 x 32 pixels in size, so focus on those for your portal itself. The other icon sizes will be good to use in your documentation and other aspects that help support your Service Manager marketing and education efforts.

Note! The other key item to be aware of is that your Self-Service Portal (the Silverlight version that comes out of the box) will download every icon throughout the entire SSP when you or your users open the SSP. You can see the problem with this, right? This happens every time the portal is opened as no icons are cached to the local browser. If you are looking at using icons in your SSP please make sure that the 32 x 32 version is as small as possible. The ideal size from my testing is 1 – 3 kb in size (yes, you read that right!!!) to ensure that load time of your portal is not adversely affected. I have taken great effort to ensure the 32 x 32 icons provided within this icon pack contains icons that are really lightweight. But as always, do a little math to see how much bandwidth will be consumed for your portal. if you have a total of 10 icons (between service offerings and request offerings) at 3k each, that’s not too bad… if you have 1,000 at 3k each and your users are pulling this over the wire from another country you may want to reconsider your approach

To view the original article and download the SCSM SSP Icon Pack please visit the Service Manager User Group site here!